My Community

I drew my community map of where I live currently in Levittown, PA. This map is not drawn to scale. I choose to design the map by placing myself in the center, which is represented with a heart. This is the area that I feel most comfortable and safe at. I then drew circling out from that point. The areas that are located closer to the heart symbol are places I feel more comfortable. I divided the land among residential and commercial zones. Residential areas are colored a light purple with the names of individual sections written in black in the center. Commercial zones are indicated in orange. It also shows the symbols for important common grounds found with in the community. These include the post office, Salvation Army, District Court, schools, library and baseball fields.

I drew places on the map that I feel have value and importance to the community. I placed the library and schools on the map to show the value in education. I displayed baseball fields, (which have playgrounds with them), because there are many children living in the area. It is important to have positive outside social activities for them to do. These types of places are important to have in a community. The Salvation Army is a place that anyone in the community can go when they are in need. This is run for the community by the community. This shows unity among the people. The District Court is responsible for how the community is run on a political level. The Post Office I felt needed appear on the map, because this is a service that everyone utilizes.

The commercial zones have economic importance and serve the wants and needs of people. The residential zones show the areas within the community where people have settled. I placed friends on my map because they are important to be on a personal level and exist within my community. Thycol Woods and Black Gulch Creek are on my map because they serve as geographical reference points for people in the area. I also feel that nature is significant and holds value to me. It also helps to illustrate how developed the area has become.

There are many juxtapositions within my community. One of these is the names of the Levittown sections. The sections are names usually after trees and other plants, which were in the area when people first began to move here. There use to be many trees in the area, and now there are hardly any. Barely any of the sections now have the specific trees growing in them that they are named after. For example, the Oak Tree section when developed had two Oak trees on each property and small woods. Now, there is only one Oak tree for every four blocks and the woods are gone. This shows how much the area has changed it environment.

This link has some intersting movies of Levittown when it was orignally being built. http://mywebpages.comcast.net/levittownrelics/movies.htm

This is old photo of Levittown, PA when it was new in the early 1960's.