In this final paper, you will consider the sustainability challenges that your home community currently faces and propose components of a plan tailored to meet those challenges. Think about your home community; this might be the community where you are living now, or a previous place that you identify with closely and still consider to be home(North Carolina). Drawing on your own memories and some online research, explore the challenges the community faces to becoming truly sustainable someday. In this paper, you will consider the sustainability challenges that your home community currently faces and propose components of a plan tailored to meet those challenges.
You will map out specific, concrete changes (in policy, technology, or everyday life) that your community would need to take to achieve sustainability. Provide clear, detailed examples of strategies, drawn from all you have learned relating to this course’s five weekly themes. Your examples should be based on our current scientific knowledge and level of technology (in other words, no inventing a new energy source from lightning or a new, low-energy means of generating fresh water from the oceans). Your suggestions should be tailored to the particulars of your chosen community. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, proposing solar power throughout your town would not be highly effective. Finally, you will imagine what that sustainable future neighborhood, town, or region would look like. How would it be fundamentally different from today?
To prepare for this assignment, review all chapters of Bensel and Carbone’s (2020)
Sustaining Our Planet text.
In your assignment, craft a seven-paragraph essay that includes the following:
Paragraph 1
· Describe your home community, using the Arzaville description in past class discussions (Weeks 2 through 4) as an example of the kinds of information you might include.
· Discuss at least three of the biggest challenges that your home community faces on the path to achieving sustainability.
Paragraph 2
· Explain at least three concrete actions that your community might take that would enhance its ability to sustain local biodiversity and ecosystems.
Paragraph 3
· Discuss at least three specific steps your community might take to improve its capacity for sustaining local soils and sustainable agriculture.
Paragraph 4
· Describe at least three measures that might be taken by your home community to help sustain its freshwater resources.
Paragraph 5
· Propose at least three concrete steps your community might take to better sustain local air quality and reduce negative impact on the global climate.
Paragraph 6
· Discuss at least three specific actions your community might take to manage, reduce, or eliminate its waste more sustainably.
Paragraph 7
· Identify three specific actions that you might take, at the community level, to help support sustainability for your home place.
· Considering the strategies that you have shared in your essay, assess whether your community could achieve sustainability at some point in the future. Why or why not?
The Envisioning Sustainable Communities final paper,
· must be at least 7 paragraphs in length (3 to 5 pages, not including title and reference pages)
must include at least 1 scholarly source, 1 credible source, and the class text.
Imagine that you are a resident of Arzaville, a community whose characteristics are described in this activity. You have come together with your neighbors for a special meeting to devise a management plan for helping the community become more resilient and sustainable in terms of its food production by 2050. A resilient community can recover quickly from events like drought or storms. By increasing its own food production, Arzaville can also reduce its food miles—the distance that imported food must travel. By making its food production more sustainable, Arzaville can help ensure that its residents’ food needs are supplied for generations to come, without placing undue harm on the local environment in the process.
Fortunately, you have all attended the meeting with the knowledge that you have gained from the content in this course. Now it is time to put your thinking cap on and get to work! Your ideas should consist of one or more of the following elements (some suggestions may apply to both categories):
· food resiliency measures (e.g., building vertical farms in the city center to ensure that urban residents can have access to fresh, organically grown produce)
· sustainable food production methods (e.g., phasing out use of synthetic pesticides in favor of companion planting and other organic methods) Imagine that you are a resident of Arzaville, a community whose characteristics are described in this activity. You have come together with your neighbors for a special meeting to devise a plan for managing its water resources more sustainably by 2050. Water resource issues the community faces include ensuring a safe and sustainable drinking water supply for all, handling its wastewater in a manner that has minimal environmental impact, and managing its stormwater runoff to minimize the risks of erosion and flooding. Fortunately, you have all attended the meeting with the knowledge that you have gained from the content in this course. Now it is time to put your thinking cap on and get to work! Your ideas should each consist of one of the following elements, depending on what you think Arzaville’s greatest need is:
· sustainable drinking water access measures (e.g., developing a program for rural residents to begin collecting and treating their rainwater for drinking use)
· sustainable wastewater management measures (e.g., collecting greywater from area residences for use irrigating a local golf course)
· storm water management measures (e.g., requiring that permeable pavement be used for all future development projects in the community)
· Population: 217,108
· Population Growth: +3.1%
· Elevation 1843 ft. above sea level
· Avg. Low Temp (Jan.): 24oF
· Avg. High Temp (July): 84oF
· Annual Rainfall: 17 in.
· Annual Snowfall: 44 in.
· Sunny Days Per Year: 171
· Drinking Water Source: groundwater
· Urban Area: 70 sq. mi.
· Main Power Source
: hydropower
· Average Commute: 21.3 minutes
· % Taking Mass Transit: 3.9%
· Top Occupations: health care (17.9%)
· retail trade (12%)
· accommodation and food services (9.9%)
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Overview:
· Arzaville serves as a cultural, financial, and retail center for an extensive, sparsely settled inland region. It has a dry climate that is fairly mild during the summer months but can get quite cool during the winter. Mountains are not far away, inviting outdoor recreation (hiking, fishing, etc.) to residents and visitors alike.
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