Since 5th grade, I've been building houses and neighborhoods in "Riverside" religiously. It started off as tract homes, some restaurants and a freeway. It turned into me making a subway system to carry the heavy traffic from the inner city to the surrounding suburbs. There was a huge conflict when I decided to replace the freeway with an at-level interurban system. I was scared to get rid of some suburbs and replace them with a grid pattern, but when I got done with the project it looked so much more appealing than the blocks (neighborhood) of random cul-de-sacs and oversized front lawns. I was interested in how much better the city flowed when I created my buildings in the perspective of Steve instead of the car (Steve floating). I never knew that we had these rail systems before the Interstate came, which I couldn't believe. The designs that were based on the car felt surreal and dehumanizing, and made me aware that these are the building styles that define my community. It made sense why I always felt the old bungalows felt more unified than any of my older apartment complexes felt. I recently deleted the city that I've been working on to focus on school. It makes me sad thinking I wasted 3 years on nothing. But, it made me learn so much about how important building design is. There was always room for improvement in "Riverside", and there's even more change that's needed with our zoning regulationsin reality currently. While we're going to see reform in the future, I'm going to try my best we build our cities from Steve's point of view and not the cars.

Our generation is going to have to advocate for the division of conglomerates to be brought back because the suburban experiment has been unsuccessful and only led us to a life of over-consumption and reliance on big oil for our daily functions. While they let our interurban system rot and be replaced by a world built in the eyes of the automobile, the need for a new political reform began to take shape. Euclidian zoning laws and local ordinances are the scoundrels that have let the suburban Ponzi scheme go on for way too long. The cityscape of tract housing and food deserts makes this community almost feel ghostly. Urban gardens and co-ops are meant to increase sustainability, but when companies such as Bayer own the rights to species of plants and any hybrids, more barriers need to be dismantled to ensure our rights as citizens. From the top down we're fed these fear-mongering stories of unionization and the railroad monopolies, but forget to ignore how much of our lives are controlled by Vanguard, Blackrock, and ExxonMobil. We need to be aware of these conflicts of interest because they fund and run our 401k's and economy. Our world can't run in this constant state of exploitation for us to receive peanuts for this monstrosity we created. By educating our future generations on the importance of humanization, change is possible. No matter who you are rich or poor, we're all paying the price for "convenience."