Urban Crime and Violence

If I was the police chief of a cities police force I would try to heal violent areas of the city by getting help from the neighborhood. If certain areas or neighborhoods of the city were being affected by a lot of violence I would go in to those parts of the city and tell all the people by puting signs up for everyone to watch and look out for one another. And if there is something that is going on to call 911 immediately and report it. The certain affected areas I would also improve quickly by having more policemen patrolling through those areas on a regular basis. I would also do everything possible to get the city to let me hire more policemen. This is because I feel if we did execute my proposed plan then violence would move into other areas of the city which we would need more men to patrol and eliminate crime all around the city. But most importantly the entire city would have to commit and work together with the police force to help each other report and stop crime. People and citizens would need to get more involved!

                Young people need to have a better understanding of what a life really is, how much it means to people, what one life can affect, and what taking one’s life can do to the shooters future. They need to also learn that there is such thing as a law and you to follow the law to resolve conflicts correctly. Resolving conflicts should consist of taking someone’s life. I believe that having guns on campus and giving law enforcement legal permission to “lawfully stop” someone to see if there are an immigrant would definitely harm and raise the possibilities of crime in America’s and Arizona’s cities. I believe people should be able to defend themselves at all times but I also believe putting this in to action on college campuses could result in some major accidents and possible deaths through controversy and anger. Who knows what all could happen if there started to be many multiple guns on campuses across America especially at the big universities there are these days with tens of thousands of kids on campus.

                I believe if officers started questioning people in the State of Arizona that would cause a lot racial and political controversy. I believe it would also put the lives of the officers approaching groups of people committing a crime to question such as a big fight at a bar for instance. It would put the officers’ lives at a much greater danger. Also I believe most policemen to be pretty good people and would not want to be the ones questioning and making people think that they have poor racial values.

Tempe, Arizona’s Business Opportunities

Hi my name is Jace Merlo and I am the economic development official for the city Tempe, Arizona. Today i’m going to give you a little history, insight, and tell you why putting the city of Tempe and your business together is going to equal nothing less than success. 

Established in 1894, the city of Tempe, Arizona is nestled in the Phoenix metropolitan area(6^th largest population in the country), just minutes away from Downtown Phoenix. With a population of about 165,000 with one of the country’s biggest college campuses, Arizona State University, makes having the trouble of finding good employees and future staff an easy solution here in Tempe. Especially when forty percent of the city is educated with Bachelor’s degrees or better. With over threehundred sun filled days a year the city of Tempe and its neighboring cities are a year round playground for tourists and a very busy and popular place for business events and gatherings. With our yearly traditional events like the Insight Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, professional sporting events, and the Rock and Roll Marathon of Arizona, there’s always new faces coming in and out of the Tempe city limits. This is especially certain when the busiest airport in the Southwest region of the United States (Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport) is located just a few miles outside of the city.

With fortune five hundred companies like US Airways and Insight Enterprises already having success here there’s always and will always be room for more. Office and business space of all shapes and sizes are available throughout the different business areas and districts of Tempe (please see the real estate section for more information). Incentive Packages are available and can be made possible by filling out the information bellow along with your business name and service, the purpose of your visit, and how long your visit will be. Once your information is received and reviewed, then it will be determined if your creditable of receiving a package. Incentive packages have included commendations such as complementary flights to come out to visit Tempe, complimentary hotel for your stay, and complementary tickets to shows and possible events during your stay. For any further information please give us a call at your convenience at 1-800-475-4800, thank you very much for your time.

               

Today's Education

After viewing the videos”waiting for superman” and “Changing Education Paradigms” many thoughts of these subjects come to mind. For one these videos get me thinking about how long people have been going to school and how much different the process has changed today then what it was  100 years ago and how we have we changed it a little at a time as we moved to where we are now today. These days everyone knows times are tough and to do what most people do and have what most people have which is start a family and support them. To do this getting a good job is the ideal idea. Back in the last few decades it was always said that if you go to school and do good, maybe get into a good college, and graduate and you would have a job. That’s the key word that I have learned that has indefinitely changed and evolved into the future of the twenty-first century, “have.” People that graduated college in the past economic times in most cases didn’t have too much trouble finding a job after obtaining their degree. So remember that phrase… “Graduate and have a job.” Today in the 2012 the new phrase is “graduate and look or go find a job!” An undergraduate degree today is said to be as common as a high school diploma was in the past.

