Synthesis Of Presentations

Recently, our class presented a variety of presentations based from Chris Turners Geography of Hope. Each chapter from the book emphasized a different area with regards to sustainability and ultimately a key piece to the puzzle in making a sustainable planet. Each individual team got assigned an appropriate chapter and topic and had to present on them. The areas that were assigned involved energy, transport, urban planning, green buildings, international development, smart design, making change, economics and sustainable communities. Generally, each of these topics had their own aspects to sustainability however the topics did overlap a lot onto others. After hearing the presentations, I felt like each area of sustainability was not necessarily dependent on another but involved key concepts from other topics. A good example of this is the theme that we presented on, which was urban planning.

Urban planning involves many other areas to sustainability that were presented on by the other groups. For example, the buildings that are built into new developments can be designed to be LEED certified, which branches out onto the smart design aspect of sustainability. The buildings can also be designed to implement many “green” processes and applications such as green roofs, solar panels, or possible wind power to take it off the power grid which would branch out to the green design and energy categories. Older buildings can be retrofitted with new and improved processes and energy efficient materials/appliances which also incorporates green design and energy.

Another key to urban planning is to reduce the need for transportation and promote the use of sustainable transport such as taking transit, carpooling, riding a bike or walking. Sustainable transport can increase the social capital and interaction within a community and create positive interactions and more time being around the community and not isolated in a vehicle by yourself.

Urban planning also is related to the development of a sustainable community. Urban planning is a framework that starts off the process in a sense by creating a community that revolves around mixed use, keeping money within the community(sustainable economics), and designing with sustainable living in mind. By having this initial infrastructure created in a community, the development of a sustainable community becomes a lot easier to maintain. Urban planning supports and is a vital constituent of a sustainable community.

All concepts presented from the class presentations were all individual components which related to sustainability. Even though they reflected on different aspects, I especially noticed that our topic consisted of examples that were used in the other presentations and overlapped significantly. Our topic, which was urban planning, reflected many examples that were touched on by the other groups such as energy, transport, green buildings and smart design.