Delft residents: ‘TU did not hear us on growth plans’

Delft residents: ‘TU did not hear us on growth plans’

Nine Delft residents’ and neighbourhood associations sent a letter this month expressing their concerns about TU Delft’s multicampus strategy. Among other things, they write that TU Delft has not asked the residents’ associations for their views on the growth plans.

In the letter, which is addressed to TU Delft’s executive board (cvb), the municipal executive board and the city council, they ask the university to take their opinions into account in future explorations and decisions about the multicampus strategy. In recent months, the cvb has asked students and employees, among others, to give their views on the plan to grow to 40,000 students, spread over several campuses. A number of parties had initially forgotten about the university. For instance, the cvb only spoke to city councillors after political parties complained about it in a Delta article.

DOBB-io, as the nine neighbourhood and residents’ associations collectively call themselves, also write that the pressure on the city is already too great at present. Among other things, they point to the shortage of housing for non-students, the congestion on cycle paths to and from the university and the large number of bicycles parked on pavements and near the station.

The organisations are therefore asking the university to pull out all the stops to reduce the number of students in Delft to 25,000. Moreover, developing more campuses should be more important than recruiting new students, says DOBB-io: “As far as we are concerned, realising these other campuses outside Delft is top priority and comes before recruiting new students. That means a brake on the number of new students for the next five to 10 years, until these other locations become available.”

•  The full letter (in Dutch), in which the associations give several preconditions from the TU, can be found here.