INSTRUCTIONS – REVIEW THE ESSAY BASED ON:

1. Tell the writer if you think he or she needs to add more explanation of the sources.  Does the evidence feel as if it is dropped in with little or no explanation as to how it relates to this proposal?  What kinds of reasoning and/or evidence were left out by the writer that you think would help to make the argument stronger?
2. Look carefully at those places in which the writer is referring to the ideas of a primary or secondary source. How well does the writer explain any use of fieldwork or library/Internet research? If the writer uses a quotation or paraphrase, is the source appropriately introduced in the text?
3. Comment on whether the writer adds his or her own explanation of the quotation or paraphrase. If a writer only writes something like, “This proves my point,” or “I don’t agree with X,” or “I do agree with X,” than that writer hasn’t provided adequate context for readers to understand how the source material supports the writer’s argument.

Executive Summary

Imagine yourself getting up an hour early to try and beat traffic in your hometown on your way to work. You finally get off after a long work day and you have to go to the grocery store. The grocery store is so full of people that the cold foods that you picked out get warm just waiting in line. Then you hit traffic on the way home. Your 8 hour work day turns into a 12 hours of leaving the house just because you had to deal with traffic and long lines at the grocery store. I have to deal with those issues every single day. That is the reason I decided to dedicate my proposal argument to fixing or controlling an overpopulation problem in my community.

Why Overpopulation Is an Issue

Due to multiple housing developments arising in my community, township leasers have blatantly disregarded the issues of overpopulation in efforts to collect the most amount of tax money that new residences would bring in. Township officials would rather worry about income rather than worring about the native township residences and the problems that would be implicated with constructing housing plan, after housing plan, after housing plan. The problem with my community is also that there is a college in town that populates the community with students on top of the native residences. The college facilities don’t pay property taxes. So, it is my belief that the community is overpopulating the area with residential housing plans in efforts to maintain an income that is sufficient to take care of the township resources. The township resources would include things like the road department, police department, water authority, parks and recreation, and general township maintenance. It is my thought that my community had gave approval to these residential housing plans while neglecting the needs of the native community. I think that they tried solving the problem by putting in a Walmart to sufficiently accommodate the needs of the community. That completely backfired as that drew in more people from surrounding communities and made the township resource problem much worse. John P. Rafferty serves as the editor of Earth Life and Sciences. He refers to this uptick and housing and businesses as an Urban Sprawl “An Urban Sprawl, the rapid expansion of the geographical extent of cities and towns, often characterized by low-density residential housing, single-use zoning, and increased reliance on the private automobile for transportation” (Rafferty 1).  As I have grown up and lived in my community for most of my life, the problem has gotten to a point where I thought action needed to be taken. The same problem is being recognized from around the world, according to Stanford Universities Alan Ware and David Gardner. “Twenty Thousand scientists from around the world have now signed the World Scientists Warning to Humanity: Second Notice, issued in 2017” (Ware & Gardner 1) That goes to show the importance of how bad the overpopulation issue is around the world.

Thinking about Possible Solutions

Thinking about alternatives to finding a solution, I thought about implications that could result as of not doing anything. If you think about the future, eventually the community residences would eventually get sick and tired of the issues related to living in a community that is overpopulated. The community officials would eventually also find the difficulties they are faced with after all the housing plans are built and they are stuck with what they already approved. The issue with that is that there is nothing that you can do about it once it is all said and done. Once the damage is already is done, what could you really do about it. Are you going to kick residences out of where they live? Will you shut down the large scale university that your community is proud of having? Once the damage is done, than there is nothing that would be a good decision that can take care of the issue.

Executing a Solution

I figured it would be more interesting if I would do something fun as opposed to just putting a post out there saying that the community was overpopulated and to attend your board meetings to do something about it. I wanted to think outside of the box. I went ahead and did some research through Facebook on how to do different things. I learned that Facebook has come a long way in the past years and that there are a lot of different ways you can create posts. I found that there was a certain type of post called a poll post. You can make up your own poll and people can choose options based on whatever options you provide. You can still also reply with a comment to provide additional ideas, concerns, or general thoughts. I thought this would be a fun way for the community to respond and get some different ideas and prospective. It would also bring the best opportunity for additional solutions to the problem. I could also comment on solutions in the post, once I close it to provide the public with ways to combat the problem. I went ahead and got to work.

Results of the Solution

Here was the results. I let the poll go on for 5 days. Out of the 15,221 members as of the community page as of the time of the poll closure, there was a total of 320 respondents to the questionnaire. That was actually a good turn-out. It is a small fraction of the member population, but there is only a small fraction of them that pay attention to the page. Under my option of “I think that Moon Township is not overpopulated and there is more room for housing development”, I got 40 out of 320 votes. Under “I think that Moon Township has a sufficient amount of housing and out resources accommodate out population efficiently”, I got 113 votes out of 320. Under “I think that Moon Township is overpopulated and housing development should be capped now or in the near future”, I got 167 out of 320 votes. The results clearly show that the majority of the voters think that our community is overpopulated. This was a successful poll as this raised awareness to the community and community members that there is an issue that we are all dealing with. There were also a group of people who expressed their concern through the comments section on top of also voting. I encouraged this and the people had spoken. Most of the comments were just reiterating what they voted, stating yes it is very overpopulated. There was only one comment where a community member mentioned that the good thing about the new housing plans was that they had to put in sidewalks all around the township. The rest of them were all complaints as to how the community is overpopulated and the issues that brought about to the residences. I closed the poll and made some comments as to how to help suggest some solutions to the residences as to help the problem.

Conclusion

As I went through the poll and closed the comments. I left a comment on how to help spread activism on putting a cap on the residence in my community. Obviously, you can’t kick out residences or remove businesses. So all I could do to try and help control the problem was to let them know that they need to attend community board meetings and press them not to allow rezoning of residential properties. That is about the best thing you can do aside from limiting the number of family members and pets. However, The big win in this proposal was getting a group of the community together to talk about the issue. The poll was a success in showing that the residences think that the community was too overpopulated and something needs to be done. I think that I may have ignited the spark for people to show up to the town meetings. According to Taylor and Francis online, some countries are taking a large step towards actually depolulating. “The biggest task in regional development administration in Japan today is said to be the elimination of overpopulation and depopulation”. (Unno. 1) I think we could all learn something just by taking a look at those countries and the problems they face.