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Mini Lessons: Building a City of Dreams

LESSON 1:  UTOPIA

Grade Level:  6-12

Middle and high school students will slow down and evaluate their own city/town, thinking about how it serves their needs; infrastructure requirements, preferences, and visual clutter.  Students are then challenged to come up with a proposal for an ideal city.  Students will build a scale model of their ideal city/town using upcycled material.

Objectives:

  • Scenic America’s Principles of Scenic Conservation #1 – Retain the distinctive character of our communities and countryside by rebuilding older cities, towns and suburbs as beautiful places in which to live and work; and conserve agricultural land and open space.
  • Scenic America’s Principles of Scenic Conservation #4 – Design a national transportation system that respects aesthetic values as well as economic and energy efficiency, social equity, and environmental qualities.
  • Students learn an alternative to throwing away trash by making it into art.
  • Students identify functions and places that people need and want in a city
  • Students identify issues facing modern cities, such as pollution, traffic, transportation, waste disposal, and urban sprawl
  • Students propose solutions for environmentally-friendly and livable cities.

Vocabulary:  visual pollution, visual clutter, litter

Materials:  A visit to the school’s dumpster can trigger lots of ideas, including ways to cut back on the creation of garbage.  Collect an assortment of things for students to build with.

Procedures: 

  1. Engage students by asking them the question: “What is visual pollution?” and having them think, pair, share ideas of what they think it could mean.
  2. Watch this video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1elGzZMTLw&t=11s
  3. Tell the students that they will build a scale model of their ideal city using upcycled material. Each student will be building a city block to put together to form one big city.
  4. Brainstorm all the different ways that their own city serves the needs of all the members of their community including infrastructure requirements and living preferences.
  5. Identify components that they would like to include in their own utopic, ideal city.
  6. Student will brainstorm, plan, and implement
  7. Each class should build a city block. For ease in movement, it should be built on a sturdy piece of cardboard or something similar. At the end of the project, all of the classes should be able to bring their blocks together to form a city. Each class can label their block with “street signs.” This makes it easier for judging at the end of the project.

Evaluation:

Requirements for each students’ build:

  • ONE city block per student.
  • Built on a sturdy piece of cardboard or something similar.
  • City block is labeled with a “street sign” which identifies their project.
  • Items used must be upcycled material.

 

Lesson 2:  My Home, My Pride:  A City Beautiful

Grade Level:  6-12

Middle and high school students will slow down and evaluate their own city, thinking about how it serves their needs; infrastructure requirements, preferences, and visual clutter.  Students will identify an area of their town that contains visual pollution/clutter and design a plan to address it.

Objective: 

  • Principle #5 Prevent mass marketing and outdoor advertising from intruding on the landscape or community appearance.

Vocabulary:  visual clutter, visual pollution

Materials: 

  • “This Space Available” video
  • Computer and internet connection

Teacher Preparation:

  1. Before the lesson, assemble a collection of photos from around your own community that represent “good” and “bad” areas of town.
  2. Create a PowerPoint slideshow containing these pictures.
  3. Watch this video to understand what “visual clutter” means and different forms of “visual pollution.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1elGzZMTLw

Procedures: 

  1. Engage students by showing them the pictures you assembled from town and ask them what they think about what they see.  Lead the discussion towards the students identifying what makes a city or town both habitable as well as a pleasant place to live.
  2. Watch the interview with the director of the documentary “This Space Available” to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of outdoor advertising. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVcDJQzk4rE&t=2s
  3. After the video, discuss what the students thought and ask them “Do you think outdooring advertising really a problem?”
  4. Brainstorm areas of your town where this is a problem.
  5. Identify a specific area of town where visual clutter is of most concern.
  6. Brainstorm on anchor paper a list of reasons why is visual pollution is a problem in this area and the source of said problem.
  7. Plan and implement an action campaign that will make that will improve this targeted area of their community. Ideas be a simple awareness campaign, community clean-up, an editorial, short movies, or any other creative means of solving this issue.