User:Amyapapayaaa/Urban renewal

Urban Renewal and Urban Sprawl Correlation
Urban sprawl is the spread of urban areas into low-density areas and urban renewal triggers urban sprawl to transpire, which results in a network of highways and interstates becoming the connection between many different cities. Urban sprawl and urban renewal coexist within each just approach redevelopment differently. While urban sprawl is an unrestricted way of expanding the limits of a city, urban renewal clears out undeveloped areas, within city limits. During the 1950s & 60s, the federal government allocated billions of dollars to the demolition of "blighted areas" soon be replaced with affordable and public housing. A concept established to improve the growth and urbanization of American cities harmed the welfare of many communities. This also occurs due to land owners and developers prioritizing personal gain over public good. Urban sprawl and urban renewal coexist within each just approach redevelopment differently.

Nevertheless, both methods harm the environment and communities to push out the old and bring in the new. Ultimately, this resulted in the disbursement and demolition on majority black communities across the country.

Urban Sprawls Impact on the Environment and Built-Environment
While urban sprawl attempts to create more available land to increase urbanization it produces vacant areas and "abandoned industrial sites." Urban sprawl promotes the need for more automobile usage, which negatively effects our environment. This has led to more air pollutants (ozone and airborne particles) being emitted into our environment. The built environment has become a prominent feature in regards to urban sprawl, due to urban sprawls adverse effects on policy framework designed to combat sprawl. Urban sprawl additionally causes an overtake in agriculture, due to the increasing population dwindling the land available for farming and agriculture.

Disadvantages of Urban Sprawl

 * Increased energy consumption
 * Decline in community distinctiveness and cohesiveness
 * Social Fragmentation
 * Traffic Fragmentation
 * Increased Infrastructure Costs
 * Increased air, water and noise pollution

Urban Sprawl in Phoenix, Arizona.
Over the past two decades, Phoenix, Arizona has "...grown more than 300 percent in recent decades, but its population has grown even faster." Phoenix, Arizona has a model of urban sprawl that differs from most other cities, where buildings and roads are built at a faster rate than population growth. As a the population increased within the city, the demand for water has increased dramatically. As water intake levels continued to increased, Phoenix's more water was drawn from the ground ultimately sinking Phoenix's surface. In the late 1980's Phoenix developed The Central Arizona Project (CAP), an aqueduct system that brings water from the Colorado River. Essentially, CAP sole use was for farmers, but as of today CAP serves more than 3.3 million residents in the metropolitan area. Water controversy is just one example of many ways urban sprawl effects cities across the United States.

The city of Phoenix is facing rising temperatures due to the city's sprawling urban footprint. In 1990, Arizona heat index hit 122 degrees Fahrenheit, 33 years later, in 2023, Arizona "...as a prolonged atmospheric heat dome broils the US South and Southwest, temperatures in the city have peaked above 110F for a record-shattering 29 consecutive days — and counting." Over the past decades, Phoenix's population began to rapidly expanded which has exacerbated the heat. The city’s population nearly doubled, swelling to 1.6 million as newcomers seeking cheaper housing flooded the desert city.

In regards to housing, urban sprawl has put many residents at risk of not having housing. As population grows within the metropolitan region, the demand for housing is increased and can't be met. More than 95% of Phoenix households rely on air conditioning, and roughly a third of them have high or severe energy burdens, meaning that energy bills eat up more than 6% or 10% of their incomes, respectively. That puts an essential survival tool potentially out of reach.

Critiquing articles
Navigating Wikipedia was complex but soon turned into a deep dive into the world of housing and urban planning. Before I began to decide which article I wanted to use as sources, it was vital for me to understand the article I am working on improving. After going over the original Wikipedia article I selected, I then had to decide what the article I thought would be most important to either change or add. Once I made a final decision on what I wanted to contribute I was able to carefully review articles that are beneficial to my research.

While evaluating each article, it was important for me to remember what I’m going to be speaking on. It would've been a careless mistake to only skim over the articles while overall these articles may set me back. Properly understanding the type of information, I needed to receive was especially important as well. Just because an article or source may discuss urban sprawl, it may not go into detail like I need or have the proper accreditation for me to rely on said article. Using ethos, pathos and logos has played a tremendous way in how I critiqued and approached each article I evaluated. My decision for what articles I believed to serve me best were primarily based off what I deemed relevant enough to not only what we’re discussing in class, but relevant to my interest as well.

