The case study that I chose was Long Term Sustainable Policies: Sustainable Cities. The city this focused on was Santa Monica, California. Here is a link to the case study: http://personal.colby.edu/personal/t/thtieten/sc-ca.html The goals of this development focused on the sustainable development of the city and reworked eleven citywide policies focusing on environmental issues and cost effectiveness of each plan. The overall goal being sustainability, lead the city to identify eleven environmentally damaging targets for policy change, some of these being, storm water, wastewater, education, and energy. The city worked towards long-term goals to completely switch to renewable resources. They worked with energy companies to reduce energy consumption by 16%. The city has adapted three projects to work towards their long-term goal of reducing energy consumption. They are, ENVEST, ICLEI, and EPA’s Green Light Program. These focus on the ability to install energy efficient equipment throughout the buildings in the city. The case study also expresses the need to change education and install programs that work to educate students on the importance of gardening and recycling to prepare for the future.

The second case study I chose was Sustainable City Singapore. The information is from Green Growth Best Practice. It address the need for a country wide sustainable development program. Here is a link to the case study: http://www.ggbp.org/case-studies/singapore/sustainable-city-singapore Recently, Singapore has rapidly commercialized and economically prospered advancing them to become a first world country. Their goal is to pursue a competitive economy while focusing on environmental sustainability. To reach their goals, they launched the Sustainable Singapore Blueprint that sets goals until 2030. Within this blueprint they address policy issues regarding land use, transportation, and many other regulations. One of their initiatives is to also address climate change. So far, Singapore has met their past goals of the Green plan in 2005. They also have met transportation goals by introducing a mass public transit system in an attempt to turn away from private cars. These goals that have been met has made Singapore Asia’s greenest metropolis.

At Penn State University Park, sustainability is a large initiative. The Sustainability Strategic Plan sounds similar to the goals behind the sustainable cities in Santa Monica and Singapore. Penn State has three goals: recognize the need for change, put knowledge to work, and inspire others in the common pursuit. Throughout the campus, initiatives have been put in place, like the intensive recycling projects, conservation efforts, and environmental research. Unlike the sustainable cities, one area that has not been touched on is the importance to decrease personal cars and to stress the importance of limiting energy consumption on a citywide scale. However, on a small scale Penn State does work to limit their energy consumption by composting and having volunteers turn lights off on campus. Living on a campus where environmental possibilism is so evident, it’s important that we have these initiatives in place. With the students being so focused on the need to innovate and to become technologically advanced, we still need to recognize that the environment in which we live needs to be protected despite our human advances.