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Environmental Science: A Global Concern, 7/e

William P. Cunningham, University of Minnesota
Mary Ann Cunningham, Vassar College
Barbara Woodworth Saigo, St. Cloud State University

Urbanization and Sustainable Cities

Essay Quiz


1		Outline the causes of urbanization.



2		Both rural villages and big cities have important assets. Planners seem to be trying to create cities that have the best of both worlds. What are the amenities of the rural area and cities that planners seek to combine in new urban designs?



3		Despite its popularity, the suburb style of development has caused a number of problems, environmental and otherwise. Summarize the specific shortcomings of suburbs.



4		Identify two transportation-related events that had profound effects on the development of U.S. cities, and describe the effects of each.



5		Identify the characteristics of urban sprawl that urban planners believe can be solved through smart growth.



6		Cities are compared by some to ecosystems. What basic features do cities and ecosystems have in common? In what ways do they differ?



7		Speculate on life in America today if the freeway had never been invented and railroads had continued to serve as the long-distance ground transportation method.



8		Humans have a set of basic needs that must be met for health and well-being. Although we might disagree on some of them, I suspect we would have consensus on at least these: • clean drinking water • a sense of personal dignity • healthful food • personal safety• basic interpersonal/social relationships Think about the lives experienced by humans living as primitive hunter-gatherers and the homeless of the big cities of the world today. Compare these two lifestyles on the degree to which you think each meets these five basic needs.



9		Some people believe that for many people living in large cities, the intense crowding produces nervous stress, which in turn produces a whole litany of social ills, from mental illness to hostility, drug abuse, violence—cultural breakdown generally. If this view is correct, it has major implications for how we ought to approach resolving the problems of cities. Outline how you would evaluate the validity of that view. What kinds of factual information would you gather? What pattern of facts would support this view? Would refute this view?



10		City planners could benefit greatly from input from ordinary people as to what attributes we want in a city. Assume a city planner working on a new city design asked you what kind of a setting you would want to live in. Lean back and let your imagination loose. If your job required you to live and work in a city, what kind of setting would you want? Would you be concerned with things like getting to work, leisure-time opportunities, social opportunities, attributes of a physical/biological environment, shopping, etc.? Be you. Obviously there is no wrong answer to such a question. I'll include my own response to this assignment in the answer section. Did we agree on any?



11		Evaluate this statement: Over thousands of generations, natural selection (Chapter 4) produced a human species adapted to the realities of life as hunter-gatherers. We move to cities today out of economic necessity, not because they are compatible with our basic nature. The violence, mental illness, drugs, child abuse, and all the rest that we see are simply a manifestation of what you get when square pegs try to stuff themselves into round holes, figuratively speaking. The human tragedies being played out in the world's cities will continue until one of two things happens: • Natural selection eventually succeeds in rounding off the edges of the square pegs so our descendants eventually fit into the round holes; or • we figure out social and economic arrangements that effectively replace the round holes with square holes, to match our fundamental nature. a. Is the preceding statement seemingly based on fact or opinion? b. What facts suggest that it may be true? That it may be false? c. If the statement were a correct assessment, what implications would it have for planners? d. Do you think the statement was made by an economist, psychologist, sociologist, biologist, or philosopher? Would their perspectives differ on this?

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