The book Living Green A Practical Guide To Simple Sustainability by Greg Horn vividly portrays current environmental problems and proposes to readers a number of effective methods to reduce negative health risks and create a sustainable environment. The author states that the environment can be either positive or negative, and whatever the type is, we always develop responsibility towards it. The most important feature of an environment is that it creates life. Sometimes the positive factors of an environment give rise to something positive or negative, and occasionally the negative factors give rise to some byproduct. Any type of environment leads to something new, something as a result. The book consists of three main parts discussing the problems of health issues, housing, and future projections.
The first part, “Sustainable Health” creates a vivid picture of a healthy lifestyle and improvements. The author is right that environmental health addresses all biological, physical, and chemical factors of the environment that affects public health in general. It is the branch of study that mainly regards formulating the correct way of designing the various environmental variables that leads to optimum public health. Let’s just look at it this way. We are healthy if the environment is positive or healthy. So, environmental health is all about judging the current status of environmental health and excogitating ways on how to improve it, and thus, in turn, the environmental public health as a result. Environmental health concerns air quality, both outdoor and indoor, including the hazards of tobacco smoking. Environmental health is concerned about climate change and its environmental effect, food safety, drinking water consideration, disaster preparedness, housing environment, sanitary methods, hazardous waste (whether chemical, physical or biological, whether solid, liquid, or gas) removal, and management, land usage planning and development, occupational health, noise pollution, industrial cleanliness, radiological effects and preventive measures, toxic chemical perils, and vector preclusion processes. And who supervises this whole environment risk management? It’s the environmental public health services, mainly presided over by the government or certain privacy concerns. Sanitarians, environmental public health specialists, public health overseers, environmental public health specialists, and so forth can work for environmental public health services. But some bylaws want them to hold proper licenses to work in the designated practicing scope of the environmental health maintenance programs.
Risks can be found everywhere and in every aspect. And the most important risk that we seem to underestimate is the risk to our environment. In our daily lives, we pay attention to the risks to our finance, risks to our health and risks to our properties but seldom do we come to ken the significance of the environmental risks and its effect on the very existence of us. A small step towards preempting environmental risk can save a lot of natural disasters and thousands of lives if we look carefully into the matter (Horn 51).
The second part of the book gives advice on how to create sustainable and environmentally friendly housing. The author is right that all possible hazards and disasters can be averted, on the adoption of proper preventive and mitigating measures of disasters are being followed. These steps would make sure that the possible hazard doesn’t actually turn into a real disaster and if it does, it can be redressed without much harm being meted out to the public. Risk can happen due to natural occurrences as well as manmade actions. In this case, the San Francisco Nuclear project can be treated as a manmade action. When toxic chemicals and radiation would be emitted onto the ecosphere, it can turn into a nasty disaster. This is what proper risk management involves, namely, preclusion and alleviation of possible disasters. As it’s always believed that fear is good and is directly correlated with societal improvement. If a study is to be done on the subject, it would be found that though we have evolved and uplifted our standard of living over time, we have also increased the risks (the chances of hazards converting into possible disasters). We are living on the extreme now and at the edge, it can never be risk-free. As someone said, ‘When the world is made to be idiot-proof, it gets filled with idiots’ and that’s so true. We have to be cautious not to commit any fatal error. Special attention is given to sustainable building and new technologies available for a common citizen (Horn 78).
The third part, “Sustainable Future” discusses the advantages of new energy solutions and new ways of living on the Earth. Sustainable development is a dynamic process of building, organizing, and elaborating knowledge of the natural world. Sustainable development is more relevant, applicable, and memorable for students if they understand the structure (ideas and relationships) of the subject matter. In order to acquire this structure, students must be active. Discovery learning helps students to be active by encouraging them to think inductively, using examples to form general principles. In sustainable development, the structure of the subject matter and the importance of hierarchical organization are important. It must be kenned that the level of toxicity depends upon the strength of tolerance in the receptor, the environmental factors, the discrepancy between the effects on different species, the synergistic effect of several toxic factors, and how it can possibly affect (in other words, how it can possibly turn into a disaster). It would be best if some recommendations were being followed on a general basis while assessing any site for that matter. You should always try to exact the type of contaminants released from the site and whether it can transgress limit boundaries, what the possible transmission media can be, and so forth (Horn 125).
