I’m from an automobile suburb type town in York, PA. with a population of 45,000. It has some pedestrian qualities, as students in the York City School District must walk or ride a bike to school because there aren’t any school buses. The vast majority of transportation occurs via car though. The city lacks density, and you’d struggle to find a building taller than 7-8 stories in the whole city. It’s not an overly large city, so it would be possible to walk from one side of town to the other, but it would certainly not be convenient to do so, and people usually revert to driving to their destination. There are few bikes on the streets because parked cars lined up on either side of the road constrict the roadways, making it hard to navigate via bicycle.

The second city that I’m going to focus on is Copenhagen. I love how Copenhagen’s shift from automobiles to pedestrian and bicycle traffic has revolutionized the city. It has improved the safety of transportation by eliminating fast moving cars and trucks from its roads, and has boosted businesses. I think that this type of development would be beneficial to York City because it would make the city more accessible, reduce traffic, and lessen it’s environmental impact. It wouldn’t be overly difficult to make this change. First we could start by building parking garages to minimize the numbers of cars parked along the side of the road. We could then replace the parking spots alongside the road with bike lanes similar to that of Copenhagen as we saw in module 4. Overall this would likely improve the speed of transportation in the city and greatly improve its well being.

The third city that I’m going to focus on is Detroit. I like how Detroit is working to utilize free space by installing community gardens and other urban agriculture. This is a great way to get fresh food into the hands of the city’s people at a reasonable price, and little negative impact on the environment. Not only does it improve the people’s diet, but it also helps on the emotional and social side by allowing them to be in touch with their food, and spend time with members of their community. York county is mostly rural with York City in the middle, so space to grow crops isn’t necessarily the cities biggest concern from an agricultural standpoint. However, the sense of community bonding and social interaction associated with these types of gardens could still be improved by a community garden. It wouldn’t be out of necessity, but it could certainly be a very beneficial addition to York’s community.