My selected city is Los Angeles located in the southern part of California. Los Angeles is very famous for the work and production of film and television industry. Not only is Los Angeles the biggest city in California, but also the second biggest city in the US, right after New York City. This paper will go over the urbanization analysis, green options, and global warming issues in the city of Los Angeles. This paper will be divided into different topics. The first section will cover the physical description of the land, topography, global warming and water. The second part of this paper will identify the needs and services of living in Los Angeles. The third part of this paper will discuss greener options for the city of Los Angeles. The …show more content…
Some of the major geological features in the Los Angeles area include Earthquakes, Fault lines, mining, sedimentary basins, rivers, mountain ranges, and volcanoes. Los Angeles is subject to earthquakes because it is on the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, which in an area in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. The La Brea Tar Pits is also an example of a natural resource in Los Angeles. The city of Los Angeles needs to be aggressive in terms of addressing the import issues of air, soil, and water pollution. Currently, there is a plan in the works of regulating the …show more content…
As one of the biggest cities in the U.S., they have access to many different resources to change the way they use energy. Besides using greener cars, many of the people of Los Angeles have begun to ride bikes or use public transportation when downtown. There are green guidelines that can be followed under, Title 24. These guidelines state that if no one is in a room and the lights are on in that room, then occupancy sensors should be present that will sense that the room is empty and automatically turn off the lights.
Light Harvesting is another feature that works when the sun shines through the window, and a light bulb is on. The light will dim from the natural sunlight that it senses coming into the home significantly helping to save on energy. Newer buildings are being required to follow green guidelines to help Los Angeles to cut back on wasting resources and energy such as water, electricity, gas, and oil. Recycling is a great way for anyone to help the environment and Los Angeles also participates in this great way to
Meaning/Main Idea - The meaning of Joan Didion’s The Los Angeles Notebook may seem like it is only about the foehn. While this may hold true when the passage is read at face value, further analysis shows that due to the very abstract language, she is shooting for a deeper meaning. This deeper meaning is shown when she mentions that living in Santa Ana exposes her to a “deeply mechanistic view of human behavior” (paragraph 1). This changes the meaning of the whole passage from describing the foehn to expressing the mechanical aspects of human behavior that are shown due to the wind. These mechanistic behaviours vary from how the everyone she meets knows that the wind is coming (paragraph 1) to the strange behaviour of her neighbors (paragraph
Earthquakes in California are certainly not a surprise. What is a surprise is their unpredictability and randomness. Geologists say there is roughly a 50 percent chance that a magnitude 8 or more quake will hit the Los Angeles area sometime over the next 30 years. And, over the past twenty years, the Los Angeles area has witnessed several earthquakes, and in particular, two that were quite devastating; the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, and the January 17, 1994, Northridge Earthquake. Given the certainty that earthquakes will occur, they still seem to come as a surprise, and leave many communities unprepared to deal with their aftermath.
Before 1700, Californians lived in the mountains, deserts, and the coast. Natives who lived in mountains and valleys hunted deer, elk, bears, and other animals. They gathered acorns, berries, and seeds. People who lived near the coast ate fish, shellfish, seaweed, and sea mammals for food. Desert dwellers ate pinons nuts, yucca roots, and a cactus plant fruit. They adapted to the way of life in the mission. Mountain natives built houses from poles. They would bend the poles to make a cone shape. Desert dwellers would make their house from Adobe. Natives living near the coast make their houses out of straw.
...also save energy by using motion censoring for doors and sinks. The dining rooms and foyers should have dim-able light switches. Another way to save a lot of energy is to make a master switch at the front door that turns off all lights. That way you never leave a light on when you aren't at home. You should use natural gas cook tops and ovens to cut down on electricity.
Finally, this paper will explore the “end product” that exists today through the works of the various authors outlined in this course and explain how Los Angeles has survived many decades of evolution, breaking new grounds and serving as the catalyst for an urban metropolis.
Again, this section will give a working definition of the “urban question’. To fully compare the political economy and ecological perspectives a description of the “urban question” allows the reader to better understand the divergent schools of thought. For Social Science scholars, from a variety of disciplines, the “urban question” asks how space and the urban or city are related (The City Reader, 2009). The perspective that guides the ecological and the social spatial-dialect schools of thought asks the “urban question” in separate distinct terminology. Respected scholars from the ecological mode of thinking, like Burgess, Wirth and others view society and space from the rationale that geographical scope determines society (The City Reader, 2009). The “urban question” that results from the ecological paradigm sees the relationship between the city (space) as influencing the behaviors of individuals or society in the city. On the other hand...
