The Rose cafe with Stephan Schmidt covered the increasingly important topic of place and its definition and implications in urban and regional planning. I am extremely interested in this topic as it has to do with what I would like to work in as a civil engineer. Though I would be working in the engineering aspect of it, I am passionate about the effects place and environment have on its citizens.

I really enjoyed going around the room and hearing where people were from and how they described their hometown in terms of urban scale. It was interesting to note that though each city has some unique qualities, most American cities are very similar in their structure. But these small unique factors make large differences in the way people live in them. I had never realized the degree to which people were affected by their environment until we all talked about what our hometown allows us to do and what it restricts us from doing. It is so interesting to compare this to our living situation in Cornell in which most things are communal and centered around the university as opposed to an urban community. Dr. Schmidt pointed out how our manner of living here in Cornell no doubt represents a significant decrease in our carbon footprint from when we are home because of the fact that so many things are centralized and shared. This makes me think of the fact that in cities, centralizing certain things like eating areas and some amenities may be more difficult than other things like transportation, recreation, and living. I think the future of American cities is to move in the direction of improving its intra and intercity travel as well as improving the areas where people have fun and live in to accommodate more and all types of interests and people.