What I learned Oct 1

I liked learning about urban sprawl in the last class. It gave me a sense of why cities appeared in the first place. Factory jobs were the main reason why people moved into cities. There are many cities today and it fascinated me to see pictures of the different development sprawl techniques. It was kind of surprising to find out that sparse street networking is pretty much worthless. I am also slightly disappointed that people know we are decreasing forests and ecosystems in the environment, yet there are still large amounts of development occurring.


Video Comment

James Howard Kunstler didn’t seem to beat around the bush. He made his point clear and easy to understand with his photos. James was stating how the Americans define space. It seemed important to him that better designed buildings are worth more than having badly designed ones. James also made a point that trees in city streets are there for shade and covering the buildings. They do not really help the environment; they are planted there for the benefit of people. He also said that in the future people will need to learn how create ways to make developed areas on a smaller scale. For instance houses and shops will be closer together. It makes sense that we should have places that are meaningful and do not take up valuable space and are visually pleasing to us.