I am from a small town called Sunbury, located in central Pennsylvania. Sunbury is about an hour and a half away from State College, and about an hour away from Harrisburg. The downtown area of Sunbury is essentially one street, appropriately called Market Street. Sunbury is a relatively small community of about 10,000 people all within about 2.5 square miles. Since it is so small, a lot of people choose to walk instead of drive, especially during spring and summer months. I have lived there my entire pre-college life, and have a lot of fond memories. I waited a year to get my driver’s license because I didn’t feel the need for it. I was easily able to walk to and from school, or to any of my friends houses. Most people felt the same way and you could easily run in to people you knew while just walking around.
One of the cities discussed in the module that relates to my city is Copenhagen. Both Copenhagen and Sunbury have made significant modifications to the city in order to promote walking and biking. Like Copenhagen, Sunbury has created new and beautiful walkways along the Susquehanna River that extends the entire length of the city, as well as reducing and eliminating lanes of traffic in order to build bike paths. These additions have definitely calmed the traffic in those areas, but not to the extent that Copenhagen has.
Another city that resembles Sunbury is the Jamaica Plain in Boston. The Jamaica Plain is a streetcar suburb, which can also describe most areas of Sunbury. While some people have their own driveways or garages, most people park along the street. The streets in Sunbury are large enough to accomodate this, as well as bike paths, and sidewalks. Even though Sunbury is not very big, it makes good use of its land by having houses close to one and another along very large streets. There is no bus like in the Jamaica Plain though, since most people walk, drive, or bike to where they need to go. It does have trains that travel through the main parts of town however, as well as two train stations.
Hey sebastian, great post! I can relate to being in a small community where you know everyone. The only difference with mine is the population is spread out over a huge radius (in relation to the number of people). I like how your post focuses on cutting down driving as a way of sustainibility. I think this is a very important issue and we must cut them out as much as possible. If you would like to check out my blog, go to: http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/17/module-7-4/
Hi Sebastian, my name is Katherine and I am a junior at Penn State. Your blog was interesting to read because you compared the cities discussed in the module to your hometown which is a smaller suburban town. I am from a more urban area, so I was interested in the ways in which Sunbury could reach sustainability through urban planning. I cannot imagine having a downtown area comprised of only one street. I am from the city of Philadelphia, so the term ‘downtown’ has a completely different meaning to me. Obviously the population size of Philadelphia is much larger than that of Sunbury, and so sustainability will be met by different means for each of the two cities. However, the same ideas can be applied to a larger or smaller scale. In each of our cities, people tend to walk instead of drive a car as the primary mode of transportation. Unfortunately, there is always a lot of traffic in Philadelphia, but if more people walked to their destination, this problem could be eliminated and sustainability could be reached. Also, I can understand waiting to get your license. I did get my license at the age of 16, but it was not necessary. Even to this day I can get by in the city without driving.
Below is a link to my blog that you can check out!
http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/16/katherine-rigotti-module-7-sustainability-through-urban-planning/