Sustainability In our Urban Settings 101
During my class time I will be teaching a small course on the importance of sustainable living and how it can be directly implemented trough our Urban environments. Before we go into depth on the subject, we must understand what living sustainably means. Sustainability emphasizes the practices that enable our Earth to provide for and effectively protect the human population. New methods of energy, infrastructure, and living are aiding the fight against the depletion of natural resources, and especially the ecological systems which surround us.
Continuing, sustainability can be practiced through in many professions like business, agriculture, architecture, and the list goes on. With the flexibility of sustainable practices in mind, it would be important to mention that within the last century, human populations have migrated into large urban settings like Shanghai, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, etc… Almost half of our entire population lives in some sort of urban setting, which only accounts for 2% of Earths land usage. Within those few percentages of land use, we as a species pollute the earth with emissions and effluent by simply living the way we have for more than a century now. Redesigning and reinventing our infrastructure in a sustainable manner will be difficult to accomplish but it will have beneficial long term costs. In order to return our Earth to the state it once was before the industrial revolution sustainable development and its practice forces will enable us to understand how our cities coexist with current ecosystems. We also must realize that our modern cities heavily depend on the natural ecosystems that surround urban areas.
Here is the video that will be partially shown during the lesson:
Homework video: this 17 minuet video will give you valuable insight on how nature and sustainability have started evolving the way we develop our infrastructure.
Homework:
Tweet a few interesting facts that you thought stood out while watching the video. Tweet using #WSP101. Please be ready to discuss them in class. Thanks.
Here are the sources from my presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71XSzC-JbuI
https://www.epa.gov/sustainability/learn-about-sustainability#what
http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/cities/
https://morphocode.com/global-trends-urbanisation/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kfpgS_XcQ8&feature=youtu.be&t=1m7s
