Author: Kiran Kaur

Only over the past few years have I felt the effects of rising temperatures in New York City. Praying for snow before Christmas so that it actually feels like Christmas has become a norm. If you think back to when we were in middle school, you’d realize that we never had to hope for snow. Once December came around, there were already little flurries falling from the sky and it would start feeling like Christmas. However, in the recent years, snow (or cold temperature in general) in New York City doesn’t come around until the end of December. Let’s take a look at this year, for example. In NYC the December weather has been around mid to high 50s. In December! However, in other suburban states in the middle of the country, it has already snowed. There has to be a valid explanation for this. I think that Urban Heat Island effect would be a good reasoning behind why in the city we’re experiencing higher weathers than expected but suburban cities are not. What’s really interesting is that we have all of this data to prove that the UHI effect is causing these changes in temperature and we have other data that shows how effects of the urban heat island can be reduced but there’s not much that’s being done to help it. Green roofs and cool roofs can be installed on 11% of the buildings in NYC since they’re flat. Even though they are costly to install, I feel that the sooner they are installed, the better of an impact they’ll have on the environment. Over a certain period of time, they will actually be worth the money spent unlike some other useless things the city spends money on.

One thing I found really interesting was reading about how high temperatures have accounted for deaths in the city. Heat stress caused around 300 deaths in an average summer in New York City. That’s a lot of people dying. In the past, I’ve heard people dying in India due to the heat since the weather sometimes reaches around 110 Fahrenheit on an average day in the summer. However, I’ve never heard of someone dying in NYC due to an increase in temperature. The main root of this problem is a lack of education. If more people were educated on urban heat island effect and the impact it has on our health, the city, etc. I’m pretty sure that people would try to get green roofs and cool roofs implemented someway. If those in power really cared about the environment, they could incentivize building owners to create green roofs on the roof of their apartment buildings. We’ve looked at a lot of problems that our city is undergoing and I feel that since all of us are more aware and more educated on these problems, we might be able to make a difference if we tried hard enough.

Hey guys!

This is the article for Monday which I’m going to be talking about. If the link doesn’t work for some reason, just copy paste this into your browser:

https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/crp384/2008reports/07MASDAR.pdf

Looking forward to reading about what you guys think! 🙂

I found this article particularly interesting because it’s a step away from the usual sources of human development which have practically ruined our city. When we think of things that harm our city, the usual things that come to mind are pollution, urban heat island effect, using of natural resources, etc. However, we don’t think about plastic bags and how they fit into the equation of messing up the environment. New York City is a great hub of everything, which includes shopping for various things. In Beijing, 3% of the house waste is usually plastic materials which adds up to 140,000 ton each year. According to New York Magazine, New York City (as a whole) goes through 5.2 billion single use plastic bags a year. That comes out to be around 10,000 bags a minute. I didn’t think much about using plastic bags before but when you look up the statistics and look at the numbers, you can see how the numbers actually add up to a lot more than you would expect. In a lot of supermarkets, the employees usually double bag every single time even when the items don’t require a second bag. Sometimes I’ve told employees to just single bag it but they continue to double bag. One way to fix this problem of plastic bags is not to get rid of plastic bags entirely (yet). First, employees should be told about not double bagging because that just doubles the negative effects plastic bags have on our environment. Once employees have understood that, it would be a good idea to give supermarkets and stores an incentive to use paper bags instead of plastic. Bloomingdales is a big retail store known for its big brown bags. If other retail stores such as Macys or Nordstrom were to implement a change like this, there is a lot of saving that could be done. Trader Joes has brown bags but those bags lack a handle which isn’t appealing to people. However, handled brown bags are an actual thing and would help a lot if they were made to be used in all of NYC. Certain parts of Canada already has the ban on plastic bags where people are required to pay a certain fee to use a plastic bag. Because of this ban, a lot of Canadians have their reusable bags and it seems to be working out well. If implemented properly, it can work out well in NYC as well.

Starting a big project like the one that Gittleman proposes is tough in a city like New York City. Empty lots that have the capacity to turn into community gardens may be hard to come by, but is this project really feasible? Since our city is constantly expanding upwards, the best place to have community gardens would be on rooftops. For example, there are many apartment buildings in the Queens area which have flat roofs but they’re often not used. One option is to give an incentive to the building owners to have community gardens on the roof, which the tenants can use. There are a lot of community gardens in the Bronx, Brooklyn and upper Manhattan area but not that many throughout the rest of the boroughs (2% of the gardens are in Staten Island and 5% are in Queens). I looked up where the community garden near me was and there is one community garden in the Queens Botanical Garden in all of the Bayside, Fresh Meadows, College Point, Whitestone area. Even though the article mentions that community gardens aren’t seen to increase the vegetation in NYC, they actually do. Vegetation has a lot of positive effects on the environment as a general because of all of its benefits which have been previously discussed in class (i.e. reducing pollution, improving air quality, etc.).

