Designing a new Egyptian capital – Year 7 styleDeb Gostling: Head of Geography@DebGostling

The Problem With Getting Students

to Design Sustainable Cities:

•Their assumption seemed to be that

all cities mirror the one in which they

live.

•Ideas were often simplistic and did

not transcend students’ own

experience (eg. Just ‘have recycling’,

‘have cycle lanes’).

•They could develop the skill of design

but without enriching their knowledge

beforehand, their work lacked rigour

and felt insubstantial.

•I was always disappointed by the

results.

The Solution? What we did differently

this time

•CURRICULUM DESIGN: Placed the

design process at the end of a unit that

developed knowledge of urban issues

around the world.

•‘RIGOUR & KNOWLEDGE’: Exposed

pupils to detailed case studies at a level

much higher than we had assumed they

could cope with. Flipped homeworks to

ensure pupils arrived at lessons with

detailed prior knowledge.

•REFLECTED REALITY: Rooted the

design in a real and current problem (a

new capital city for Egypt).

•A COHERENT DESIGN PROCESS:

Provided students with a tight design brief.

SOLUTION 1:

CURRICULUM DESIGN: Placed the design process at the end of

a unit that developed knowledge of urban issues around the

world.

Year 7 Cities and Urbanisation Unit:

Lesson 1: Mega Cities

Lesson 2: Mapping Mega Cities

Lesson 3: Problems With Rapid Urban Growth: Cairo

Lesson 4: Which Problem Does Cairo Most Need to

Solve?

Lesson 5&6: Sustainable Cities: Six Cities, Six

Questions

Lesson 7-8: A Changing London: The Past 2000 Years

Lesson 9-10: Designing a Sustainable Egyptian Capital

SOLUTION 2:

RIGOUR & KNOWLEDGE: Exposed pupils to detailed case

studies at a level much higher than we had assumed they could

cope with. Flipped homeworks to ensure pupils arrived at lessons with detailed prior knowledge.

SIX QUESTIONS, SIX CITIES

London

Cairo

Dubai

Shanghai

Curitiba

Los Angeles

Detailed case studies at a level much

higher than we had assumed they could

cope with.

Six Questions, Six Cities: Dubai Fact SheetOn average in Dubai, each person uses enough energy (electricity, petrol etc) to give off 22.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person per year. They call this its ‘per capita CO2 Emissions’.

This is one of the highest figures. They use so much energy in Dubai because the hot climate means large amounts of energy are used on air conditioning to keep buildings cool enough. Also, half of all energy used in Dubai is used to desalinate sea water (to take the salt out of it so that it can be used as drinking water). Building a city in the middle of a desert means finding fresh water can be difficult, so they have to take it from the sea!

90 percent of Dubai’s electricity is made using natural gas. This is a fossil fuel and contributes carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

In Duabi, people use an average of 500 litres of water per head per day. Most of that comes from sea water that has been desalinated.

This figure is huge! Dubai uses more water than any other city in the world, despite being built somewhere with no freshwater supply (ie. in a desert).

Dubai uses the water for cooling its buildings, luxury swimming pools and cleaning buildings that get battered by sandstorms.

Each resident of Dubai produces an average of 2.2kg of waste per day. They are very bad at recycling it though; at the moment only 12% of all waste is recycled in Dubai. The government is trying hard to solve this and aims to send no waste to landfill dumps (‘zero to landfill’) by 2030.

It is difficult to find the data for how many miles each person drives in Dubai. But they have one of the highest rates of car use in the world and on average there are 2.3 cars per family. Only 13% of people ever use public transport.The government are trying to encourage people to use public transport and even offered prizes of gold bars to people who bought public transport tickets.

Dubai’s population density is 2,650 people per square kilometre. It is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, and huge building projects are taking place all around the city. Dubai has even gone as far as building Jumeirah Island, the world’s first ever man-made island. A huge new building project, called ‘Dubai Waterfront’ is going to be bigger than Manhattan (the main central part of New York).

Over 50% of all energy in Dubai is used to ‘desalinate’ water.

Detailed case studies at a level much

higher than we had assumed they could

cope with.

SIX QUESTIONS, SIX CITIES: Working in groups we are going to investigate six cities to see how sustainable each one is. We are going to ask the following questions about each city:

1. How does transportaffect the environment there?

2. How much waste is produced and what do they do with the waste?

3. How much water is used per person?

5. Are people’s lives getting better and are all people treated fairly and equally?

4. Is the city spreading into the surrounding countryside and how much land is used per person?

6. How much energy is used per person and where does the energy come from?

Detailed case studies at a level much

higher than we had assumed they could

cope with.

Six Cities, Six Questions Main Task: Work in your groups to complete this research grid about different cities around the world. Take two cities each. Fill in your columns and then collect all your information together so you all have everything.

Question Curitiba Dubai Los Angeles Shanghai London Cairo

How does transport affect the environment there?

How much waste is produced?What happens to the waste?

How much water is used per person?

Detailed case studies at a level much

higher than we had assumed they could

cope with.

Question Curitiba Dubai Los Angeles Shanghai London Cairo

Is the city spreading into the countryside?How much land is used per person?

