What am I learning about sustainable cities?
What we learned is that it is much easier to say you are going to be sustainable than actually being sustainable. This is the economic realities of building a sustainable city. Changing the infrastructure of a building to be energy efficient can be costly, and even switching energy from fossil fuels to sustainable fuel can be costly as solar panels and other sustainable energy sources are not yet cheap. The cheapest way to have a sustainable building is to build it from the ground up as a sustainable building, rather than changing old ones to be green. Furthermore, from the viewpoint of CEOs and owners of organizations and sports teams, being sustainable can lose money. The bottom-line is typically top priority for owners, so if switching to sustainable practices cost a lot up front, and don’t break even in a short enough period, they don’t see it as a priority.
What pages/parts of my web case need improvement/sharpening?
In our opinions, our section on transportation (which connects to justice and equity in terms of recognition, process, procedure, and outcome) is lackluster and a little far fetched. At first we saw it as a good way to fit under that section of just sustainabilities, but as we deep dived into research we found mostly “we promise to xyz by 123” statements, with some substantial information. We think that if we are able to find more information on transportation in Seattle related to sporting events we should be fine, but we believe our best plan of action is to maybe switch gears and find something else that fits under that section of just sustainabilities, with maybe including transportation as a tidbit.
Overall though, the entire website needs improving, looks wise. We don’t have any images and the font and texts aren’t consistent, so we need to go through and steamroll everything to be the same. Need to find a good aesthetic.
Also, we have a lot of text on certain pages, so we think we need to find a way to space things out to look nice and make it readable.
Where are the gaps in my research?
Definitely our section on transportation. As we previously stated, it’s lackluster at best. We can’t find much information online that is useful or even substantial, so that is for sure the biggest gap in our research. Furthermore, our topic on “New Community” isn’t as much research based as it’s more opinion based. There is some information in there that relates to class material, but not much else. We can find more information and then add and/or alter our page on it, but as of now, it’s mostly observations and opinions. We believe the new stadium/community could work based on our observations of what the Greater Seattle Area has done and how successful they have been.
Additional Themes
What are some additional themes that I want to add for my final web-case?
We are going to drop our section on transportation and probably replace it with equality and representation in sports. Overall, we’ll be talking about the positive impacts being made and places where they can improve.
For these themes, what sources might I use as evidence?
Some sources we’ll use will probably come from articles and just viewing media overall, while also grabbing some information from some of our interviews. Some of the biggest evidence we’ll use to help our case will come from class material, such as Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy.