Urban Sustainability Research Paper Description

You are required to write a short research paper analyzing the effectiveness of one policy (or program or tool) used to make any one city more sustainable.

Step 1: Choose a city that you would like to research. It could be a city that you have lived in for a long time, or only visited or have learnt about in other courses at school, or a city that you wish to learn more about. Choose an aspect of urban sustainability that you are interested in or would like to know more about (for example, water conservation). Then choose one program or policy or tool (such as low-flow toilets) in your area of interest in sustainability that the city has adopted to become more sustainable.

Step 2: Do some preliminary research to see if enough information if available about the city, the program and the effectiveness of the program to enable you to write a short research paper. And if you don’t find enough information, then repeat Step 1 with a different city or program.

Step 3: Post your choice of city and program to the Discussion Board on Blackboard

Step 4: Start writing the paper. The paper should have the following elements:
a) An intro paragraph that describes concerns about unsustainable urban development, some
information about the specific aspect of sustainability that you wish to focus on, a sentence or two on the specific program/policy/tool whose effectiveness you wish to evaluate, and a couple of sentences about the structure of the paper to inform the reader about what he/she can expect to read in the rest of the paper.
b) A few paragraphs about the city you have chosen to write about.
c) A few paragraphs about the aspect of urban sustainability that you have chosen to write about. Here
discuss why this issue is important in your city (i.e., the city of your choice for this paper). Provide some information on how serious the problem was in the past (i.e., before the program/policy/tool that you analyze was adopted).
d) Describe the program/policy/tool whose effectiveness you explore. Describe also the reasons that specific program/policy/tool was adopted. Why this one and not something else. Were the reasons based on sound science? Was the reason for adoption political?
e) Discuss the challenges involved in implementing the program/policy/tool. How successful was the implementation? Why do you say so?
f) Did the implementation of the program/policy/tool make the city more sustainable? Why?
g) How can the positive impact on urban sustainability of the program/policy/tool be improved? Would
the city be better off using another program/policy/tool to improve sustainability? Why?
h) A concluding paragraph that summarizes key points of your paper.

Urban Sustainability Research Paper Description You are required...