A smart growth approach would focus growth in more walkable neighborhoods within existing developed areas, supported through improved public transit options. This and mixed-use development (combining housing, commercial, and other uses) reduces the distances people have to travel. More people are able to accomplish more of their daily activities through easy, local access to shops, […]
Cool New Tech
This past semester of ENVS 220 has introduced me to a number of methods and tools to be used in later environmental analysis. These have included the SPSS statistical tool, mapping program ArcGIS, network mapping through yEd, even the statistical equation side of Excel. When I think about my growth through the class so far, […]
Resilience
After reading Urban Centers: An Assessment of Sustainability by McGranahan et al., I realized that I needed a new way to disagree with the idea of sustainability. I knew that I didn’t quite agree with what McGranahan brought up, but I wasn’t sure how to disagree. Brown et al. and Sellberg et al. introduced me to […]
Giving It a Try
A skill that my concentration in particular has helped me to develop is to “give it a try”. It is difficult to be planning in advance something as significant as the next two and a half years of my schooling, so the process could have very easily shut me down without letting me figure out what […]
Blessed Unrest Literature Analysis – Jay, Maya, Tasha
Background Popular environmental literature often acts as an important bridge between the scientific world and the world beyond. This genre of literature brings much-needed context to scientific writing, which can be too narrowly focused on one single experiment or problem. This context is also useful for “connecting the dots” and drawing conclusions among individual scientific […]
The Big Words: Sustainability and Development
Urban Centers: An Assessment of Sustainability was one of the first articles that I read in preparation for my concentration. This article proposes a way in which sustainability should be used in urban planning and how it has or has not been successful in certain contexts. Surprisingly, I found that I disagreed with many of […]