I am from East Stroudsburg, in Northeast Pennsyvlania. According to the 2010 census, there are 176,567 people living in the Metropolitan area. I would consider my town to be an Automobile Suburb. The module states that these are neighborhoods designed for residents to commute into the city via car, and many residents make the 1 and half hour commute to New York City for work on a daily basis. Only around the college and certain areas downtown are there sidewalks to walk along the streets. Other places like restaurants, stores and businesses, and our mall are in different locations and often difficult to walk to, so the car is the main mode of transportation. The hilly geography is another huge discouraging factor to walking. I was born and raised in East Stroudsburg, so taking a car on even short trips is normal for me. Luckily, even with the mass use of vehicles, the environment is still relatively healthy. The air is clean, and there are many national recreation areas with healthy forests to enjoy.

The first city I’d like to discuss is Curitiba, Brazil. Although it is significantly larger than my town, their model bus system is definitely something East Stroudsburg could look at. East Stroudsburg has a bus system; however, it is not used very often due to lack of knowledge of the system and sporadic stops. Using the Curitiba as inspiration, a massive renovation for the actual bus stops could help immensely. The module states that our minds need to transition too, and since most people from my town don’t use the bus system, renovating the bus stops to be safer, cleaner, and simpler to use than they are now will ease this mental transition. The benefits of using busses to transport people are there, but there need to be incentives to ride the bus like they have in Curitiba.

The second city I’d like to discuss is Copenhagen, and their programs to reduce traffic. For this, I will focus specifically on the downtown borough region of East Stroudsburg, because the rest of the town would be too hilly to promote consistent cycling or walking as transportation. Copenhagen closed a 1 kilometer stretch of road to cars. There are many stretches of road in downtown East Stroudsburg that should be closed to traffic. On these streets are restaurants and shops that often suffer due to the fact that it can be hard to find a parking spot and walk across the busy streets. If these streets were closed and traffic was routed around, people would have more incentives to safely walk around and explore the vibrant downtown region. The downtown borough contains around 11,000 people. Convincing these people that walking or cycling is easier than driving a car would have huge sustainable benefits for the environment.