I live in Beaver Falls, Pa, which is about 45 minutes north of Pittsburgh. I live specifically in Chippewa Township, which is an area that relies heavily on car transportation. It is very hard to get from one place to another by walking or biking because we don’t have sidewalks on the roads where I live. If you take a short drive to downtown Beaver Falls, it is very pedestrian-focused neighborhood. There are sidewalks and the stores are lined up together, making it easier to move from one to the other. I see a lot of people walking in downtown Beaver Falls, but I don’t see much of that in Chippewa. There are about 9,000 in the Beaver Falls region. I have lived in Chippewa my entire life. I’ve always thought that if it were easier to get around without a car, I would, but there is really no way to do that in the area I live. I don’t think Chippewa has done much to be a sustainable place to live, but I’d like to see them make progress to do that.

Chippewa reminds me a lot of the neighborhood from Rochester, New York. It is a like a little neighborhood that was built with the knowledge that people just would not be walking around. Chippewa has a very low urban density, but that may not necessarily be the worst thing. There is a lot of car usage, but Chippewa is a small town, so I think that the environmental impact is minimal. I think the best thing that could happen in Chippewa to make it more sustainable is to make it a more mixed-use area. A lot of people travel into Chippewa to go to Walmart or eat at a restaurant, so I think it would be good to add a few more stores that people could use while they are in Chippewa, rather than having to travel 15 minutes elsewhere to get what they need. For instance, we used have a shoe store, but they got rid of it a few years ago. Now we have to travel 15 minutes to the mall to buy shoes. Bring back the shoe store or adding different stores would make Chippewa more sustainable.

The next “city” I’d like to examine is Penn State. I think it is great that they are taking steps to making buildings more sustainable. The newer buildings at Penn State are really top-notch in efficiency and minimizing energy. I would like to see this happen more in buildings in Chippewa. My church recently built a Community Life Center. I would like to know if it would classify as a sustainable building. The town also just built a new office complex for the sanitary system across from my house. There are always new buildings being added in Chippewa, so it would be worth it to put effort into making these buildings more sustainable. Chippewa could also implement some type of “energy awareness” program to inform houses of how much energy they use and how they can lessen their impact on the environment.