- I live in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, which is located in southeastern PA. I would describe Wyomissing as an automobile suburb, where most people drive their cars to work, the store, school, etc. In 2013, the population of Wyomissing, PA was 10,481 people, and the population density was about 2,336/ sq mile. Also, the borough holds a good mix of population by age. Wyomissing holds many large shopping centers and corporations, and in turn, a good amount of job growth. I have lived in Wyomissing for about 5 years, and I really enjoy living there. It is a very clean, friendly town, made up of many families. I have noticed that not many people use transportation other than cars in my town. There are hardly any busses that run efficiently to where you need them to, and roads are not really suited for biking or walking.
- My favorite video from this week’s module was about the cycling day in Bogota, Colombia. Every Sunday and holiday from 7am-2pm, streets are closed for cars and open for all pedestrians to just go out and enjoy the streets how they’d like to. Pedestrians feel safer this way, and it is much more convenient for them to go out and exercise. They even offer aerobics classes right in the middle of the street. I think this would be an awesome thing to implement in my own town because most people in my town drive everywhere every day of the week. It would be harder to do this in my town because most streets are only one lane, where in Bogota there were three or four lanes and one was left open to normal traffic. To stop all normal traffic in my town may not work for some people, but it would definitely be great to get people moving and walking or biking to most of their nearby errands. Having less traffic would also lead to less pollution from cars, making my town an even cleaner place to live.
- The other video that I really enjoyed watching was the urban agriculture video from Haiti. I thought it was amazing how the changes being made to Haiti are making them much more of a “greener” place to live. The woman in the video said that she used to be able to provide bread and soup for her children, but she’d have to go to the market to buy vegetables for them. Now that she’s growing her own vegetables, it saves her the time and money to buy them from someone else. This would be great to implement in my town because now most people buy fruits and vegetables from grocery stores, where they may have no idea where they are even coming from. By growing fruits and vegetables in our backyard and selling them inside the town, we are keeping the money in the town, and even making it more convenient to buy these goods. While my town does not have a lot of farmland, it may even be an interesting idea for only people that have enough land to grow certain fruits and vegetables and sell them throughout the town.
2 thoughts on “Module 7- Urban Planning”
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Hi! I’m Micaelie. The town in Colombia is such a great idea! It reminds me of Japan requiring no cars for a day (I can’t remember the specific information) where it significantly helps the environment and air pollution. It’s a good idea to close the streets to also allow more socialisation and boost for income of the stores and restaurants. I wrote about a street in a town near me that does that in my blog : https://wp.me/p3RCAy-c0D
Hi my name is Aaliyah. Here is the link to my blog http://sites.psu.edu/geog30/2016/03/16/sustainable-cities-4/
I think its very interesting that for having such a small population the city still has many large shopping centers and corporations. How far is this town from a major city?I live in the suburbs outside of Pittsburgh so I can relate to the poor bus system. In order to get to a bus stop I would have to drive which is counter productive.