In general, Horn creates a vivid narration about new ways of life and methods available to every citizen of the Earth. I agree that urban lifestyle is influenced greatly by such processes as cultural diversity and social differences which erode a sense of community and unity. Many critics admit death of traditional landscape and the emergence of suburbanized settings. Landscape designers contribute to beautiful spaces, each planned entirely on its own merit. They also designed temporary structures in the parks to serve as news and ice cream stands, cafés, etc. Buildings in parks are features that easily become out of date and therefore are regularly replaced; in order to pre-empt this they were light temporary structures, and the temporary nature is emphasized by the materials and by the fact that they were demountable. A similar approach was adhered to in the design of lighting in parks and gardens. In many places, a sense of community disappears because of new structures and the simplification of landscapes. Consumerism and mass culture affect all elements of landscape architecture. The aim of the literature review is to evaluate current literature on the topic of social ties, neighboring and community in the city, and give a detailed analysis of each source.
Horn underlines that social ties are stronger among rural dwellers and in ghettos but weaker in “white” regions. This book is written in a scientific style for city planners and architectures interesting in modern trends and changes. This can be interesting for a general reader and social science student. The author underlines that using our intuition, people can take the experience of building and begin to make judgments about the overtness of the architectural enclosure. A sense of community is influenced by environmental sustainability issues involving parks and green areas. The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the post-colonial theory of landscape with modern attitudes of African-American towards nature and suburbs. These processes become strategic tools for determining the spatial arrangement of enclosures and the displacement of light. The genre of this study is scientifically directed to architects and landscape professionals interested in history and modern trends in landscapes science. The modern community now measures itself against the wider community. A sense of community is affected by consumerism and mass culture, lack of knowledge about environmental degradation, and community life. A sense of community is shaped by ”unnatural, unrealistic, unhealthy” behavior patterns. This article is oriented to a wide audience interested in community affairs and changes. Also, it can be useful for social workers and sociologists. Together, such components and standard house plans challenge the community to find a new vocabulary for living in such a place. Special attention is given to parks and commentaries as a reflection of a sense of community. Also, the authors evaluate and analyze the impact of consumerism and mass culture on Puerto-Rican and Asian –American areas. This study persuades readers to preserve the natural beauty and uniqueness of suburbs and understand their sense of belonging and unity. This book is written in the journalistic genre. The main audience is sociologists and architectures, and those people who are interested in landscape changes and community studies.
The author states that a healthy life is created by the proliferation of social and cultural ideas into architecture. In this study, special attention is given to car culture and consumerism. This is a historical work based on memories and historical analysis. The main audiences are those people who study social sciences and landscape architecture. A sense of community is created by parks and cafés, etc. the main problem is that buildings in parks are features that easily become out of date and therefore are regularly replaced; in order to pre-empt this they are light temporary structures, and the temporary nature is emphasized by the materials and by the fact that they were demountable. Modern suburbs are in crisis trying to combine ideas of sustainability and technological innovations involving automobiles and highways, new environmentally friendly materials, and mass culture.
In order to improve our environment, local provision should be made for a variety of activities and sports ensuring the engagement of both young and old in city life and local planning. The main target audience of this research is students and sociologists. A sense of environment and sustainability is eroded by automobiles and consumer culture, lack of planning initiatives, and sustainability policies. New social values and culture can preserve a sense of community and improve the perception of landscape and architecture by modern dwellers. Modern adolescents do not value natural beauty influenced by a strong sense of consumerism and false ideals of wealth. The main strategies to improve a sense of community are better neighborhood development and preservation of the countryside. While these qualities make the law-abiding man more social and desirable, they make the social man situated in a certain community. The area of social interaction is well measured off on sociological maps. In reality, there are invisible transitions, sections where no arrests are made. Only when the massive concentration begins and social appearances are reduced, people focus on interaction and interpersonal relations which affect their life and environment.
References
Horn, Greg. Living Green A Practical Guide To Simple Sustainability. Freedom Publishing Company, 2006.