As an environmental studies major, I found Lauren Umek’s lecture on Tuesday to be very interesting and exciting. I am currently taking the first course out of the five required to receive a GIS certificate, so it was really awesome to see some of the more modern GIS abilities that are being used in the science community, especially with Chicago Wilderness. I was also extremely interested in learning more about the Green Infrastructure Vision that Lauren mentioned Chicago Wilderness getting into. I am supposed to graduate this year, so I’ve been giving a lot of thought into what kinds of jobs I might be interested in and that project seems like everything I’ve been imagining, so it was really cool to see that these kinds of large scale urban projects are in the works right here in Chicago.
I have to admit that when Lauren Umek first came in to present I wasn’t really sure how her information was going to be that pertinent to our course materials, but now that I’ve processed it under a broader scope I totally get it. As an Urban Ecologist, she works within the idea of cities being the last environmental frontier, and potentially the best hope for the United States to see a sustainable future; which I now realize goes hand-in-hand with some of the themes in both Cradle to Cradle and Massive Change. I also was thinking about the upcoming presentation from Dr. Honold on cyborgs and how GIS technologies and Google Earth might fit right into the information he’s going to share with us on Thursday. I’ll also take this opportunity to say that I am very intrigued to hear his perspective on this subject matter.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I really love the way you phrase this, " cities being the last environmental frontier." I think that is so indicative of my feelings and what seems to be the sentiment of the rest of the class. I have grown to be so attached to this city over the last 3 or 4 years, but often wonder what it would be like without the green spaces that we have or the relationship we have with the lake. I really love the idea of embracing both the city and environmental landscape together.
ReplyDelete