Are people’s lives getting better and are people treated equally?

How much energy is used per person and where does the energy come from?

Total of the ranks (ask your teacher how to do this)

Six Cities, Six Questions: RANKING THE CITIES

Once you have filled in the information on each city you need to start giving each city a score for each category. Write it in the box for that category.

The best = 1The worst = 6

Discuss the scores in your groups (sometimes it is complicated – it is based on your ‘best judgment’).

Once each box has a score you need to add up the totals for each city. The city with the lowest score is the MOST SUSTAINABLE and the city with the highest score is the LEAST SUSTAINABLE.

Write the scores for each city in your book.

Now it is your task to write about the top and the bottom cities, explaining why they are so good and bad. Use the writing frame to help you.

If you are aiming at a Level 6+ then you need to do your own research. Try these for starters.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/mar/21/greenpolitics.germany

1. Ideas from the German Parliament:

http://thecapitalcairo.com/index.html

2. The website for the new Cairo:

Smart Cities: How do we Build the Cities of Tomorrow: Hugh Green at TEDxEmory

3. The idea of Smart Cities. Watch these TEDx talks on YouTube by searching for this lecture in YouTube:

Europe's first carbon neutral neighborhood -Smart Cities - Horizons

4. Find out about sustainability in Malmo in Sweden by searching for this in YouTube:

As you research, think carefully about how reliable the sources of evidence are that you are seeing.

How can you tell if something on the internet is reliable?

FLIPPED HOMEWORK: RESEARCH

Flipped homeworks to ensure pupils

arrived at lessons with detailed prior

knowledge.

SOLUTION 3:

REFLECTED REALITY: Rooted the design in a real and current

problem (a new capital for Egypt).

SOLUTION 4:

A COHERENT DESIGN PROCESS: Provided students with a

tight design brief.

Designing the new Egyptian capital city

Your brief is to draw an annotated plan/map of the new Egyptian capital, which the government is hoping to build in the Sahara Desert. It needs to do the following things:

1. Provide 1.1 million homes2. Provide buildings for the government to work in and also other places for the

inhabitants to work.3. Provide space for people to relax and spend their leisure time in (including a

theme park)4. Be sustainable. For this you need to consider:①Where will you get your water from. L6+ Also include how you will dispose

of waste water.② How will people travel around your city? How will you design your city so

that the need to travel long distances each day is reduced?③Where will your city get its energy from? ④ How will your city reduce consumption/packaging etc and what will it do with

its waste?⑤ How will you make sure that people’s quality of life is getting better? This

includes being treated equally, having good quality housing (that they can afford), having job opportunities etc?

⑥ How will you ensure that your city doesn’t sprawl further and further outwards, eating up precious fertile farmland along the River Nile.

Tight design brief.

Thinking about our six cities, six questions work, can you think of examples of things that you definitely want to AVOID in your new city? Be specific if you can (linking them to real cities and giving facts) and explain why these are important to avoid.

Thinking about our six cities, six questions work, can you think of examples of things that you definitely want to INCLUDE in your new city? Be specific if you can (linking them to real cities and giving facts) and explain why these would be good things to include.

How will you make sure that people’s quality of life is getting better? This includes being treated equally, having good quality housing (that they can afford), having job opportunities etc?

Application of the

knowledge from the

case studies.

What might some of the challenges be when building a new city in the desert?

Rooted in reality.

What might some of the challenges be when building a new city in the desert?

Rooted in reality.

How will you draw out your city map?

It should include:

• A key• A title• Annotations or

information boxes around the side to explain the reasons for your design. Tight design brief.

Why should you do this?

1. Students created innovative designs, based on the application of knowledge of

real places.

2. Students carried the knowledge of case studies into their end of year exam,

raising their attainment:

(Excerpt from a Year 7 End of Year Exam Essay – Student had a target of 5a):

“There are so many ways that a city can be made sustainable. A sustainable city needs to be able to control a lot of

things like fairness, waste produced, water use and energy. A city in Sweden called Malmo is a very good example of

how a sustainable city needs to be. Each household has a rubbish tube which you put your rubbish bag in which is then

sucked into a collection point where it is recycled. This means that less vehicles are on the road as rubbish trucks are

not needed. Public buses are filled with biogas made from old waste which is healthy for the environment as it is not

adding out more carbon dioxide like normal buses do. Every home has a gadget which tells them how much water they

have used, energy they have used and how much this will cost them, this makes them able to see how they are trying to

help the environment and how they can control it.”

3. Students really enjoyed it, particularly those with the highest prior attainment:

Parental Feedback:“Sam is really enjoying his Geography classes and told me when I got up at 7am this morning that he had already spent ‘several hours’ researching ideas for his new Egyptian city. He is looking forward to getting stuck into the project.”

How could you learn from

our mistakes?

•The drawings were still a bit ‘weak’. Either

they looked nice and weren’t well explained,

or they looked terrible but had a good report.

Does it matter?

•Whilst it provided lots of stretch and

challenge, how could you differentiate it to

make it easier to access for the least able?

•How could you involve real planners and

architects?

•Could you make cross-curricular links that

would enhance the project further?

•How could you get students out into London

on fieldwork to back this up?