Author: Kharene Gittens

Learning about the strategies used in making Masdar the most sustainable city in the world was very interesting. I also thought it was extremely ironic that one of largest oil providers in the world is building the most sustainable city. Furthermore, they are using the revenue from the oil and gas production to build city that doesn’t need either. Apart from the irony, I thought this was all a great step to a better future.

One of the most important aspects of this initiative was the expansion of knowledge on the project. in many of these sustainable rebuilding throughout the world, there is a lack of education on the topic. Their use of local creativity is a step that will drive the project forward for many years past the lives of the architects and engineers working on it now. We have brought up the important of education to our relationship with the environment in the past and this is one article that has addressed it effectively.

Another part of the article that caught my attention was the pedestrian-friendly environment. Master is a zero-car zone which at first struck me as odd. Nonetheless, I thought it was oddly brilliant. They set up quick and efficient means of public transportation while strongly encouraging biking and walking. This emphasizes the sense of community as well as exercise which is necessary world wide.

Using the 3 E’s is what put this project over the edge and is something worth celebrating. It makes everything inclusive both socially and environmentally; the richest man holds just as much importance as the poorest man in a better environment.

I thought this article was extremely interesting. When thinking about the affects of light pollution, I’ve always thought about its affects on humans; this article brings up the affects of our unnecessary light on plants and other animals. I was also very surprised to learn that light pollution could be a carcinogen.

Hearing the way that light pollution hurts the biological processes of other animals is really sad. It changes reproductive cycles, instinct, perception and other aspects that are important for their survival. The species that I thought was saddest in the article was the sea turtles. Disorienting the newborn sea turtles, and leading sea turtles to the streets is heartbreaking. Some of our lights are unnecessarily bright and we can take measures to decrease our light pollution.

One of the lights that I think are bittersweet are street lights. Street lights seem unnecessary, but the lack of street lamps promote crime. (This is what I’ve been told by people older than me, and teachers in the past). So the lights from street lamps may seem like they are just on for the sake of electricity, but it helps with safety. However, my bed is right by a streetlamp and the light can easily disrupt my sleep. My solution to this is having really dark curtains, and it makes my room almost as dark as it would be without it.

The correlation of night time artificial light and breast cancer in women is very important information. This was shocking to me because I sometimes sleep with the lights on in my house. My parents often told me to turn them off, but I thought it was just for the sake of me getting sleep or not messing up my sleeping cycle. To learn that our body’s melatonin production is affected by our unnecessary light use is worth telling the public.

We have read a lot about green and sustainable infrastructure. In many of our conversations, we were faced with the concern of whether or not these ideas are applicable to our dense city. Gittleman’s article is very important in this sense because it provides us with the agency of doing it without having to replace the buildings we already have. Her study estimates the stormwater retention we would have if we flipped vacant lots into community gardens. Aside from the amazing estimate she provides, she also provides a good way of doing it. Vacant lots are lots that aren’t being used and are not yet claimed spaces. This is means that it wouldn’t be an inconvenience to anyone in the community to just put nature in the lot. Furthermore, she briefly discusses the benefits community gardens and nature can have on humans and a community ,which we have also discussed extensively.

Gittleman’s estimate of stormwater retention surpassed 100 million gallons which I think is absolutely incredible. I thought it was even more incredible to think of when I knew the number isn’t far fetched for a project like this one. Also, she mentioned the amount stormwater runoff we currently have caps our around 15 million gallons, which would mean the green spaces would be more than enough to help our overflowing problem.

I think this is a wonderful way to help our water management systems and increase the amount of greenery in our city with little hassle. This was a brilliant way to approach this dilemma and should very much be funded. It can increase the value of communities as well as the social structure around it, which is something worthwhile.

I thought this article was very similar to one that we have read before. Nonetheless, they presented some new ideas that I thought were very interesting. The comparison between both the physiologic response and the psychologic response can be very important. Using the saliva to test cortisol levels was a new technique (to me) and is a good way to avoid bias. I am very skeptical of the assessments they use to test the psychological response. I have taken surveys that have choices similar to “i have several new ideas” and “I feel more creative, ” and it can be very confusing to categorize your thoughts accurately. It is even more difficult to process, when you didn’t know that was the goal (which I am sure participants didn’t know to avoid bias).

