The End of Suburbia in Taiwan and the U.S.

Suburbia was the term given to a large amount of land in the U.S. which was outside of the cities. The original vision of suburbia was something akin to a mansion in the countryside; reality could not be more different. Suburbia has proven itself to be a real threat to sustainability. The houses in suburbia do not even partially resemble the romantic picture painted for people, and the geography of suburbia does not help much for sustainability. The central problem is that suburbia is too far away from most work places, and it costs a tremendous amount in fuel to travel from work to home. The regular commuting from house to work also creates pollution. Such a large number of people live in suburbia that the problem is compounded manifold. Those are the central issues with Suburbia in the U.S.

In Taiwan, I do not feel we face the problem of the sustainability for suburbia. Taiwan is simply too small for us to designate a massive portion of land to countryside homes. We do face a similar issue in that people in Taiwan are used to the idea of traveling miles and miles for work, then returning. I know there are even people that travel from city to city in order to go to school in the mornings. Taiwan faces the same problem with pollution. Nobody is exempt from the pollution issue, in Taiwan, the problem takes the form of scooters. So many people drive scooters in Taiwan that it is creating a serious environmental problem. Scooters make it easier to travel short distances, so people take scooters instead of walking. Scooters also carry a maximum of up to 2 adults (safely) so carpooling is not an option with scooters. Taiwan faces the same problems as the U.S., just not in the form of Suburbia.

Organic Farming and Enron

Organic farming has been widely accepted as being more healthy and ecologically friendly than its non-organic counterpart. This attitude has spawned a new type of competition amongst organic farmers: the race to be the most organic. The organic movement began in the sixties as a type of counter-culture movement which aimed to allow people to get back to their natural roots (no pun intended). It has since then been transformed into a business in which people desperately try to outsell each other in the organic market economy. This is ironic because the idealistic organic movement of the sixties has now morphed into something resembling industrial farming much more than organic farming. One may point to Enron and argue for a similar case. Enron began (presumably) with rather innocent motives, but eventually became corrupt due to the need to stay in the financial competition. Everything does change into the way the world is, at least in the economic sector.

The process of organic farming has also come a long way from its original state. Instead of the original idea of farming as naturally as possible, organic farmers now try to control nature as much as possible in their farming. Everything seems to be controlled to yield the most gain out of the farming process. Enron was a similar case; the people at Enron felt as if they had to maintain control over everything, and even spoke about trading weather. Nowadays, the term organic has been reduced to a word that means almost nothing, it is just another way to sell a product.