2011 Theses Bachelor's

LEED for Neighborhood Development: Programming Urban Sustainability

King, Ruth

At a time when urban populations are growing and sprawling at exponential rates, the need for control over the complexity and potential harm of our urban systems is evident. We have only a dim understanding of the complex processes of natural and manmade feedbacks including the water and carbon cycles, information networking, and resource harvesting. These processes network our cities to each other and to the rest of the world, and a concrete paradigm of sustainability could afford us with the long-term, unifying planning goals that will help incorporate private interests with environmental interests while simultaneously working for social good in the city. An examination of
the theory as compared to implementation will offer us insight into the way sustainability can or should be applied to cities.