sc.06 Sustainable cities
Content
- Statement of inquiry
- Increasing global interactions concentrate more power in cities which can cause unsustainable growth, and increase disparities.
- Factual questions [Remembering facts and topics]
- What are the three 'pillars' of sustainability?
- Name a country that making quantifiable efforts in terms of improving their level of sustainability.
- According to the 'Sustainable Cities Index' which is the most sustainable city in the world?
- Conceptual questions [Analysing big ideas]
- Who has the power to make cities more sustainable?
- Debatable questions [Evaluating perspectives and developing theories]
- Can a city ever be truly sustainable?
- Aims of this lesson
- To explore contemporary examples of cities that are making meaningful efforts to increase their levels of sustainablity.
Base knowledge and understanding
Video clip
Visualization
Context
What is 'sustainability'?
The 'sustainability stool' is a pictorial reference to remind us of the different elements that need to be considered when viewing sustainability.
- Add the 'sustainability stool' to your notes.
Sustainable cities and communities
The Sustainable Cities Index
- Page 11 - Add the top 10 most sustainable cities (according to the 2018 Sustainable Cities Index) to you notes.
- Page 9 - The Sustainable Cities Index uses three pillars of sustainability. What metrics are used to build each of the pillars?
- Page 4 - Does London score well across all three pillars of the index?
- Pages 11 and 4 - Which is the first African city on the list and where does it rank? Which of the three pillars is holding African cities back?
How does a 'sustainable city' operate?
Addressing disparities
BBC World Service - People Fixing the World - The Street Where Houses Come Half-Built [23 minutes]
Sustainable transport
Sustainable sanitation
Recycling
BBC World Service - The Compass - The green city: San Francisco, USA [27 minutes]
- Choose one of the videos above. You need to make notes on a real (actually happening, not just forecast) example of increasing sustainability in a named location.
- Approach 1 → detailed example using the 5Ws and an index card.
- Approach 2 → digital notes, including at least four screenshots from the video.
A city as a system
- Add the linear system and circular system diagrams to your notes.
- List named and located examples of circular approaches being taken to increase the sustainability of cities.