Exploring the Concepts and Content in IGCSE and IBDP Geography
This video serves as a great crossover between units like urban environments and oceans/coastal margins in the IBDP syllabus. It’s something you should look out for when you do your post-Covid city trips! An interesting video that concerns many of the concepts of space, place, power, spatial interactions, and more. Credit to Half as Interesting Youtube channel for providing this video.
Why the East Ends of (Most) Cities are Poorer – Half as Interesting
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to cause unending disruption, researchers at James Cook University and other collaborators put forth some interesting and thought-provoking possibilities for urban areas in this publication which takes only a couple of minutes to read. One has to wonder what lessons can and should be learned from how we have(n’t) adapted to the current state of affairs on all different scales. A further more comprehensive publication is linked to at the bottom of the article.
https://www.jcu.edu.sg/news/releases/re-evaluating-public-spaces-during-the-covid-19-pandemic
(Credit to: Lisa Law, Simona Azzali and Sheila Conejos)
The article below is an interesting read for anyone interested in both rural and urban environments. Counter-urbanisation, urbanisation, tourism, cultural identity, and architectural design are all interesting themes at play in the plans of building Europe’s tallest sky scraper in Brande, a town of just over 7000 people. Credit to the Guardian for the article, no author named. The photograph below provided by Bestseller and found in the article is of the planned skyscraper.
This visualisation offers insight into how urban densities can be compared and contrasted with regards to how much area they would take if the total human population lived according to a particular city’s density. It gives good indications of the processes of urban sprawl, urbanisation, as well as the expansion of the rural-urban fringe. A thought provoking creation!
In this article with some good visuals, Caitlin Fitzsimmons writes about the potential of Sydney, Australia, being viewed and managed differently than previously with regards to the idea of a ‘green city’. This is a great article with relationships to ecocities, urban processes, microclimates and more.
This is an interesting and radical deconstruction of how American suburbs are a short-sighted, inefficient, and community destroying piece of urban America. It is a thought provoking and critical video which really illustrates the flawed idea of suburban growth.
The link below contains a ‘live’ bar chart which goes through the most populous cities in the world, from 1500-2018. It is an excellent resource to spark discussions as to what makes cities successful, and what the future has for urban environments
https://observablehq.com/@johnburnmurdoch/bar-chart-race-the-most-populous-cities-in-the-world
This mini-expose uncovers the nature of gentrification in San Francisco and the effects on different neighbourhoods and communities running along market street. This clip is useful in how it shows the faces and names behind the causes and consequences of a controversial urban process.
https://hoodline.com/2016/04/vice-takes-a-video-tour-of-san-francisco-gentrification
This slightly long(er) clip focusses on some of the realities about African migration. Good for lessons on migration, urbanisation, displacement, and more. Misconceptions are illuminated and some interesting examples of cause and consequence are brought to light as well.
Below is the agenda I am using for my New York City infrastructure growth case study. It contains a bunch of resources I have looked up online from various websites. It corresponds to a syllabus point from the Urban Environments chapter from the IBDP Geography syllabus which reads:
Urban system growth including infrastructure improvements over time, such as transport, sanitation, water, waste disposal and telecommunications
Case study of infrastructure growth over time in one city
The picture used in the agenda and below is a mindmap of ideas created by my current grade 12 students about what they would expect to learn about NYC in this case study.
New York Infrastructure Case Study (Urban Environments)