Gittleman gives an idea to replace vacant lots with community gardens. This seems like a good idea except the main problem with such ideas is that after the community garden is in place, will the community be able to retain these gardens? A lot of funds will go into these gardens and it seems as though the city will end up saving a lot because community gardens retain a lot of stormwater. What are other places where community gardens or mini gardens can be placed? I live in an area where the sidewalks are quite wide and I’ve actually seen people plant vegetables on the outer edge of the sidewalk where there were originally weeds. If the edges of these sidewalks were turned into mini gardens, that could also help a lot with stormwater runoff and other environmental problems that NYC has.

This article was a very interesting read because it gave experimental evidence as to how green environments have an effect on us. A lot of us who live in urban environments don’t realize how these green areas can help reduce stress, even though most of us try to get away from the city and go elsewhere on vacation. The findings from this paper suggest that even short-term visits to nature areas have positive effects on perceived stress relief compared to built-up environment. In urban cities, stress is very common since people work long hours trying to make ends meet, etc. The real problem, however, is how can we manage our time in urban areas and in green environments so that we can get the best of both worlds. In New York City, we have a few green areas (i.e. Central Park, Washington Square Park, etc) but these aren’t enough to alter our stress levels. But in a very busy city, these are better alternatives to being stuck inside buildings with no nature in sight. Whenever I go deep into Central Park, I’ve felt nature take its course and it helps me take my mind off of all the problems. This in turn reduces my stress for that specific period of time. However, once I’m back in the city, the stress is back as well. What can we do so that destressing isn’t only a temporary thing for those who are permanent dwellers of the city? People go on vacations to areas with beaches, mountains, etc. but they can’t stay on vacation forever. We need to find a way to incorporate more greenness into our cities so that this exposure to nature can help us on a psychological as well as physiological level.

Waste management isn’t something that people often think about unless they themselves are living in an area where they have to deal with the managing of waste on a daily basis. Most of us just take out the trash on our assigned days and wait for the sanitation workers to come pick it up. But what happens to the garbage after that? Does it miraculously disappear? To be honest, I really don’t know what happens to it because I never tried to find out. According to another article, each New Yorker produces about 3 pounds of garbage daily, making that 1095 pounds a year. These numbers eventually add up to much greater numbers when we take every single New Yorker into account. How can we work around this and actually help in the management of all this waste?

Personally, I am huge on recycling – whether it’s paper, cans, bottles, glass, etc. No matter what the situation, if it’s recyclable I make sure that I find a recycling trash bin and dispose of it in its proper location. However, this isn’t the mentality that most people carry. If every person tried to recycle whenever they could, rather than just throwing everything away in a garbage pail, waste would be managed more efficiently. However, like everything else, this also goes back to a lack of knowledge. Most people aren’t aware of the consequences of all this trash that builds up and they don’t know where it goes. They also aren’t aware of how recycling benefits with the waste management and how it helps the earth (especially if you recycle paper). Along with the lack of knowledge, there’s also a lack of these recycling garbage pails on the sidewalks. At the corner of almost every block, there’s a normal wastebasket but not one where you can recycle. If a person had to choose between throwing out their recyclable trash in a wastebasket 2 feet from them or throwing it in a recycling bin 2 blocks away, they would obviously choose the one that’s closer. The recycling situation also breaks down into matter of accessibility. For example, whenever I have some papers I need to throw out, I collect them and throw them out at school in a recycling bin because there’s no other place that’s accessible for me to just recycle my papers. Most people would not do this. However, I feel that if people were a little more aware of this situation, maybe they would actually try and recycle.

While reading a lot of the previous articles in class about urbanization and incorporating nature into the city, it was hard to believe that we could add more nature into our city since it’s very developed. However, after reading this article, I’ve started to believe that it’s possible. Also, before reading this article I wasn’t aware of the efforts that people were putting into helping with our environmental situation. I always thought that a lot of people were ignoring the needs of the environment, but now I know that there is hope. Even though this planning strategy is expensive, I feel that if we were to incorporate this idea into other parks and school playgrounds, we could save a lot of money in the long run. Whenever there’s problematic storm water runoff, the government spends a lot of money in trying to fix that situation after the damage is done, but there isn’t much that is done to fix the situation for the future. Temporary fixes can only hold out for so long. We need something permanent like the $1 million playground renovation. There are the monetary effects to doing this in that the government saves money in the long run. However, there are also going to be positive cognitive effects on the children. In a previous article that we read, we saw how plants and nature helps improve the brain functions of students. If more nature is incorporated into playground where little kids often go, there’s a possibility that there would be improvements in their cognitive function. Fixing up the environmental issue would be a plus for everyone.

