User:Dcr18

Homework 1: Grand Challenges for Engineering- Sustainable Suburban Infrastructure?

A Comparative Assessment of New Urbanist Neighborhoods: Durham, NC & Greenville, SC, Phillip Gao, Duke University Economics, created 10 December 2008, accessed 15 September 2013 (Restore and improve urban infrastructure)

New Urbanism is a concept in urban design that creates self-sufficient, walkable neighborhoods by combining high density residential infrastructure with a commercial, business, and social hub. New Urban neighborhoods use less grid-space for resources such as water and electricity and less gasoline per resident than the traditional suburban sprawl that surrounds downtown areas in cities that evolved after the invention of the automobile. A school of thought in urban development sees a network of New Urban neighborhoods connected by public transit to downtown areas and other neighborhoods as the eventual solution to the sustainability of suburbia.

Living in the endless suburban sprawl that is the D/FW Metroplex, I've been fascinated by different aspects of sustainable development; I know that Dallas in its current form is not sustainable. The neighborhood that peaked my interest in New Urbanism is the Legacy in Plano [1]. It's in an incredibly pricey area of Dallas (Plano has been named the wealthiest and safest city in America two of the last five years by Forbes, largely due to the Legacy bringing in the corporate headquarters of many major companies, including Frito-Lay, jcpenney, and Pizza Hut), and this article by Duke undergrad Phillip Gao answered one of the questions I'd wondered for a while: Do New Urban neighborhoods have a price premium in comparison to traditional suburban neighborhoods, or was the wealth surrounding Legacy just a product of the location?

The research gathered by Phillip Gao supports the idea of a price premium for New Urban neighborhoods using data from Durham and Greenville, SC. That is both an incentive for engineers interested in sustainable development and businesses and residents interested in investing into suburb revitalization programs in the future. However, it does bring up the dilemma of exclusion from these neighborhoods based on price range; a 13.7% price premium for the walkability, commercial center, and sustainability of a New Urban setting would discourage people from moving into the neighborhood and would make it hard to justify investing in this form of suburban revitalization in poorer areas.

P.S. This article made me incredibly excited because it was written by a Duke undergrad. I just Googled "New Urbanism" and it was on the first page. That makes me so excited for the future.

Homework 2: MATLAB Demonstrations

After having worked in Java the last two years, I am very happy to see the incredible extent and ease of the MATLAB graphics package. Needing only four lines of code to create a contour map of a graphic blows my mind; that is why Viewing a Penny was my favorite example today. However, once I get deeper into Multi-variable Calculus, my favorite might very well change to one of the examples that explains how to create a 3-D Plot.