Summary of Edits
As I began to review my chosen Wikipedia article, I believed that particularly valuable information was missing. My contribution's main aim is to dive deeper into how urban renewal affected many communities due to it being a catalyst of urban sprawl. The section revolving urban renewals impact on urban sprawl, at the time, was simply a mere sentence. There’s an influx of information that was essentially missing from the article that I believed would help elevate the article. I began to expand on the urban sprawl section by simply adding more general information and diving deeper into the two's correlations. This addition provided more than one sentence and a deeper elaboration. The urban renewal article was already for extensive with its elaboration on how urban renewal as affected many metropolitan areas in the United States, so I decided to take a different route. Yes, I’m aware urban sprawl and renewal are two complete things, but I recognized the drastic relation in their shortcomings.

Next, instead of merely focusing on the general information, I decided to add sub-sections focusing on the drastic effects urban sprawl has on the environment and built environment. Within this sub-section, I have dived into how our living environment has been drastically harmed by urban renewal and sprawl. Highlighting this was particularly important to me because I believe that when thinking of urbanization, we always think of the good. We consider the new communities and advanced technology, but never how harmful these practices are on our health and environment. To stay on track, but still provide a good amount of information, I provided a bulletin point list of the disadvantages of urban sprawl right under.

Lastly, my focus was giving an example of a city facing drastic consequences regarding urban sprawl. Phoenix, Arizona became my city of choice simply due to me wanting to venture out and research an area I’ve never been before. Phoenix caught my attention due to its rapid growth, over the past two decades, and how the city was coping. This is the lengthiest part of my contributions, due to there being so much research and prime example of how urban sprawl and renewal can potentially bring a city to ruins.

In Hindsight, most of my contributions went to reflecting on how urban renewal is a catalyst to urban sprawl and its drastic effects on humankind.

Peer review and Instructor Feedback
While conducting the peer review, it was exciting to read what my fellow peers had written and what their focus was. Personally, I appreciate peer reviews for several reasons:


 * Offers a fresh perspective
 * Helps with refining my work
 * Catches errors I may have missed prior
 * Allows innovative ideas to be developed

While analyzing my peer's sandbox, my process consisted of analyzing my peer's article and providing supportive critiques. During our peer reviews, I believe that many of our sandboxes were a work in progress. I felt that it was best to leave positive critiques rather than something too harmful or incorrect. I wasn’t reviewing a final draft, so I know there was so much more for my peer to complete.

The critique I received from my peer was immensely helpful, but I didn't put it to use the way I would've liked. My peer suggested that I provided more positive details, but when conducting research on urban sprawl and renewal there aren't many positive things to be said. However, the feedback I received from the instructor helped me construct most of my sandbox. The feedback was for me to highlight a city and its history with urban renewal and sprawl. I decided to analyze Phoenix, Arizona and how urban renewal and sprawl steadily progressed after World War 2. Instead of providing a history lesson, I decided to mainly discuss the 21st century issue the city is currently dealing with.

Wikipedia generally
Overall, Wikipedia is a meticulous database and here are my top key takeaways in regards of working with Wikipedia:


 * Contributions: Contributions must be accurate and shouldn't completely take over all the original information in the article.


 * Learning Process and Comprehension: Wikipedia is a meticulous database and the best way to understand it is by reading.


 * Underrepresented Groups: Highlighting unrepresented demographics will forever be important because it allows light to shine on communities who aren't heard. This also helps educate fellow Wikipedia readers regarding diversity and equity.


 * Comparison: Compared to other classes, I’ve always been told to stay away from Wikipedia due to it not being a reliable source. Never could I imagine taking a class solely based around Wikipedia, but the class helped me understand Wikipedia more. The information presented on the website isn't entirely incorrect, it just requires additional revisions and critiques. I gained to appreciate the mere existence of Wikipedia.

In a nutshell, this class was extremely exciting and felt like a breath of fresh air from your simple testing and group assignments. I appreciated the excitement and interactions each debate brought to the classroom.