#5 Utopia: Paradise in Pollution and Overpopulation

Tree Hill is a community that we developed to replicate and represent nineteenth century utopian ideologies. In the early part of the century, people lived in communities with others who shared common interests and goals. Tree Hill is arranged into small sub-communities which include a public building, a park, and a housing development. This community also has farmland, orchards, woods, factories, and industries in which they manufacture and distribute their own goods. Everyone in Tree Hill shares a common religion, Protestantism. All the children are brought up on the faith and practice it diligently. This community is socialistic and religious because of the supporting belief of self-sufficiency and equality. Tree Hill is confronted with problems of urbanization and an excess of industrialization that is leading to problems with pollution, overpopulation, and immorality.

This utopian community is arranged so that each sub-community contains a public building and either a church or store. Along with that, they each have a public park, a road, and a housing development. Everyone in Tree Hill is Protestant so they all share the same basic beliefs of self-reliance and salvation. The industry aspect of this community is arranged so that it is far enough to not bother the citizens but close enough where it’s not bothersome to travel each day. The orchards surround a housing development, which they all must tend to, as well as another development surrounded by fertile farmland which they can use to cultivate crops. Tree Hill is very self sufficient but faces the same problems which every other town does.

Tree Hill is a socialistic community that grants equal rights to life, work, and leadership. Many industries and factories are scattered along the river for the citizens of the community to work in. Tree Hill’s farmland is primarily there to nourish the citizens of the community, whereas its orchards and forests are used in the factories for personal consumption and trade. Although the factories and mills are located away from the developments, there is still a major problem with pollution which is greatly affecting the citizens of the community. The industries create more pollution that the environment around the town can handle and the health of the people is starting to suffer. Citizens of Tree Hill face problems of respiratory infections and diseases because of the pollutant saturated air.

This utopia is a family-oriented community, but with that it is facing a very real problem with overpopulation. Each of the housing developments holds a maximum capacity of one hundred people with only 5 developments in the whole town. Tree Hill’s population is at 1500 and still continuing to rise. Some of the negative social impacts of this overpopulation is the loss of privacy and solitude which for some is a big deal. The community has expressed some concerns about the shortages of water, food supply, and employment because of this overcrowding. Due to this lack of work there have been more problems with criminal action along the lines of theft, burglary, and assault between citizens. This has created a serious morality problem in the population of Tree Hill.

Although Tree Hill faces a few problems of pollution, population, and immorality, it still has a good base which can help rebound a struggling citizenry. This is a well organized and structured community which can help itself with the right attitude.

Utopia Links:
http://www.louisville.edu/~adwats01/utopianintro.html
http://faculty.mansfield.edu/skaspere/Restricted/utopia.html
http://www.easternct.edu/depts/amerst/utopia.htm
http://www.louisville.edu/a-s/english/subcultures/colors/red/jtrieb01/utopiafront.html

Comments:
Our group did a good job with this post; we had a lot of teamwork going on in order to get the assignment done. The strongest point in this post is the dedication to detail in the explanation of how our community, Tree Hill, functions. We state that Tree Hill is based around small sub-communities that include parks, public buildings, and housing developments. Also within Tree Hill are orchards, woods, farmland, factories, and industries to keep everything functioning in the right manner. We also explain that the main religion of our community is Christianity (Protestantism); “All the children are brought up on the faith and practice it diligently.” Although this is a good post, there are still a few things that can be slightly corrected. The issue that obtained most of my attention was that we put in too many negative aspects about our community; utopia means ideal, and most people would assume that a utopian community would not have so many faults or “problems.” However, I noticed that over half of the post includes details on the problems that our community faces; we should have focused more on the positive aspects rather than the negative ones that bring our community down. Another issue with our blog post is its cohesion. Although our post is very coherent, it lacks unity and structure in some of the parts. A prime example of this is in the first paragraph: “This community is socialistic… overpopulation, and immorality.” As one may see, it jumps from religion in the community to the problems our community has. A better transitional sentence would fix this error. A final correction that we could make would be a better thesis statement. Since the assignment is based on a utopian community, we should not have chosen to create a thesis statement that argues the negative aspects of Tree Hill. Like previously stated, the blog focuses more on the negative aspects of our community, when it should be more centered on the positive aspects. Therefore, a better thesis statement could be, “The small sub-communities that include public buildings, parks, housing developments, farmland, orchards, woods, factories, and industries are what earn Tree Hill’s title as a ‘sim-utopia’ because they all help Tree Hill to function as a whole [utopian] society.” Although this composition has a few minor holes to be filled, our great efforts and teamwork made this a very well rounded post.

Comments

[Jessica Jones]

Group 5 comments consist of many small grammar errors. Firstly you wrote one big paragraph instead of separating it into two or three. In your paragraph, however, should never start your sentence I think you could have began your sentence with another word. Also you should always have a noun follow this or that. Overall your comment was written well just make sure to check your errors closely before posting it.