From all the studies we have seen on the relationship between mental health and greenery, there has always been a positive effect on emotion and feelings. Another effect that the study addressed was the relationship between greenery and memory. I didn’t expect there to be a different outcome based on what type of greenery the people were exposed to. Nonetheless, it was worthwhile information.

This study acknowledges a few new research points that I think would be interesting to pursue. One of the research points were to explore the differences of the psychological and physiological effects among genders. I am curious to know how and why there may be a difference to our experiences with nature. A second study that I would be interested in is a comparison between the effect of man-made greenery/ “nature” (like parks) and natural greenery (like forests) on humans. I think it is important to know what degree of our nature can be contrived for it to have the greatest effect on our mental well being. Finding more information on this topic can help planners and pedestrians alike choose the places that would put them the most at peace. For example, if it is found that women are more at peace and creative in man made green environments, then there can be more parks, etc. by an all girls school.

I think this article was very important. Information about the huge amounts garbage we produce a day (50,000 tons) is a topic widely ignored. One thing the article talks about is the fact that we are running out of places to put our large amounts of garbage. Furthermore, this article is only from the perspective of New York City; I can only imagine the repercussions of our garbage on a state, national, or global scale.

From this article, the most important issue we need to address is not where we should put the garbage,but how to reduce it. The article briefly discusses the need for stricter legislation on the topic, however, I think it is more important to increase the availability of different options. For instance, if there are 25,000 waste bins placed in the city, there should be 25,000 recycle bins and 25,000 compost bins (each with signs of what garbage goes where). It should also be established that all places that serve food have their own individual compost bins or at least a community compost bin that they can throw out their food. (Ideally, I would rather have them distribute the food to those who can’t afford it, but that is a different issue). I also believe that we should encourage recycle so much so that we would not need to produce new plastic. I think we have more than enough plastic already produced that we shouldn’t have to do that.
If we change our garbage cultures, we can very effectively make great reductions. One suggestion could be to change our garbage day. Instead of having every home/business owner have their own garbage put out for the sanitation workers, they can put them in large garbage spaces (separated by compost, recycle and waste)and have the garbage men pick them up from there. Those who don’t comply can get fined as usual.

When looking at cleaning up our environment, waste management is often something we look over and don’t really think about. Waste management is just as prevalent as our resource management and our pollution problem. Something as simple as our garbage can have a huge effect on us and we need to be more mindful of it. Many of us, including myself, are guilty of the “out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon and we should address it.

Hi everyone, my paper is Planning of sustainable cities in view of green architecture by Emir Fikret oglu Huseynov.
Try this link to get to it, I got it through Baruch’s online library, if the link doesn’t work.

I really liked this article because it brought green infrastructure in a new light for me. I’ve read a lot about sustainable architecture in the places we’ve discussed like green roofs and more permeable roads. The idea of putting this same technology in playgrounds is a brilliant idea. This can reinforce the importance of greenery to the children that play in the park as well as to the community as a whole. Furthermore, it can increase the positive relationship children have with nature, which can play out in adulthood as well. This makes the areas safe, fun, and dry even when the weather isn’t great.

The green infrastructure was a great addition to the playground. Innovation like this can be a great help to making New York a greener place to live. A few things I thought was amazing about this was the goal of capturing 500,000 – 700,000 gallons of stormwater per playground per year. This is an incredible amount of stormwater and can be a tremendous help with New York’s current draining/filtering system. We have approximately 30 billion gallons of raw sewage and stormwater that flood our pipes and having this sort of absorption can help us fix that. Even though it will take a lot of resources and time to completely upgrade our sewage and drainage systems, this can help in the meanwhile.

If this feature is added to parks as a temporary fix while we continue to upgrade the water systems we have, this can be extremely effective in the future. However, I would hate for this to be another bandaid fix like we have discussed in the past since it has so much potential to improve the system as a whole. Just because this is an incredible idea, doesn’t mean we should ignore the greater problem in the city of our pipes having overflows 75 times a year. Instead it should be utilized in combination with these systems. I think this article is really important because it opens up the idea of adding green infrastructure in different types of places. This way we can think about new places to improve instead of just business and public buildings.