This article was a very interesting read because as students, we should be able to relate to some of the things mentioned. For example, we can take their results into account and see how we can improve our cognitive functioning and working memory. Working memory is the ability to update and manipulate information in short term memory. It is also an independent ability that partially composes our executive functioning. Executive function refers to volitional cognitive abilities generally associated with goal setting, planning and problem solving. More specifically, executive functions refer to cognitive abilities that enable the control and coordination of information in the service of goal-directed action. If nature has the ability to better our working memory, it can also in turn have a positive effect on our executive functioning. As honors college students, it’s very important for us to have great working memory so that we can do well in our classes.

Along with improving our memory, nature also has the ability to reduce stress. There are multiple studies that have been conducted on the affects of nature with stress, cognition, etc. but it’s still interesting to see how we (at Baruch) don’t get to experience nature while we’re at school. In most of the classes we have, there are no windows , giving us no view of the outside world. According to this article, having a window in a room has positive effects on our minds and bodies. If more windows and more nature was to be implemented into Baruch, I think there would be a more positive atmosphere which would benefit the Baruch community as a whole.

This article was an interesting read because I was sort of able to see the psychological aspect that plays into how humans are causing the downfall of the Earth. For some reason, a lot of humans find it hard to wrap their head around the fact that all these other animals are living things as well. Even though they don’t have complex thinking and don’t develop relationships like humans do, that doesn’t make them any less alive. Just like humans, they have to have food to survive and they need a habitat to live in. I think that the main reason for this disconnection between the environment and humans is because of the way that kids are brought up nowadays. Before the rise of urban cities, families used to live on farms and in suburban areas where they’d have access to nature on a daily basis. When they had this access, they would get to understand animals and take note of how they live. However, now a lot of the world is living in urban areas and all of these suburban areas (which are homes to a lot of animals) are being turned into cities. Children don’t get a chance to interact with different animals in cities because there aren’t many around anyway nor do parents make a conscious effort to introduce their kids to animals.

Ever since I was a little child, my mom would make me feed the birds outside of our house. By feeding these birds over the years, they’ve developed an understanding that they’d get food in front of our house so they come and sit on the fence at the same exact time everyday. The fact that these birds do that makes me wonder what kind of concept they run on. We don’t really regard other animals to have a high level of intellectual thought but they have the ability to think to a certain extent. I feel that this should be enough for us to understand that we shouldn’t ruin homes of other animals in order to create big corporate cities for ourselves. In addition to this, these corporate cities end up hurting the environment even more through all the pollution and the usage of natural resources. It was really interesting the way that the author made us go in an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker’s shoes. I know that I would not like it at all if every other human died and I had no home to go to. So what right does it give us to destroy homes of other animals?

I feel that this article is one of the most interesting articles we’ve read so far. It flows in a timeline fashion which makes it very easy to follow. As the timeline goes on, you can easily follow along and see all the damage we’ve caused as the societies have changed. We start off with hunter gathering societies which eventually changed to agrarian societies. These agrarian societies developed agriculture which in turn started disturbing the natural cycle. This shows that ever since we started to build actual communities and societies, we’ve been disturbing the way of nature. The only difference between the disturbance of today and the disturbance by agrarian societies is the extent to which we’re hurting the planet. With the development of agriculture, humans caused ecological irreversible effects. There was some damaged caused by this. Nowadays, however, it’s hard to explain how we’re damaging the environment because there’s SO much we’re doing. As told by Rees, “empirical evidence suggests that resource consumption already exceeds the productive capacity of critical biophysical systems on every continent and waste production already breaches the assimilative capacity of many ecosystems at every scale”. Our societies take more from the planet in a short period of time and give less back. There isn’t enough time for the planet to develop those resources again because all we do is continue taking them. The way that I view the relationship between us (humankind) and the Earth, is how one would se the relationship between a guy and his super materialistic girlfriend. The girlfriend asks for extremely extravagant and expensive gifts every other day but doesn’t give the boy a chance to work and get the money in order to get those gift. In this case, most people would look down upon the girl because she’s taking advantage of her boyfriend and draining him of everything he has. Compared to this scenario, humankind is the girlfriend and Earth is the boyfriend. We’ve seen societies completely collapse due to improper resource management and due to misuse of those resources. There’s not much time left for the current societies either, because they will eventually collapse as well if we don’t start planning to help the environment. Incorporating resource management in urban planning can be a great help if we get on it as soon as we can, otherwise it might be too late to undo all of the damage we’ve done over centuries.