The concept of mixed-used development of city, which I learned in AP human geography last year can be applied to my plan for a green city. Most contemporary cities are divided into sector: residential, commercial, agriculture, and industrial. People need to frequently travel from residential to other sectors of the cities to purchase goods, undergo activities, etc., which takes a lot of energy and produces a high carbon footprint. By using the mixed-used development model, houses, restaurants, school, and working office can be strategically combined in one area and people's activity space can become much smaller. They will be more likely to walk and bike, instead of driving.

Pearl, in my APES class we also learned about mixed-use land as a part of Smart Growth. Mixed use land is definitely extremely important to find a way to live on our Earth in a less impactful way. Another principle that Smart Growth that we learned about was taking advantage of compact building designs. Compact building designs is a way that we can more efficiently use the land we have. With our growing population, this is extremely important because the amount of land on Earth is limited. An example of compact building design would be creating a multi-level parking lot instead of a sprawling parking lot. By doing this we can decrease the amount of used surface area of Earth used up by this parking lot. Another principle of smart growth that can help us reduce the amount of land we are using is about developing existing communities instead of using developed that has not been developed yet to create new communities. By developing existing communities we can preserve the natural land that we have. This will mean less impact on animals whose habitats are being destroyed th rough the development of land for human use. The principles of Smart Growth are extremely important and I hope that every state takes these principles into account when creating policies for their residents.

Pearl and Sisi - I find it interesting that you both are suggesting a planned-layout city, where all the land area is distributed purposefully and conveniently where it minimizes travel by citizens.  I think you would both find it interesting to observe the work of Brigham Yen, who I studied a few years back through a social justice project in a religion course.  To give you a brief idea of his work, Yen is a popular real estate agent in the downtown Los Angeles area who has affordable properties close to resources like those Pearl was discussing (stores, businesses, schools, restaurants, etc.) as well as public transportation if necessary.  Yen's work not only greatly lowers the price of living and transportation for his clients and citizens of Los Angeles, but it clearly also eliminates much of their carbon footprints.  Personally, and I feel this is the case for many Americans, a majority of my carbon footprint comes from driving automobiles.  I constantly drive throughout the day, whether it is to school, the store, soccer practice, etc.  In addition, all the places  I have to be each day are rather spread out and far apart from each other.  If these were all conveniently located close together, my carbon footprint would see a significant decrease.