Creating Sustainable Communities

Creating Sustainable Communities

Presentation by Dr. Henry Bullamore

During the sixth year of Frostburg State University’s Focus Frostburg event, I attended a presentation on creating sustainable communities. In this presentation presented by Dr.Henry Bullamore, a geography professor here at Frostburg State University. Dr. Bullamore explained that the choices we make as a nation have collect impact on the people around us. He explains the importance of sustainable living and not every reason has something to do with the environment but with your personal well being. According to Dr.Bullamore “The united states is a suburban nation, more than 50% of the nation lives in suburbs” and this increases every year. Times are changing more than ever, people are living in single households. However, houses are getting bigger and people are taking longer commutes to work more and more. Dr. Bullamore explains that this happens because people want to be safer, or have better schools for their children but if these problems were fixed there would be no need. People also believe that living in the suburbs is cheaper which is true and that would allow them to spend more time with their families. However, people spend more time commuting “Maryland on average has one of the highest average commutes in the counties” this is a lot of lost time. Its gets worse, the average household spends 20% of their income on transportation, mass transit is an option but less than 20% of united states has well organized transit.

As Dr. Bullamore goes on about the money reasons people do not use public transportation and living in suburban areas instead of urban environments. He concludes that the most important thing for us to do, is to reduce our carbon footprint and that recycling is not enough. Matters that go into the size of our carbon footprint include: transportation, the size of our home, and even where our home is. Dr. Bullamore goes on to talk about traffic congestion and the problem of our city's making us auto dependent. He begins to compare and contrast the united states against japan. Given that Dr. Bullamore has taught in Japan for a number of years, he knows first hand what it is like to live in Japan compared to the United States. According to Dr.Bullamore Japan and United States have a lot of similarities, like we both pay property taxes and family sizes are getting smaller. However, Japan has auto regulations like being unable to purchase a car without proof of having a parking space. Japan also has mixed communities, apartment buildings next to single family housing in the United States this does not exist or it is very uncommon. Also the city density in Japan is much greater than in the United States, Dr. Bullamore gives some solutions as to how we can live sustainable, one being creating housing within urban areas like above store fronts. With this you are close to stores, entertainment and potential jobs, with less of commute this lessens your carbon footprint.

A program mentions by Dr. Bullamore is the Legacy Program, a program in which provides local governments or community organizations with funds for projects help strengthen communities through maintaining businesses and activities that cause attention to the city, causing more home-ownership and commercial revitalization.​