| Hey welcome! It'll be awesome to have someone come to L.A. because they love big cities. We need more people who love the city instead of constantly complaining about it.
I actually have heard of the URP major, but only because I worked in the Alumni Affairs office while I was a student and was exposed to all the majors available, present and past. Anyway, I don't know much about it, but I can understand all the environmental classes. Especially in environmentally conscious states like California, city planners need to do environmental impact studies all the time to make sure their projects won't be causing any harm to nature. They also need to make sure that the ground and surroundings they build on is structurally sound, and how they might be impacted by earthquakes, floods and mudslides. As much as we'd like the city to be a self-contained unit, the fact remains that everything we build affects the environment, and those structures may in turn be affected by the environment.
An interesting little story I heard recently... in Long Beach there's a big bridge (I think it crosses the bay). They decided to string up some lights to make it pretty at night. A few environmental studies later they found out that it was negatively impacting the migratory pattern of some birds in that area. They tried switching to blue lights instead and that fixed the problem. I found it fascinating that something as simple as decorative lighting on a bridge could impact the environment in some way. |