The town that I live in is Kingston, Pennsylvania and there are roughly thirteen thousand people that currently live in the area. It is about twenty minutes away from the city of Scranton, where the television show “The Office” took place. I believe that Kingston would be considered an automobile suburb because the majority of the people use cars to travel around. Even in the summer you don’t see a lot of people walking unless you are at a park. I do like the town I live in but one thing I do not like is that it is not very social. Because of the lack of people not using cars, you rarely see people outside hanging out unless you go to a park in the summer.
The first city that I chose from the module is Bogota, Columbia. The city bans care on a 75 mile stretch of their streets every Sunday. This promotes physical activity outdoors and as a whole it improved the atmosphere of the city. I believe that this is something that my hometown needs to start doing because it would force people to be more active and more social. Sometimes I feel that the overall mood of Kingston is not very good and if we do what is done in Bogota, the people will be happier and it would lighten up the mood. Also, by promoting physical activity and restricting the use of vehicles, the obesity rate in Kingston would definitely go down, which is always a plus.
The second city that I chose is Havana, Cuba. One reason I chose this city is because that is where my dad was born and he moved here when he was in his teenage years. The other reason is because Havana is almost completely self-sustainable. Because of the embargo with the United States and the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba was forced to become as self-sustainable as possible. I believe that the people of Kingston should start to promote urban agriculture and try to rely less on purchasing their food from grocery stores. This would be healthier for everybody and it would save people a lot of money. Also, the food that you do not eat could be sold as another source of income aside from their current jobs.
Hello Eric my name is Lucas Skiba I may have commented on one of your posts before. But anyway your post caught my eye, not because you live in Pennsylvania but of your smaller population as well. I also don’t see as many people socially being outside unless its summer at a park or people doing yard work. I feel like our towns almost need to a change in the community and have more social activities such as bicycling or walking as more of a social norm. Thanks for listening Eric here is my link.
http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/17/sustainable-cities-module-7-skiba-ljs5300/