The Importance of Environment Friendly Urban Development

Urban sustainability is the idea that an urban area can be organised without excessive reliance on the surrounding countryside and be able to power itself with renewable sources of energy. The aim of this is to create the smallest possible environmental footprint and to produce the lowest quantity of pollution possible, to efficiently use land, compost used materials, recycle it or convert waste-to-energy, and to make the urban area overall contribution to climate change minimal. Therefore allowing the next generations and future generations to have the required resources without compromising them. However sustainably needs to focus also on other issues such as crime and economic factors.

What do sustainable cities and communities look like? They are economically, environmentally, socially healthy and resilient. It should meet its challenges through integrated solutions rather than through disintegrated approaches that meets a goal at the expense of others. A sustainable city or community takes long-term perspectives that are focused on both the present and future and lasts well beyond the next budget or election cycle. It manages

Urban sustainability is the idea that an urban area can be organised without excessive reliance on the surrounding countryside and be able to power itself with renewable sources of energy. The aim of this is to create the smallest possible environmental footprint and to produce the lowest quantity of pollution possible, to efficiently use land, compost used materials, recycle it or convert waste-to-energy, and to make the urban area overall contribution to climate change minimal. Therefore allowing the next generations and future generations to have the required resources without compromising them.

Greening is the act of saving energy and creating products that is eco-friendlier. Businesses that owns air dryers in their public restrooms, using reusable bags when shopping, buying cars and trucks that are fuel efficient or hybrids, and having solar panels built on the roof of a house to use energy given directly from the sun are just four examples of greening. Three businesses that are going green are: Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Bank of America. Wal-Mart is putting its plan to power each and every one its stores using 100% renewable energy sources in the works; one of the many examples of Starbucks going green is now they sell customers a semi-permanent cup which only costs $1 and it lasts for about a month, instead of them giving away

If you’re wondering how my suburb is sustainable, here’s why. It has lots of healthy green bushland, lots of solar panels, transport, shops and buildings.

The green infrastructural plan; PlaNYC, specializes in a form of city planning that focuses on achieving a greener and greater New York. The goals of the plaNYC looks to strengthen the economy, combat climate change, and enhance the quality of life for all New Yorkers by implementing environmentally friendly goals. PlaNYC specifically targets ten areas, of which are Housing and neighborhoods; parks and public spaces, brownfields; waterways; water supply; transportation; energy; air quality; solid waste; and climate change. As generation’s come and go, different plans and projects arise accordingly to how the city is affected. In this generation, PlaNYC

Sustainability is not just an individual’s responsibility but also the community and the government officials’ of where the individual lives. As individuals continue to move from rural to urban areas, it creates urbanization cities which present issues of environmental protection, economic viability, social and health equity. Cities cannot be sustainable in the long term if their economic growth harms the environment that they depend upon for clean air, fresh water, food supplies, and other ecosystem services. In this paper, I will introduce and analyze Washington D.C.’s sustainability plan and its involvement to the three pillars of sustainability. I choose Washington D.C. because it is an important center of politics, culture, and economics in the United States. In addition, I choose Washington D.C because I live very close to the city. I live in College Park which is about 30 minutes ride from the city. I have live at College Park for a year and have often visited the cities. I am interested in working in the city after graduation so I want to understand how the city addresses and responds to threats of the urbanization trend.

A sustainable city is when harmony is reached between the environment, economy and society. Environmentally, sustainable cities are ecologically friendly by using alternative sources of energy such as solar or wind power. Economically, governments should share a similar decision-making process with institutions and with the public by having a common belief in what should be done by improving sustainability. Sorensen, Marcotullio, and Grant (2004), find that a good decision making process consists of planning and control at the municipal and national political levels which would allow local level functions to become reinforced. Socially, sustainable cities are classless, meaning that there are no social divisions which serve as limits; leading to a more equal society. One of the many ideas would be using mixed housing to remove the class divisions between people. Also, city streets would be walkable, with businesses and services located at close proximity to promote a healthier lifestyle and serve as an alternative to using cars for transportation. The writers differ in their analysis when examining the approaches to improving sustainability in cities. This section will analyze four important ideas on how cities can become more sustainable.

