WEEK 3 Green Building, Sustainability, City Beautiful Movement and Urbanization

I have studied urban metropolitan studies and urban planning during my time at Arizona State University. The following four concepts were studied in dept and I will never forget. I am currently applying each one someway in my life and will continue to practice green building, sustainability, city beautiful movement, and urbanization in the future.
The city beautiful movement was a great concept that we studied in several of my classes, basically it is a reform movement that flourished in the 1890s and 1900s in urban planning and North American architecture. The bases of the movement are using monumental grandeur and beautification when building and restoring our cities. The city beautiful movement is very important for the community and the people. We explored the city beautiful a lot in my urban metropolitan studies classes. At my Thunderbird Tower project I can see how they are using beautification practices during construction and design, they want the Tower to be beautiful because it is the centerpiece of the school. Many students and faculty meet and hangout there, meetings will occur, and the building will be used for so many various reasons.
Green building is a major concept that is creating waves in the world of construction and architecture, basically the practice of building or creating structures only under environmentally friendly processes. The main goals of green building are siting and structure efficiency, energy efficiency, materials efficiency, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality enhancement, operations and maintenance optimization and waste reduction. I truly believe that green building is the way of the future and I am glad the Thunderbird Tower is renovating their tower to make it a green building. I am personally working on documenting everything for the LEED certification; it is a lot of work but in the end when the project is complete and certified green I will be very proud.
Sustainability involves every living and non-living system in the world and is basically the capacity to endure. Protecting natural ecosystems and putting effort in changing destructive ways of living are crucial. In my urban planning classes we discussed sustainability in great depth. The concept is very important and I believe that we as a community and nation we can work to improve our current ways of living, make our cities and environments more sustainable and less destructive the planet Earth. Out at Thunderbird a large number of the materials being used in construction are recycled materials, the building itself will be energy efficient and sustainable. Everything from the paint that will be on the walls to the wood that was used in framing is a product the environmentally friendly.
Urbanization is the actual physical growth of urban cities and areas. Many more people are leaving life in the rural areas to find work and live in big cities. Global change is the direct cause of urbanization and now we are seeing less population living on farms and in villages and more population living in the congested urban areas. This would not be a terrible thing if all of our cities were ecofriendly, green, and sustainable however we are a long way from that. We covered the urbanization and it’s after math effects a lot in my urban metropolitan studies classes, and I personally have lived in big cities my whole life so it hits close to home. Out at Thunderbird School of Global Management we are also working on two buildings that are dorms, I thought the urbanization would fit right in since we are experiencing it first hand at the campus. It is an International Business School and people come from all over the world to live in the city of Phoenix and to study at Thunderbird.