Urban Innovations in the Falgarwood Community

Introduction The theme for our innovated community revolves around renewable energy, and minimal energy consumption. Our plan is called, The Falgarwood SMART Plan. Were planning to incorporate SMART growth into the Falgarwood community by... implementing: Solar Panel roofs, green roofs, SMART growth, Electric Cars, and More Bike Lanes. Were doing this to help save our residents money, and minimize our ecological footprint. We plan to achieve this by, proving to the community Falgarwood, the benefits of these ideas, and how much money they could save in the long run. Therefore, were trying to get the communitys co-operation. AM, CN

The Plan
Solar Panels Were going to use solar panels to cover the surfaces of roofs of our homes in Falgarwood. Were using solar panels on our homes, because our homes cannot implement green roofs. This is because, green roofs require a flat surface, and our homes in Falgarwood have slanted surfaces. This is a renewable energy source, because it uses the suns rays to conduct energy, so as long as the sun doesnt burn out, were able to get energy. This impacts the environment in a positive way, because the majority of our energy is from fossil fuels, which causes a lot of harm to the environment. Were using our empty roofs to minimize the amount of fossil fuels burned in Falgarwood, by substituting with clean energy! This lowers the amount of air pollution in the Earth, and our ecological footprint, leaving a good and cleaner environment for the future to use. Knowing the amount of single homes in our community, there is a lot of room for our solar panels to be placed, thus on sunny days or even cloudy, a lot of energy can be produced without any impact on the environment. AM, SA Green Roofs Were going to use green roofs to cover the surfaces of our flat roofs, because all the plants will not fall or slip in the flat space. Flat roofs may include community centers, schools, and indoor pool roofs. The green roof is a small eco-system consisting of flowers, trees, and other plants with wildlife on top of a roof. This is good, because

these roofs purify the air, since the plants take in dirty air, and release clean oxygen for us to breath. This is good, because our community would be going through development which will probably cause some air quality decrease, and dust. The plants on top of the roofs also absorb a lot of rainfall, because of the surface area the plants cover. This lowers the amount of water that has to be processed in the sewage system. This process requires energy, which most likely uses some fossil fuel energy. Green roofs provide warmth in cold temperatures, and cool air during hot temperatures to the building. This removes the need to use the heater or A/C. AM SMART Growth We also plan to include SMART growth in our community as we develop on it, because we cant destroy buildings and rebuild. We plan to build more residential space or put different land uses into a more condensed space. For example, making more apartments, semi-detached, townhouses to fit more residents, and multi-purpose buildings. This minimizes the amount of transportation thats tempted to use, which lowers the amount of pollution to the air, water, and wildlife. Also having many single family homes, we have more independent activities that we do that can harm the environment, such as: cleaning our pool and washing the water out, cleaning cars, pesticides on gardens, etc, opposed to having an apartment or townhouse, where they all share a garden or cannot fit a pool. This also leaves some more land for the future generations to develop on instead of the future having to cling to the past, because of us. If the different land uses/places we want to go are spread out too far, most people are tempted to drive their automobile there. We dont want to continue too much urban sprawl any longer; and move onto SMART growth. SMART growth, save land, money, energy, and the environment, and lowering Oakvilles ecological footprint! AM Electric Cars We also plan to include electric cars, encouragement of them, stations, etc in our community as we develop on the community. There will be a few parts to this innovation: electric car use in general, special stations, and parking space. Electric cars are automobiles which rely on electricity to run, that energy is received from often more environmentally-friendly ways, which reduces the ecological footprint of the automobile. Since these automobiles are more sustainable, and our day and age are all about automobiles, why not make the electric cars a great plan! We plan to put electric car recharge stations around popular places, such as plazas or malls. These work just like a gas station, but for electric cars and are also much cheaper than gas. There will also be special parking spaces for electric cars, just like the handicap parking spaces, so users of electric cars have the upper hand of getting a parking spot. These benefits are green

and will also encourage more people to get into using electric cars in the long run, thus making our environment more sustainable. There will also be Community-Shared Electric Cars, sort of like the idea of a BIXI bike where you can basically rent out a bike for a certain time to use. There will be specific areas where there is a community garage with these cars inside, however you must rent the car out and get the car tools from the company to use it. The cars will also have a certain amount of time to be used, before return. This encourages the use of electric cars to those who maybe dont want to buy an electric car, or cant afford one, but still want to help the environment. CN, SA Bike Lanes/More We also plan to in cooperate more bike lanes into our planned community. There arent too many bike lanes in the Falgarwood area, therefore the use of bikes isnt encouraged much. Because, bikes are eco-friendly source of transportation, and fast, we want to encourage the community to use them more. Bike lanes will cause fewer accidents for those who do bike in the middle of the road, and the cyclists will not get in the way of traffic. CN Add Regional Factors, Analysis, Urban Sprawl to where you think it fits, label under AM Add your own ideas if you wish.