Green Campus I recently saw a tweet saying that the reason a lot of Americans love college so much is because it’s the only time period where all of their friends are within walking distance of them and it made me notice some other patterns with my thought process when thinking of what I want out of a city or neighbourhood. Whenever I try to envision my perfect town or a perfect urban environment built for efficiency, I almost always end up with something very similar to a residential university/college campus.

I rode an electric bike for the very first time last weekend. I’ve been seeing them more and more often over the course of the last three years but had never had a scenario where I really wanted to ride one. I was fine riding my regular human powered bicycle and the regular bike share bikes. I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed it! It was a marvelous experience.

Reducing Waste in 2021 I often talk about the environment and how efficient it would be to change the urban design in the US to promote more efficient movement and living, but there are some ways where I’ve made little effort to changing and realized I need to start doing more towards more efficient living. Now that I live in an even bigger metropolis than I did before, there are more options than ever within walking (and even train) distance that would help in this goal.

A few months ago, I was talking to two friends on a group chat and as always with me the conversation eventually went on to talk about cities vs. suburbs. One of the friends eventually said “the good thing about the suburbs is that they’re cheaper”. I heard that statement and it went back to a lot of things I’d been thinking about how it doesn’t make too much sense that suburbs are cheaper than cities.

My senior year of undergrad, I would go to the restaurant in my dorm building and order food and the question that was always asked first was “for here or to go”. Whether or not I was eating there, I would always default to ordering “to go” because in my mind I had the chance to take it home if I didn’t eat all of it and could just throw it away in the worst case scenario.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), transportation accounts for a whopping 28% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and 90% of that is petroleum based as of 2018. I live in an urban area, so I like to think I am doing my part by doing things like taking the train or bus and cycling and walking to many of the places I go. Before, I never really looked into how much more efficient it is, so I decided to look into it.

Arlington, Virginia is a county in the US state of Virginia across the Potomac River from (and formerly part of) Washington, DC. As an inner ring suburb of DC, Arlington receives a fair amount of benefits from being close to one of the major cities in the US such as the Washinton Metrorail and the business of many companies wanting to be adjacent to the US capital. In fact, many of the things associated with a trip to Washington, DC are in Arlington including: Washington National Airport, The Pentagon, and Arlington National Cemetary.

I have stalled the creation of this site for quite some time. At the point of writing this intro paragraph, it is September 2020 and I definitely intended to create this website around this point in 2018. I have evolved a bit as a person since that time, so I’m somewhat happy that I didn’t start at the back then, but at the same time, it would have been nice to see my progress throughout the years.