This article did a great job of pointing out the benefits they found associated with the natural experience. Before reading this article, I knew nature has a lot of physical health benefits. However, I did not know the mental benefits it can have as well. Personally, nature was my reprieve to relax myself from the stresses in my life. Whether it was a walk in the park or sitting by a pier, something about nature always calmed me down. I am very glad to know that this occurs to everyone on some scale, and not just me. The series of experiments they did to prove the benedictions nature has in very insightful.
Not only do they make it important to have nature, but it makes us wonder how our increasing urbanization can bring a lot of negativity without us realizing.

This article says that the nature experience showed a greater decrease in anxiety, rumination, and negative affect. I didn’t know what rumination was so I looked it up. Rumination is the amount of times you recall your negative thoughts and experiences. That means nature even reduces our bad thoughts. This is incredible because this kind of research can show the reasons (at least some of them) as to why people in cities have higher stress levels, stress related health problems, depression, self-esteem issues, and much more. More importantly, it can lead to using nature to help improve these things. These are things that may make a difference even though we won’t recognize it at first. Living in the city for so many years has taken a toll on the people around me who get to experience both urban and rural living, and this study begins to understand why that may be.

This research can lead to an increase in the incorporation of nature in schools and campuses (even workplaces). This can lead the way to new study techniques and urban designs that can produce the most productive and conducive outcomes for students and adults alike. I really liked reading this article because it adds to the reasons why we should push for nature to coincide with urban environments (rather than urban areas replacing natural ones).

This article was written in order to evoke emotion and I think it really helped bring the point across. This is one of the many articles and chapters we read that fully recognizes the power our consumerist culture has in destroying the environment. However, It correlates the need to stop destroying our environment and our well being as a human population.

Adams opens the article by having us (the readers) compare ourselves to the ivory-billed woodpecker and what it may feel like to be the last of our kind. This was very effective in putting perspective on extinction. It made me relate to the woodpecker and how sad it might be. He talks about the importance for recognizing extinction for what it is and having a deep emotional feeling for nature in that sense. He wants us to understand that extinction is not a concept separate from our existence; it is directly related to our existence. Therefore, addressing extinction and our relationship with the environment is the most powerful step we can take in helping. I agree with this notion 100%. By recognizing what our role is in the natural world now and what our role should be in the natural world is extremely important in bettering our environment.

One thing that Adams mentions that needs to change is our outlook on the issue. He says, “The real issue is not whether millions are being spent to preserve [the ivory-bills’] habitat, but that billions are being spent to destroy such habitats.” I agree with this statement. Spending some money on the environment is nothing compared to the amount of money we spend on depleting it.He makes a point to say that we only recognize nature as raw materials and not as the beautiful home and ecosystem that it is. Changing our view of the nature around us can make a big difference.When we think about the amount of resources we take from the environment, spending a few million dollars on preserving it doesn’t seem so bad.

Throughout the article, there were a few things that caught my attention. Adams says, “at least 13,000 species are dying every year, 35 every day, more than one every hour.” This is a very heart-breaking and appalling fact. These are organisms that we are literally wiping off the face of the earth. This means that we completely stop their evolutionary process and any other possible advancements they may have.This article brought a to of issues to light about the importance of our relationship with nature and was very interesting to read.

It was a relief to read about something other than our impending doom as a society. I think it is really cool that we can find bones and footprints of dinosaurs and plants from millions of years ago. 

From the footprints alone, paleontologists can roughly identify which types of dinosaurs were in the region. This is incredible because it can lead to so much more information about what they ate or did during the day. We can further speculate why they were in the area and what kinds of food they ate. Some limitations that footprints may have are that there can be discrepancies among paleontologists as to which dinosaur do the footprints belong too. We learn a lot by examining fossils as well. In the fossils, we can tell how hollow the bones are or how strong or weak they might have been. For example, the hollow bone showed that the dinosaur had feet similar to that of birds. They would create lighter footprints, etc. This provides information as to what the dinosaur might have looked like and allows us to draw conclusions on how that might have affected its lifestyle. Although it is extremely difficult to be completely accurate due to lack of bones and other information, it is still incredible insight.

I am really excited to see these thousands of footprints and dozens of fossils in person. It is amazing to think that we walk the same earth these huge enigmatic creatures once did.

attenuated

to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value

abutment

-a masonry mass supporting and receiving the thrust of  part of anarch or vault.

-a force that serves to abut an arch or vault.