Final Essay
Land use is necessary to have because land is not a renewable resource since the
resources if provides can not be created today. These lands also have unique species and scenic
beauty which are specific to this land only. It is important to plan carefully as once the land is
converted to intensive human use, it becomes unavailable for any other use. There are eight
different principles that should be involved in good land-use planning. I think that these
principles are very useful when someone is trying to decide what they should put on that land.
The principles go from preserving historical and cultural features, conserving space and
environmental qualities, recognizing cost for renovation, planning for transportation outlets,
planning for a mix of housing and commercials, evaluating principles of the land, setting the
urban growth limit, and encouraging development in areas that are already developed. However,
along with good land-use planning there comes restrictions that play in implementing land use
plans. In implementing land use plans, state and regional planning prevents duplications of
facilities and allow greater use of efficiency. They also have more financial resources to hire
professional planners to help with the planning process. As for purchasing land, this allows
development rights. For use restrictions, it creates “zoning” which means that it designates
specific areas in the community for certain kinds of land use. Also, there are three common
land-use issues cities must deal with. Such cities have to deal with areas of land that are
designated for military use, national reserves and preserves. They also have to deal with the
national parks and areas that are designated for recreation such as parks. They have to work with
these different groups and all of them have different interests on what should be done with the
land.
The next topic is urban sprawling. Urban sprawling and environmental problems
definitely has a direct relationship with each other. The main thing that urban sprawling does is
make it so that the residents of the urban community heavily rely on their cars for transportation
and because of this there is a lot of air pollution going into the environment and we all know
what air pollution does to the environment. Transportation plays a part in environmental
problems as well because it causes us to be more exposed to air pollution and waste countless
hours sitting in traffic. The economic effects of transportation costs a lot with the building of
roads and the maintenance of these roads. Cars also dictate government policies as well because
us humans are so dependent on our cars and oil. We could slowly remove the dependence of oil
by moving to renewable energy and redesigning the way we build communities, putting a
mixture of residential, commercial, and industrial, all in one area instead of separating them.
Because suburban settlements are built so far away from commercial and industrial settlements
and public transportation sometimes don’t travel from these suburban settlements to the
commercial / industrial settlements, we are constantly dependent on cars as our main source of
transportation. Suburban settlement may reduce the amount of shoppers due to the time it takes
to travel to the mall may be a long time, traffic adds even more time, and the distance between
the mall and shopper may just be too far.
Along with all these reasons of environmental problems we also have the problem of
invasive species. Invasive species are mainly introduced into a new environment by humans due
to transportation being so accessible nowadays animals are being transported daily. New
Oreleans had a big threat of invasive species, termites, because a majority of the buildings were
made of wood and termites habit both underground and above ground they weren’t affected by
the pesticides. To solve this wood baits with poison soaked paper would be used to reduce the
number of termites. In Uganda, lake victoria were filled with crocs, the perch was added to the
lake half a century ago, and it attracted more fish to the lake which lead to more fisherman
fishing in the lake which eventually lead to more crocodile attacks. Water hyacinth, a plant that
ended up floating down stream and eventually clogged 80% of the stream which greatly
impacted the fisherman in the area and caused diseases for the people drinking the water.
Eventually, a scientist introduced weevils to the ecosystem to destroy these weeds and it
eventually destroyed all these weeds. It lead to a cleaner lake and less diseases and problems
present in the lake. In Hawaii there was a species that caused massive landslides, which leads to
harm to species in the water and on the land, Hawaii is mainly consisting of invasive species.
Myconia, along with the Japanese white eyes, spread the seeds produced by these trees, mainly
consisting of 3 million seeds and spread over 10,000 acres over 3 years which leads to killing
Hawaiian plants which eventually leads to weakened soil causing landslides.