Sustainable Community?

‘Sustainable communities are places where people want to live and work, now and in the future. They meet the diverse needs of existing and future residents, are sensitive to their environment, and contribute to a high quality of life. They are safe and inclusive, well planned, built and run, and offer equality of opportunity and good services for all’(Communities and Local Government, 2010).

A sustainable community offers decent housing being sold at reasonable prices and there is a source of public transport. These communities have schools, shops and a hospital located nearby. Finally for a community to be sustainable it needs to be clean and safe. I am from a village called Glenfield located to the West of Leicester’s city centre. I feel that Glenfield can be classed as a sustainable community as it boasts all of the above. The majority of the housing is detached or semi-detached with a few bungalows. The public transport system is fantastic supported by the two bus companies First and Arriva with buses coming within every 20 minutes. Glenfield has two primary schools and a range of shops such as newsagents, hairdressers and a supermarket (the co-op). To add to this, Glenfield also has a hospital.

Glenfield encourages people to recycle by having a collection day once every two weeks and green bins have been provided to all houses in the village. The co-op also has giant recycling bins in its car park allowing villagers to dispose of all their cardboard, plastic and glass. Crime rates are relatively low in Glenfield, the fact the village has a neighbourhood watch scheme reduces crime rates even further.

The amount of households that own a car is relatively high, with 47.2% of households owning one car, 34.2% owning two cars with only a small percentage of 12.8% of households not owning a car (Office for National Statistics, 2006). To be fair Glenfield does not boast a great deal of jobs although with the amount of public transport available with the local bus links and taxi services some people may not need a car but simply have one for convenience.

Overall Glenfield is a sustainable community in many ways, although in terms of vehicle use more could be done to reduce its emissions to become even more sustainable.

References

Communities and Local Government (2010) What is a sustainable community? [online] Available from: http://www.communities.gov.uk/archived/general-content/communities/whatis/ (24/03/10). Office for National Statistics (2006) Neighbourhood Statistic. [online] Available from: http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=3&b=6161384&c=LE3+8RY&d=14&e=15&g=465049&i=1001x1003x1004&m=0&r=0&s=1269689286374&enc=1&dsFamilyId=51 (24/03/10)

Education for Citizenship

I am from a village called Glenfield in Leicestershire. Glenfield is located to the West of the city centre and has a population of approximately 10,000 people (Leicester County Council, 2006). Glenfield’s local council is the Leicester County Council. The local MP for my constituency is the Labour MP Patricia Hewitt. As shown on the map, the Labour and the Conservative party both are responsible for 5 constituencies each. It clear that Conservative dominate as conservative is accountable for the larger districts.

I understand that this year the general election is to take place. There are many opinions on those who do not take part. Some people may see the ‘non-voters’ as people who do not care about the way in which the country or their district is run. Others may possibly just see the ‘non-voters’ as lazy.

I personally do not have an opinion on the ‘non-voters’ as this is my first year where I can legally vote and I am choosing to not take part. There are several reasons why, first of all I do not feel educated enough to make a precise decision on which political party I am in favour of as I am not fully aware of each party’s aims and visions. From what I do understand, each party seems to flaunt themselves in an over-exaggerated way to win votes. They make many promises to us that they are going to improve many things for example reduce tax, provide more money for education, create more jobs and so on. When it comes down to it, I personally feel these parties do not stick to their word 100% of the time.

Years ago, there were clear distinctions between the 3 main political parties but now a lot of their policies are very similar and people often vote for the ‘person’ they like rather than the party.

‘Voter turnout has declined in recent years due to apathy – where voters are not motivated to vote for any political party’ (Tutor2u, n.d). Tutor2u (n.d) explains how this may have been caused by false belief or people thinking there is little difference between one party to another. Tutor2u (n.d) also explains how people feel that politicians do not always listen and that one vote will make little difference to the outcome of who wins the election. I can agree with all the points the mentioned therefore I do not blame people for not taking part in the elections!

References

• Leicestershire County Council (2006) Leicestershire Small Area Population and Household Estimates 2001-2004 . http://www.leics.gov.uk/search.htm?qt=population+of+glenfield&col=all&flag= (16.03.10)

• Tutor2u (n.d) Voting Behaviour. http://tutor2u.net/sociology/power-voting-behaviour.html (16.03.10)

Is there a transport problem?

I’m not going to deny that the world, especially in MEDCs, have sustainable transport issues. In this day and age, technology has grown so rapidly it has gone beyond thinking about being sustainable.

