My hometown is in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Doylestown is a City and the county seat of Bucks County. It is located 27 miles north of Philadelphia and 80 miles south of New York City. Within this town, it is fully dependent on automobiles, thus is it an automobile suburb. However, in the Doylestown Borough, the heart of Doylestown, it is a mixture of pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods. Here, people can park their cars and walk all around the town where there are many shops and restaurants very close together. For a given estimate, there are around 9,000 people living in this area. A majority of these people use cars to transport to work and for shopping. Although the Borough has shops, there are also bigger shopping centers and malls that are designed to use cars since everything is relatively close to each other, although most places are car dependent!
The first city from the module that I am picking is Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts. Beacon Hill is a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood, allowing its entire people the ability to easily walk from place to place. Their urban density tends to be high meaning that there are lower environmental impacts. Since Beacon Hill is a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood, they also are very mixed-use. This means that all of their stores are very close by to each other and reduces the use of transportation. Unlike Beacon Hill, Doylestown is the complete opposite. My hometown neighborhood is very dependent on automobiles; however, the Borough follows some of the same patterns as Beacon Hill. Doylestown as a whole should focus on becoming more pedestrian-oriented which will lower the health risks for its individuals since they would be able to walk every where and exercise more instead of driving everywhere. Also, if Doylestown became more like Beacon Hill, their lower urban density would rise to a high density, lowering its environmental impacts. The same thing does for its mixture. Doylestown currently is a single-use, creating higher environmental impacts, but becoming less reliant on cars, and more reliant on walking will lower the environmental impacts.
Another city from the module is Detroit, Michigan. Detroit made a case study about urban farming. In the video, American Revealed, it shows that the person Will grows his food in the inner city of Detroit, Michigan. Detroit is a food desert meaning it’s very hard to find produce, especially fresh groceries. Urban farmers transformed abandoned land into alternative agriculture. Different from Detroit is Doylestown. In Doylestown, nobody usually grows their own produce, but rather drives to the local supermarket. Doylestown should adopt the action of urban farming, which can greatly lessen environmental impacts. With every individual driving to the grocery store to get produce, they emit tons of pollution into the air from their car emissions, affecting everyone who breathes air in. Adopting urban farming can grow a greener future for Doylestown because it requires less transportation, which lessens air pollution and therefore reduces its ecological footprint!
Hi! I’m Chris and I also live in an automobile suburb. My town is slightly bigger then yours, but people usually get around by using cars as well. I also talk about Beacon Hill in Boston and how if my town became more like Beacon Hill, they would be much more sustainable. My town, in northern new jersey, is creating high environmental impacts just like yours, and they should both change to help future generations. Great post!
Here is the link to my blog if you want to check it out
http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/17/urban-planning-unit-7/