The urbanization which has been growing rapidly in the early twenty-first century is going along with the issues related to jobs, housing, transportation, and the polluted environment within urban areas. In order to deal with those issues, “green cities” has been given as a great solution. Green city is a program of building smart constructions and technologies that are friendly with the environment, and establishing the smart growth policies to resolve the economic, social, and as well as environmental issues in the city. There are some opinions claimed that green cities should not be developed due to the high cost and negative environmental effects. Despite those opposing opinions, green city would still be an effective program for the sustainability of the city by creating more jobs, reducing traffic congestion, and protecting the environment.

The environmental challenges the world is facing today are greater and more complex than ever before. Soon over 9 billion people will inhabit and share the planet, increasing demands for natural resources such as food and water, and for energy and more infrastructure are pushing nature to its limits. Urbanization continues to increase with no indication of stopping anytime soon, which means that the world needs to begin planning and supporting a more sustainable growth of the worlds cities. Through the incorporation of nature into city planning, sprawling urban areas can be transformed into healthy and thriving environments that many people want to reside in. Nature can aid cities in more effectively and efficiently managing their waters, as the fastest growing sources of water pollution are derived from waste water and runoff. Implementing properly designed green space within cities can help manage the amount of runoff from city streets and buildings entering clean waterways, and “upstream natural areas can potentially save cities millions of dollars in drinking water treatment” (“The Biggest Environmental Challenges”). Street trees can reduce air pollution and provide shade thus reducing and absorbing heat in urban areas, this can potentially save lives through the reduction particles in the air that cause respiratory issues and heat related ailments.

Second of all, I will discuss about what go green mean. It is important for us to understand why go green can be effective for environment. There are 3 meanings of go green. The first is reducing influence on the environment with your everyday choice. You are using a lot of natural resources from the earth by driving a car, taking shower, buying a bottle of water that have a bad influence in the earth. All natural resources for using these things are taken from the earth to live. However, these processes have damage on the environment, and you want to think how you can use small amount of yours as possible you can. Therefore, this is one of the important aspect within going green. Addition to using less, there is another aspect of going green, which is staying locally. Staying local basically means to shop locally especially food. It is because industry faming has bad impacts on the

Sustainable Development means learning to achieve more with less in order to develop a city or state in a way that is:

But, rather than being reactive, future infrastructure designs will have to be anticipatory and proactive to be truly sustainable. Much like an ecosystem, these designs will contain many small-scale, networked elements that serve a multitude of uses, rather than one single guiding purpose for their existence. Urban community garden plots, for example, not only provide food for urban dwellers, but serve as storm water management systems, allowing water and waste to be recycled at the smallest

A considerable change which has occurred in the late 1990s around the world, is an increased number of regulations to minimize environmental damage. People, also have become more conscious of environmental protection and as a result there is increased demand for green architectural design which consists of eco-friendly construction. Eco friendly construction refers to building with a reduction of energy consumption, waste, pollution and degradation of the environment, to protecting health and efficiently using water resources (Dean 2003). However, a significant problem for environmentalists, architects and urban planners, is how to reduce the effects of climate change by eco-friendly

Urbanization, which is becoming a buzzword during the last few decades, is enlarging at a booming speed. It is predicted that 93 percents urban growth will occur to the year 2020, in the developing world (Elliot J.A, 1999). Generally speaking, more than half of the people around the world have been moved to cities, which led to a series of “matters” connected with people’s life that changed in a dramatical way. In this period, sustainable development, another buzzword during the past few years, came into people’s view and gradually became the mainstream of society development. Its definition is to make the development continue in a long term, which means allowing appropriate economic growth and industrialization without