When starting a family and when your kids get to the age to start school it is a whole new process to go through when thinking about your child’s education and future. Today there is much competition when finding the better schools for your kids to go to and attend. I thought it was interesting during the video about how going through the public school system is almost a gamble these days and your really actually putting a risk on your child to maybe not succeeding or going to college because how impacted schools are. There are so many people in this world and the competition for jobs is going to only increase and get more and more intense.  Is there new ways we can solve the public school systems problems? Does a newer system need to be put into place to adapt to the new economic times and the future? I believe that the education system being as old as it is needs to be tweaked or changed. The world to me changes almost every day and with that older traditions and processes might need to be altered to keep the success of that system at a high up to date standard. The cultural standards of today have changed and we need to adapt to that to allow all of today’s public school system kids an equal shot at the their futures.

Week 2 Blog Post:

If I was the father of a low-income family of four, money would definitely be the main key factor for the location of where my family and I reside. For instance if I just moved into a brand new city or was about to and started looking around for a place to live. I would start by asking myself or studying my finances to see if I can first afford to buy a home or determine if I will have to rent a residence. Being our example is a low-income family I’m going to say that my family and I are going to have to look for a place to rent for now. Once that has been decided I then need to go through my finances once again and determine how much rent can I afford a year. Then once I resolve what I can afford yearly I need to look for apartments, houses, or condos which I can afford on my budget that I made. Now when I’m looking for the right area to live in there are certain factors in which I need to think about and keep in mind. Affordability which we’ve talked about I think almost too much now is the first thing and as you can see is a very important piece of this puzzle. Following affordability you need to then think about things like a decent area of town, area with good schools, one with low crime rates, affordable taxes, opportunities for good employment, close to public transportation. I know there are lots more we could think of but those would pretty much be my main concepts when determining this. Another thing that would be impotent, which I am adding in this post only because I’m a real estate minor and there’s a section on this in the reading also on this, is if you were buying a house or property do it in a county with low property taxes and in  a high value real estate area.

I’m going to be comparing my area living factors  example with the concentric rings model that was created by Ernest Burgess in 1925 and revised a few years later. I chose this model to use in my example because I feel this model out of the other two is pretty much the easiest to understand and look at how the different parts and areas of the city lays out and appears.  I think this model is very easy to understand because also it is very organized in a neat fashion and well planned out. With the factors that I’ve mentioned above I believe that they would set my family and I up in Zone Four in Burgess’s model. Burgess describes Zone Four as a place with: “single-family homes, apartment houses, residential hotels and bright light areas.” I could see me and my young family starting out in Zone Four and only building and growing my employment to maybe one day change to a different zone and own my own home.

Week 1 Blog Post:

While I was reading I had a little disagreement during the opening few pages in the first reading when the author starts to talk  about and describes his feelings and thoughts on what makes up a city and what makes a city so spectacular. I just felt like the author should have not quiet said that in that way because I feel a city isn’t just those things alone by themselves.  There’s much more that meets the eye here because of all the uniqueness and diversity each individual city has to offer. I’ts distinct location, it’s citizens, it’s culture, it’s own way or own “style!” I feel like the author was giving a city rules and regulations almost on what it has to be and I believe that some cities that have been around for hundreds of years still aren’t even defined. The words aren’t this city is this … the words are what can and what will this city be. I mean even though the city has been there for hundreds of years its changes every single day with new people touring through  or even new people moving in. What I am trying to say is that yeah, it’s been here a long time. Yeah that long and we still don’t know what this city can be or turn into. I feel like that’s why people travel and see the world because each place is different and has its own personal special things to offer to its people, guests, and the world. Cities will always keep changing and changing.

I one hundred percent agree with the topic of controlling Suburban movement. There needs to be supervision on the community of future projects in order to de-promote Urban sprawl. Urban sprawl can affect all kinds of things in the future. You can’t just keep pushing away and destroying desert ect if you want people to keep coming here. Also all this suburban movement can cause many future problems for certain areas in the Valley. This is why the city is trying to make Downtown Phoenix more economically viable and have new nice places of residence to attract people to move into the city and to slow urban sprawl of the Phoenix metropolitan area. There needs to be a plan to increase urban density along with providing an increase in downtown amenities to benefit those that choose to not only work but also live in the downtown area. The city has already tried to approach this topic from many different angles like providing first class public transportation with the light rail and our bus system to encourage the citizens to use public transportation and discourage automobile use which will make the central area of Downtown Phoenix a lot less congested and busy and a lot more attractive to the potential home buyer in the area or future Downtown residents.

About me:

Hello URB 240,

       My name is Jace Merlo, I am 22 years old and from Fresno, Ca. I'm majoring in Urban and Metropolitan Studies and minoring in Real Estate over on Tempe campus. I'm taking URB 240 because its a requirement for my major but after going over the syllabus the course also sounds very interesting and I can't wait to jump into the semester. When I finish school I plan on being a Real Estate Broker back home in California. I really look forward to working with each of you and also meeting all of you as well throughout the semester.