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
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.
UCL’s Oliver O’Brien has created an easy to use, informative and interesting map of the tube stops in London, correlating them with the (second) languages spoken by residents in that area. This very informative resource can be helpful in discussions about urban planning, ethnic patterns, and socioeconomic distributions in cities.
Click this link for direct access to the map: https://tubecreature.com/#/tongues/current/same/*/*/FFTFTF/13/-0.1000/51.5200/
Click the link to the article below with some image stills, explanation, and access to the map: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/oct/30/-sp-londons-tube-languages-visualised
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
My good friend and fellow geographer Arnoud Kamp recommended this (in Dutch) mini-documentary to me. At only 45 minutes long, it goes into the diversity, personality, and future of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. If you know anything about Rotterdam and the transformation it is undergoing, you will know about the rapid gentrification that is taking over. This documentary analyses the practical consequences of the drivers of this change. One of the more apt and realistic presentations of the damages of gentrification and so called ‘urban renewal’.
https://www.vpro.nl/programmas/tegenlicht/kijk/afleveringen/2018-2019/mijn-stad-is-mijn-hart.html
THIS IS A MUST WATCH FOR DUTCH SPEAKERS INTERESTED IN GEOGRAPHY AND CITIES
A special thanks and shout out to an old student (Sasha v.h.) who sent me this incredible link. With relevance to disparities, urban environments, migration, and so much more, these images captured by drones show the distinct spatial differences between ‘rich and poor’, ‘developed and developing’, or maybe even ‘us and them’. An example of such an image taken from the website can be found below.
To all of my students past (and present too, of course), please send me any cool stuff you encounter both online or in your university courses. Would love to hear from you and use what you find in my classes!
Click the link to check out the powerful images:
Photograph: Johnny Miller
ElectroCity is a game developed by Genesis Energy where you can build and maintain the growth of a city in a multitude different ways. It teaches students about sustainable urban growth and energy consumption, in an intriguing and memorable way.
ElectroCity link: http://www.electrocity.co.nz/
