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Destiny USA Essay

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Destiny USA

What happens when the world’s largest green building will also be the world’s largest shopping mall? You get a building fueled by renewable energy that harbors within its walls unsustainable patterns of consumption. This green mall, Destiny USA, is expected to open in Syracuse, New York. Destiny is a proposed $4.2 billion project that will use green building technology to create a complex that will be home to an amphitheater, an aquarium, 500 retailers, 20,000 hotel rooms, and a 65-acre glass enclosed rooftop park (Destiny USA Website).

Destiny is being touted as the key to the economic comeback and future success of Central New York. Local and regional politicians are vocal supporters of …show more content…

This technology could spread to the rest of Syracuse and would be a way to introduce concepts of sustainability to people who visit Destiny. Sounds like a good plan, but in reality might fall short of its goals. Carl and Greg both felt that this project will fail, and that its failure will be attributed to its green design, not the project’s other characteristics. This could negatively affect other, smaller-scale ‘green’ projects. These types of projects would be deemed risky investments and scare away potential investors, which would make the investment capital that is crucial to the start up of these projects hard to come by.

An estimated 40 million people will visit Destiny annually—12 million from out of state (Destiny USA Website). Since Destiny’s father, Pyramid CEO Bob Congel, repeatedly states that he wants Destiny to be fossil fuel-free, it is ironic that plans include enormous parking garages and lots. How will all of these millions of consumers reach Destiny? They will come by automobile. It is ridiculous to espouse that this project will be fossil fuel-free.

Michael said that this project, despite its pro-environmental aspects, does not challenge the fundamental problems facing our society, which include unsustainable levels

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