Albuquerque's Environmental Story

Educating For a Sustainable Community

The Home, School, and Neighborhood as Mini-Environments

Introduction - A City in Miniature

Your home, its surroundings, and your neighborhood with its people form a small ecosystem which resembles a city in miniature. The systems of rules, paths, wires, and pipes regulating the flow of people, energy, goods, and wastes reflect those of the larger community to which you belong.

Looking at the interrelationships in this mini-environment can lead to many interesting discoveries about aspects of your life you may have taken for granted. It may also help to interpret the workings of a system as complex as Albuquerque and the natural areas around it.

In both your immediate surroundings and the world beyond, the foundation of the ecosystem is the natural environment--a piece of land, the plants and animals adapted to live on it, and the life support systems which sustain these living things. They provide the natural base for roads, houses, schools, and other buildings. Finally, people with needs, wants, and social structures are added, forming an ecosystem which interacts and interlocks, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and creates a closely meshed entity.

Section IV looks at these three major components of your home, school, and neighborhood.

Part 1, The Natural Environment

The plants and animals in yards and vacant lots, as well as the people in your home, school, and neighborhood, are affected by the physical elements of their immediate environment.
In turn, the use people make of the grounds and of the physical factors in their surroundings affects the larger environment beyond the home, school, and neighborhood.

Part 2, The Built Environment

Houses, schools, and other structures in the neighborhood are built with materials from the earth. Heat, electricity, food, water, and other supplies are brought into these buildings to support the occupants.
In turn, the buildings affect the quality of the larger community's environment by their design, by the demands made on energy and material resources, and by the wastes they generate.

Part 3, People and Their Social Structures

The people in your home, schools, and neighborhood are individuals who have distinctive needs, wants, and inner environments. They interact and form communities, functioning as social entities which have special roles, internal organization, government, and decision making capabilities. In the process, aesthetically pleasing, clean environments and cooperatively functioning social organizations may develop.
In turn, the larger community is affected by the attitudes, demands and actions of people in the homes, schools, and neighborhoods.

Your mini-environment interacts with the outer world in a continuous, ever-changing succession. Today's city was spawned in the past. Seeds for a future Albuquerque are planted in the present.

As you think about these interactions and changes - past, present, and future - some of the following questions may occur to you.

Heritage

What was the natural history of your neighborhood?
How did this area look before your home was built?
How was the land used by people who lived in Albuquerque in earlier times?
What human succession has taken place in your neighborhood?
What happenings in the past contributed to making your neighborhood what it is now?

Here and Now

How compatible is the architecture of your house with its natural en- vironment? With Albuquerque's cultural environment?
What demands do your home and neighborhood place on the community for energy and transportation?
Is there a sense of community in your neighborhood?
How do people in your home and neighborhood interact with the larger community of Albuquerque? Of New Mexico? Of the United States? Of the world?

Horizon

How will your neighborhood be affected if Albuquerque's population grows excessively?
How would an increase in automobile traffic affect your neighborhood?
What can be done to develop a greater sense of community in your neighborhood?
What values and attitudes are the young people in your home and neighborhood developing concerning their environment and the role they can play to preserve it?

(Up to Section IV, Back to The Human Environment - Bibliography, On to Abiotic/Biotic Profiles)