Fifty years ago, a household would be lucky to own a car due to the expense of buying and running them. Nowadays, ‘The proportion of households in Great Britain with access to a car increased from 52 percent to 75 per cent between 1971 and 2007. Over the same period, the proportion of households without access to a car almost halved, from 48 per cent to 25 percent (National Statistics, 2009)’. Today it can be seen as “normal” for a household to own more than one car. National Statistics (2009) states that there has been an increase of 19 percent from 8 percent in 1971 to 27 percent in 2007 of households owning two cars, and an increase of 5 percent from 2 percent in 1971 to 7 percent in 2007 of households owning 3 cars.

These days, transport plays an important role in everyday life as people rely on it to get to work, to go shopping, to visit family, to go on holiday and so on. Without the use of cars, people would be limited to where they worked in relation to their home, how far away from family they may want to move. Although it is argued that people should be less reliant on cars and use public transport more often. By doing so, this will primarily cut down on the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted and will also reduce congestion.

It is in my opinion that despite the amount of harm cars are doing to the environment, cutting down on car use and replacing it with public transport is easier said than done. I can particularly relate this to myself as I have a car at university of which I use regularly as I travel home every weekend to work. The government continue to encourage more sustainable transport, especially walking, cycling and using buses if possible, yet not enough people are doing something about it. I find, just like a lot of other people, that the use of public transport is not as reliable as using your own car and can be much more time consuming. Public transport is not available as and when you need it compared to your car, for example; buses and trains only come at certain times and only go to certain destinations. If travelling a long distance and you took the train, you not only have to pay for the train but the transport to get you to and from the train stations as well, therefore it can work out much more costly.

The demand for fossil fuels is forever increasing, with prices constantly fluctuating dependent upon how much of the fossil fuels are available. If the demand for these fuels continues to increase, more people may resort to using alternative transport methods than their own car. I believe that if public transport was made cheaper and came on a more regular basis, people would end up preferring to use other methods of transport. Despite no major action being undertaken at the minute, I do agree that something has to be done about the use of cars in the long run. I am concerned about the depletion of fossil fuels, there is only so much time left until we completely exhaust our resources, and then where do we go from there?

References

National Statistics (2009) Car Access: More households than ever have a car [online] UK: National Statistics. Available from: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1770

Christmas is coming!

Cultural festivals, such as Christmas, are undoubtedly enjoyable and an important time for families and friends to relax together. Many have important religious significance. On the other hand, such events are often defined by excess and waste...lights, fireworks, over-packaging, excessive spending, over-eating and embarrassing self indulgence.

Christmas is a great time of year for people to enjoy celebrating and spending time together. For most people it is probably one of their most favourite times of year, being able to spend valuable time with family and friends, being able to enjoy festive foods and treat loved ones.
Despite Christmas being a fantastic time of year, it is very unsustainable. Year after year, 2 million tonnes of waste is created every Christmas. This includes wrapping paper, cards, food, Christmas trees, bottles and cans.

Christmas lights make the season feel much more festive and special. Some people feel it is not only important to have lights on their Christmas trees but feel the need to decorate their houses from top to bottom in all sorts of lights. As nice as it is to drive by these houses where hours of time have been spent to make them look as eye catching as possible, it is extremely unsustainable. All year people focus on keeping their electricity bills to a minimum due to the expense and for some people to cut down on pollution, yet as soon as it hits Christmas, the whole ‘energy saving’ scheme is thrown out the window and Christmas lights are kept on for hours on end, even when nobody is in the house.

I personally think that this time of year, a lot of people forget about being sustainable and use the season to let down their hair and put all their worries behind them. Even I find I am more unsustainable at this time of year, leaving the Christmas tree lights on for long periods of time just because it looks pretty and feels cosy. I also find myself over-packaging presents and not able to eat all I’ve put on my plate... my mother feeds me well at Christmas.

In a changed world, that was more sustainable, I think Christmas would be very hard and less enjoyable. I believe this because it is the Christmas lights, the amount of food we eat and the unwrapping of presents that make Christmas, Christmas. If we were to be more sustainable, presents wouldn’t be wrapped up, all Christmas trees would be fake, lights would have to be kept to a minimum, possibly allowing lights on Christmas trees but not on houses and lights should only be turned on in the evening and turned off before going to bed and so on. This would completely destroy the whole festivity of Christmas. As important as it is to be sustainable, for a lot of people being sustainable at Christmas isn’t possible. Christmas time is where people celebrate the birth of Christ and for those with children, bring them up believing in Santa Clause, neither celebrations would be possible if the cooking of vast amounts of food and the wrapping up of presents present’s were cut to a minimum. Christmas is the one time of year I look forward to more than anything, just like many other people and I feel people should be conscious about how sustainable they are being but I don’t think everyone should be that extreme it ruins their Christmas!

References
http://www.basingstoke.gov.uk/environment/sustain/christmas.htm