My town is Swarthmore Pennsylvania. It is outside of Philly and is a mix of suburban automobile for people who live in the area and commute to Philly and pedestrian-oriented due to the clustered main area which contains an old college. The college part has narrow walkways similar to Beacon Hill but other parts are automobile oriented like Rochester NY. It is part of a much larger general metro area outside Philly but the smaller town area itself has roughly 15,000 people. The place is nice, definitely a good mixture of a town and suburb style. However, the people there are very old fashioned and this ends up messing with the surrounding areas who do not have the same old design. I like the town and the area but sometimes the people cause massive problems.

The first city I will focus on from the module is Rochester NY. I am choosing this because it is how a lot of the surrounding neighborhoods and towns are aside from Swarthmore. In Rochester, things are more focused on automobiles and getting into the city. My area needs to take this into consideration. My area has a road, the Blue Route, which connects two major areas of transportation and many many people rely on it for work each day. It was designed as a shortcut back when the suburban neighborhoods in the area were booming. However, my town blocked the highway from being 3 lanes in their part, meaning there is a several mile stretch where the road is only 2 lanes. While not a huge deal back in the day, this causes massive traffic jams not only on the Blue Route itself but also on the major highway it connects to. Because my area was determined to remain a mix of pedestrian and automobile focused, it really screwed the whole region. This is a problem that should have been addressed back in the day and is now causing major issues for commuters in the area. My town would be more sustainable if it allowed the highway to expand: less traffic, pollution, and overall higher quality of life for the entire region.

The next city I will focus on is Detroit. I really believe that there is a major opportunity for urban farming in my town. Swarthmore is a place that enjoys organic food but there is a real lack of it, meaning prices are extremely high. This could be solved by putting the developed area to use as urban farms. Small scale urban farms could produce local goods and have a major opportunity to sell them right in the town. Swarthmore is obviously not as developed as Detroit however, and it must be noted that our version of urban farming would be a more open and “rural” one in comparison to theirs. Both achieve the same goal however: reduce the footprint of shipping food and also satisfy a demand for local, fresh, organic produce that cannot be easily accessed.