Win Butler Sprawl Analysis

For a majority of Earth’s history, its populous has been free to roam and live off of the land, maintaining a balance between the habitat and its inhabitants. However, as technology develops the earth is placed at an even bigger disequilibrium. In the places where massive sequoias reigned, high-rise apartments now stand. Just as water rushed through rivers, cars drive down streets. The populants of Earth continue to innovate, industrialize,and urbanize, but at what cost?

I will start by looking at the poem called Tree in the City by Thomas Shapcott and what is revealed about suburban life by it. Initially, the poem appears to be depicting a positive outlook on suburban life, and its integration with nature, and having not lost the connection to it that children have had for years. While remaining ambiguous in its ideas, upon closer inspection, there are numerous occasions where the poet is insinuating how nature is fading out as the buildings of urban life take over. As can be seen here (the screen) by the highlighted words, the poem focuses on the restrictions and changes that urban life has made to nature, as well as how important this fading element is. For example, “small span” refers to how the city branches of

In Robert Bruegmann article “How Sprawl Got a Bad Name,” he is the odd man out and is for sprawling. One of his reasons throughout is that all the architectures plan for preventing the problem has failed. Bruegmann shows his argument that the economy has these set of expectations for today’s society. The citizens are not really thinking realistically when it comes to those modern expectations. He backs up his point by stating a big crisis of traffic in Los Angeles and how it is not the congestion it is that the programs sit in place are outdated. One of the more convincing reasons of why Bruegmann is supporting sprawl is “that growing numbers of people have discovered that it is the surest way to obtain the rich, satisfying

Every day, people often get themselves in positions where they are presented with appearance known to be deceptive. Based on the appearance, a false truth hides beneath an exceptional display. People, objects, and buildings are entirely taken by people’s perspectives. This is the theme that the book Tangerine illustrates. The novel Tangerine, written by Edward Bloor, is about Paul Fisher, a boy having to go through many situations where a false reality surrounds his life.

Andrew Simms, a policy director and head of the Climate Change Program for the New Economics Foundation in England, presents his argument about the impact SUV’s have on our roadways, and the air we breathe. “Would You Buy a Car That Looked like This? “. The title alone gives great insight on what the article is going to be about, (vehicles). “They clog the streets and litter the pages of weekend colour *supplements. Sport utility vehicles or SUV’s have become badges of middle class aspiration” (Simms 542). Simms opening statement not only gives his opinion on how SUV’s are the new trend, but he also paints a picture of what we see every day driving down our roadways. Simms also compares the tobacco industry’s gap between image and reality

In addition, these six counties had at least one or more code red days per year, when air pollution has reached unhealthy and harmful levels for everyone. These six counties, Rockdale, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry, Cobb, and Rockdale, all lie the nearest to the city of Atlanta, an intersection of interstate highways. Though many culprits contribute to this hazardous level of air pollution in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, cars contribute so much more because of the sheer amount of cars that exist in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area. An average car can emit 6 tons of carbon dioxide per year, and assuming that the every adult has a car that does not run on electricity in Metro Atlanta’s population of 5,490,000, there would be 32,940,000 tons of carbon dioxide emitted by those cars per year. To give a perspective, the Scherer plant, a coal-fired power plant, in Juliet, Georgia gives off 25.3 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, but these estimations do not include other vehicles that emit carbon dioxide and other pollutants (Center for Global

An emerging issue is that of urban sprawl. While some aspects of urban sprawl has been seen since ancient times, this phenomenon has started gaining the most momentum in the past century, aided by the advancement of technology, especially with the rise of mass produced automobiles, houses and highway systems. Many people unknowingly contribute to this environmental problem, as is the nature of it. Urban sprawl deals with the growth of the suburbs, the area between the urban and rural areas of a city. Most of America’s largest cities and states, in terms of population, are prime examples of urban sprawl. Opponents of urban sprawl usually cite the government as a major cause of sprawl. The government may be a major catalyst of

Last year brought 100,000 new feet onto Colorado soil. Not far behind those feet, rolled an army of hungry bulldozers and cranes. Even in the suburbs, old walls crumbled to make way for sparkling new housing. People want to be here. Perhaps the only bearable part of living in Denver’s suburbs for me has been the gritty old farm houses tucked behind groves of mangled cottonwood trees. Haven’t you ever seen an old, abandoned building and wondered what it could tell you? This curiosity is the basis of urban exploration, or urbexing.

The convenience of living in an urban or suburban neighborhood can be appealing to many people. Choosing between areas can sometimes be overwhelming for some individual. People are not only concerned about the safety of a community, but they are also concerned about the environment. Although some neighborhoods might look attractive, people should consider the expense that comes with it, and how commuting will affect them in the long run. Nevertheless, both neighborhoods have their specific advantages and disadvantages. When choosing between an urban or suburban neighborhood, it is important for people to research the community, the expense, and convenience

Chris Van Allsburg grew up in a quiet suburban setting in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During the 1950’s, when he was a child, the town was a place that seemed like a haven for any young boy. There were open fields that provided places for the children to enjoy a baseball game in the spring. The houses were not separated by fences, but rather blended together by the yards. The setting in which he grew up provided

Question “Do you know that using cars for the planet is like smoking cigarettes for people?”

“1 gallon of gas =24 pounds of global warming emissions” (UCSUSA). Many of the people in our world today don’t understand just how much The Automobile affects us, our lives, and the world we live in. Undoubtedly, the invention of the car has changed our perspective on the different technology created over the past years. However, cars are some of the leading factors towards one of the largest ongoing problems occurring in our world today. That problem goes by the name of global warming. “Since 1990, Transportation has been one of the fastest growing sources of U.S. GHG” (U.S.D.T), otherwise known as Greenhouse gasses. In which most of us know; global warming affects our health, environment, weather, and ultimately our lives. It is a

The conquering and development of natural land has in the past, been seen as a mark of human civilization. In the United States, our progress is often measured by growth and development, but should this be re-examined? There are many opinions on the subject of urban sprawl and its effects on wildlife, but one thing is for certain, we are expanding. From 1955 to 2005, urban and suburban areas grew by 300%, however, the population only increased by 75% over the same period (Ewing, Kostyack and Chen). According to NatureServe, a non-profit conservation organization, urban sprawl threatens one of every three endangered species in the United States. NatureServe’s analysis states, “rare and endangered species data shows that three-fifths (60

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

Automobiles are a major producer of greenhouse gas. One gallon of fuel burned puts five pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Let’s say that an average car gets 25 miles to the gallon, and that car has a ten gallon tank. Every time a car gets filled up with gas, another fifty pounds of carbon dioxide have been put back into the atmosphere, and that is just one car. The automobile industry is very important to the world economy, so I am not saying that we should stop making cars, but there are other solutions. The recent trend of hybrid electric cars that get up to fifty miles to the gallon are becoming more popular. Also public transportation is very important. City dwellers that live downtown, do not need to drive their cars to work. Every major city has a form of public transportation that can get anyone around the city, and for that gallon of gas a bus burns the same five pounds reaches the atmosphere, but instead of one