- My hometown is Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Doylestown is a rather small town with only about 8,000 residents in the 2.2 square miles that the town takes up. It is a suburb of Philadelphia which is only 27 miles away making it a popular automobile suburb. There are also many jobs in the urban parts of the town which make it somewhat pedestrian- oriented. I personally enjoy living in Doylestown, but there isn’t much to do. One good thing about it is that it is a drivable distance to Philadelphia, New York City, and the New Jersey beaches from there. There are many farms in the rural parts of the town where food is locally grown. It is also close to some big bodies of water such as the Delaware River.
- The first city that I chose to discuss was Copenhagen. In this city they implemented car free streets that serve as public spaces for the residents. This caused people to start walking or cycling around town instead of driving cars and causing air pollution. This has led to many people walking around the beautiful city and it now has big public spaces for the people to enjoy. I think something similar could easily have the same effect in Doylestown. It is smaller than Copenhagen but still a very nice little town that has many roads going through it and there are small sidewalks that cyclists and pedestrians must share. I think making the two main roads that go through the center of town into public spaces would lead to fewer cars and encourage more bikes and walkers. This will be promoting environmentally healthy methods of urban transportation. I also think doing this will make the town more enjoyable for the residents.
- The other city I would like to discuss is Bogota, Columbia. What this city does is have car free events. Every Sunday and holiday cars are banned for most of the streets in this city. This forces many people to bike or walk to places on these days which promotes good physical fitness and causes less air pollution due to the absence of car emissions. I really like this idea and I am surprised that it hasn’t gained more popularity in the United States. Implementing something like this in my town is very possible and would be good for everybody. I would love to see Doylestown filled with bikers and walkers instead of cars. It may be hard to do this because people have very different work schedules, but even if this is done once a month it will help with sustainability and may become more popular that way. This is truly a great idea that I think could definitely be successful in my hometown.
2 thoughts on “Sustainable Cities- mod 7”
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Hello Bryan I’m Garrett and currently a Junior here at University Park. Here is a link to my blog post, please feel free to go and check it out!
https://sites.psu.edu/geog30/?p=46457&preview=true
I cant agree more that implementing the care free days or certain streets where no car traffic is allowed would greatly increase the popularity of your small community. I think this because the same can be done in my smaller hometown of Wellsboro, PA, it not only has a unique opportunity to increase the health of its citizens but can also attract more tourists who want to experience this new opportunity. It will also be safer for families with small children, they wont be worried about walking their kids downtown, or letting them run on their own. I think this not only greatly reduces the carbon footprint of these cities but it has the potential to reduce the obesity in our nation. All in all great blog post! Again feel free to check mine out.
Hello Bryan, my name is William and I really enjoyed reading your post. I thought the most interesting paragraph in your post was the final paragraph. I also thought it was extremely interesting to hear about just car free days in Bogota. I grew up running outside and biking around the area, and I still enjoy hopping on a bike. I would love to experience one of these car free days in Bogota and I wonder if they would have the same success in some American cities. I think it would be very interesting to see. If you would like to read my post it can be found at the link below:
http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/16/william-graf-module-7/