Curitiba and Bogota have both revitalized themselves with the help of Urban Planning. They both use transit to their advantage.  They also had the idea to put people before cars.  Their ideas on urban planning and everything is great. The people seem a lot happier and the country is doing great. They were both doing badly before and now they are doing great. There are still some bad parts of town, but they are working at making them safer. This would totally revitalize the country.

                They have three major things in common that I found. The first thing I noticed was that they both use articulated buses. These buses are used everywhere pretty much, but they have them working a lot faster. They are very good at moving a lot of people very fast. This cuts down on wait time and allows people to get out the city fast.

                The second thing I noticed was that they both put people before cars. They identified problem areas and tried to fix them. They tried to fix them with people not with more roads and cars. This allowed the urban planner to add greener infrastructure. Also with fewer cars, buses have more opportunity to get around faster.

                The third thing I noticed was that they both made the country better, safer, and more prosperous. They have lambs eating grass to cut down on emissions. They shut down a road every Sunday to allow people to walk or bike it. They have people living in slums collecting garbage and getting paid in fruits and vegetables. They are building new community and having the slums move there and work there.  They are essentially eliminating slums and the high crime areas. The two urban planners were very smart at what they did and how they did it.

                One thing that was very different in the two was who the urban planner was and how they got their opportunity.  The Curitiba urban planner was an urban planner. He did not have any political power other than knowing a few people. He just had good ideas and brought them to the table. They town liked them and proceed with them. The mayor of Bogota was the urban planner. He had the power to change and it did not matter if people agreed with it or not. In the end, he made it great though.

                Another thing that was different is that Bogota named their bus system. They did not want people feeling like they were getting on a bus. They wanted it to be a better name and feel better (Transmillino). Curitiba just left it as their transit name. They did not care what the name was. They knew it would still work for the people.

My neighborhood is Orland Hills, Illinois. It is a small suburb of Chicago. It is a very small community of about 5,000 people. The people who live there work all over the place. There is not any non-automobile transit. The biggest thing in my town in the Wal-Mart and the strip mall the faces the Wal-Mart. My town is small enough to where you can walk from edge to edge. My town stretches 12 blocks north and south and 6 blocks east and west. We do not have any green infrastructure in my town. The only green things we have are trees and grass.

I do not think there is a center to my town. There is not a center piece to it. There are however edges that are easy to see. The town is made into a rectangle by four streets. Going east and west you can walk my town with ease. North and South may put a little struggle on you but nothing too bad. We have a lot of sidewalks to walk on and there are many trails to bike around on. I do not think I would change anything in my neighborhood for the walkers and bikers. They have a lot of room to do what they want. I would only considered 88^th Ave. to be complete because it has sidewalks, bike lane, and then the street. The street I would say that is unsafe is 159^th Street. Cars go really fast and even with a big sidewalk it is still dangerous.

I see my neighborhood not really changing in fifty years. I see Orland Hills still being a tiny town in-between to big towns (Orland Park and Tinley Park). The town may go green with the town hall and town recreation center, but other than that I do not see anything else going green. Many people may move in and out of the town, but it will still be the same. The town will not grow. It will just be a nice little suburb to families who work around the city of Chicago. The cars that they drive may become greener but other than that nothing else will. I do not plan on living there forever, but it will always be a nice place to call home. The community will always be one that anyone and everyone would want to live in. This is what makes it the best.

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-06/world/world_brazil-indonesia-rainforest-eco_1_deforestation-brazil-vote-brazilian-government?_s=PM:WORLD

 

The article I chose was about Brazilian Deforestation. The article describes how Brazil has to make a decision over a “common.” This is an example of a tragedy of commons because it is a resource that will go away if everyone continues to act the way they do. We consume way too much wood and wood products. If you look around your room, you can see so many objects and goods made out of wood. With this consumption rate we have, the rain forest in Brazil and around the world are going to cease to exist.  Without trees, carbon dioxide will become more and more abundant and oxygen will become less abundant. This will cause many other environmental problems besides the two listed above.  The forest is a common area and we are taking it over without any care. Without this care, the forest will go away and eventually so will we.

There are many solutions that can be proposed and used to help with this tragedy of commons. One solution is selective cutting. Selective cutting is to only cut trees that are mature enough to be used. This would allow baby trees to grow and develop and would always have trees in the ground. Another solution is to stop cutting trees down. This would hurt the economy but would help grow back our forests. We could cut for one year and then stop cutting for three years. This would allow trees to grow and help out the environment.  Another solution would be to find out how to make more synthetic wood. This would allow us to still cut wood but a lot less. With less wood being cut means more trees growing and the environment would become stronger.

The solution I believe that would work the best is to cut less wood and find other products to use instead. We have so many smart people on this earth and such great technology, that we can come up with other goods to use in place of wood. This would free up keeping trees in the ground and make the environment better. Besides the obvious ways of making the environment better, it would also help aesthetics. Many people are now worried about how their businesses look and many owners like trees. These trees can help their business and our environment. This is a solution that I believe will work the best.

I believe “growing cooler” is a hybrid between technological and ecological sustainability. I think it is both because in the reading it talks about how technologies can help advance sustainability and how ecologically can help sustainability. I would agree with a lot of the things said in the reading; too.

            To begin with, it is technological sustainability because of all the technologies that are described in the reading. For example, they talk about increasing the fuel efficiency in cars. This would help a lot because then cars would use less gas. With using less gas, we would emit less carbon dioxide. Another new technology would be changing the composition of gas. They talk about this and say that it could emit less carbon dioxide. There is a draw back from this though. With all of these new technologies, we are always expanding. Our VMT (vehicles miles traveled) is expanding rapidly. We are driving longer and getting stuck in traffic more. With this happening, the carbon emissions are staying the same. We can lower the output from cars, but if we don’t lower our VMT then we are still going to get hotter.

            In addition to technological sustainability, I think there is some ecological sustainability. The reading says that if we would build houses closer to our cities, than we could walk and ride our bicycles. This would not be new technology but would be smarter for the environment. Also in lecture, were talking about growing cooler. We discussed ways on how to become cooler. We can stop using so many fossil fuels or change the way in which we mine fossil fuels. The ways we mine now are very disruptive to the earth and sometimes they can turn horribly wrong. For example, the BP oil spill. The way we were drilling for oil was a new way and it went wrong. Then the oil spill happened and it went downhill. Also, we can add green vegetation to the surroundings and grow cooler.

            With all of this, growing cooler is a viable option for the world. It can help us make a better world for all of the generations to come. With the idea, people should start to come to the idea that something needs to happen. You may not agree what the article says, but everyone agrees that something needs to be done. Growing cooler is a very good idea to help us preserve the earth.