One of the most dangerous environment issues Southern California is facing today is air pollution. This includes the burning of fossil fuels and natural disasters. Los Angeles is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and the most polluted city in the United States. I will research information about the causes, the effects, and the history of air pollution in the Los Angeles. For my research, I have relied mostly on, the school’s database and library, as well as current events.
Kats, G., Alevantis, L., Berman A., Perlman J., & Mills, E. (2003, October). The Costs and Financial Benefits of Green Buildings: A Report to California’s Sustainable Building Task Force. Retrieved from http://www.usgbc.org/Docs/News/News477.pdf
The concepts about green architecture can generally be organized into several areas of application. These areas include sustainability, materials, energy efficiency, land use, and waste reduction.
The Green Building is a way to increase the positive effects and fade the negative effects through the life cycle of the building.
Indeed, many global cities face compelling urban planning issues like urban sprawl, population, low density development, overuse of non-renewable natural recourses, social inequities and environmental degradation. These issues affect the cities themselves, the adjacent regions and often even globally. The resulting ecological footprint upsets the balance in adjacent rural and natural areas. Unplanned or organic development leads to urban sprawl, traffic problems, pollution and slums (as evident in the case of Mumbai city). Such unplanned development causes solid waste management and water supply to fall inadequate. Urban sprawl gives rise to low density development and car dependent communities, consequently leading to increased urban flooding, low energy efficiency, longer travel time and destruction of croplands, forests and open spaces for development.
The 6.7 magnitude earthquake was felt throughout most of southern California and as far away as Utah and Mexico with a max acceleration of 1.0g in several different areas and the highest at Tarzana with a recorded value of 1.8g. The earthquake also deformed over 1500 square miles of the Earth’s crust, forcing the surface upward in a dome shape. The Susana Mountains sustained the most soil deformation with an uplift of around 15cm causing numerous rockslides, blocking many roadways. Soil liquefaction was observed in the Simi Valley area and other parts of the Los Angeles Basin. After all the term oil ended the preliminary cost estimate of damage was between 15 and 20 billion U.S. dollars. Today, Geologists remain to search for thrust faults throughout the southern California area by using a 3 dimensional modeling system to view folds and upli...
In a world where over half of the human population calls a city their home, the need to restructure and revolutionize the way we design our urban environments has never been greater. Currently, the notion that these vast metropolises of metal, concrete, and sludge could one day be fully realized pillars of sustainability is certainly laughable. However, when these same cities are constantly growing and multiplying across the globe, all the while using a greater and greater chunk of our planet’s energy, this impossible task becomes a necessary focus. To strive towards the closed, continuous loop of “true” sustainability could greatly alter the image of the modern city. Any improvement over the current state of urban affairs could carry weight, and even if that goal is not entirely fulfilled, the gained benefits would be immense.
With the development of urbanization, an increasing number of social problems have emerged. These problems will decelerate the urban development, however, there are many ways in which sustainable development can reduce the impact of these urbanization problems. “Sustainable development seeks to improve the quality of human life without undermining the quality of our natural environment” (Adams, W.M. 1999). Actually, sustainable development can partly solve the urbanization problems, for it can reduce the impact of the problems such as traffic jam, housing shortage and severe pollution, but it is difficult to completely solve these problems in a short time.
Cities all over the world are developing. As war ended in 1942, a significant number of people move to the city because they want to improve life. This urbanization process is causing a number of problems and should be met by sustainable development policies. In the beginning, it is important to know the definition of sustainable development. There are some definitions for sustainable development, but simply they say that sustainable development is a development which using resources now and preserving them for future generations (Adams, 1999, p.137). This concept has been agreed internationally at a Rio Conference in 1992 to be implemented by all government policies which mostly known as “Agenda 21” principles (Adams, 1999, p.141). This paper will show that traffic jams and housing problems caused by urbanization can be met by sustainable development policies. The structure of this paper will first explain the situation that leads to traffic jams and housing problems. Next, it will elaborate the sustainable development solutions, implications for the solutions, and evaluations how effective the sustainable development solutions solved the problems.