Geography Education

Read the Transcript: http://to.pbs.org/b6sR86 The capital of the South Asian country Bangladesh, Dhaka, has a population that is booming. However, it stands ...

TED Talks How can we fit more people into cities without overcrowding? Kent Larson shows off folding cars, quick-change apartments and other innovations that could make the city of the future work a lot like a small village of the past.

This talk is relevant not just because it focuses on many urban issues; it also is a fantastic demonstration of how to use spatial thinking to solve problems.  

Tags:  density, urban, spatial, planning, TED. 

TED Talks As Vicki Arroyo says, it's time to prepare our homes and cities for our changing climate, with its increased risk of flooding, drought and uncertainty.

Our major cities are suceptible to environmental catastrophes for a whole host of reasons.  Cities depend on a smooth of goods, money and services provided by infrastructure that we take for granted and assume will always work 24/7.  Presented in the video are some ideas about how we should rethink our cities with a different ecological paradigm to protect our cities more in the future. 

Tags: planning, urban ecology, environment adapt, sustainability.

"Schools used to be the heart of a neighborhood or community. Children and not a few teachers could walk to class, or to the playground or ball field on the weekend. This was relatively easy to do, because the schools were placed within, not separated from, their neighborhoods. They were human-scaled and their architecture was not just utilitarian, but signaled their importance in the community. Now it has become hard to tell one from a Walmart or Target."

What better way to demonstrate the concepts of urban sprawl, automobile-dependent city planning and economies of scale than by analyzing the very geographic context of our schools themselves?  This is a very nicely arranged photo essay that most could spark conversation and would foster some discussion on how best to plan neighborhoods and spatially arrange the city.   

Tags: transportation, planning, sprawl, education, scale. 

The federal government's relentless expansion has made Washington, D.C., America's real Second City.

From 1890-1990, Chicago was America's second largest city.  Since then Los Angeles has been the second largest city, acting as the west coast capital for the United States. Both of these cities have declined in economic and political importance in the recession, and in this article Aaron Renn argues that Washington D.C. (although demographically not in the same category) could be considered an emerging second city and chronicles it's historic development.  Readers may also be interested in how Renn ("the urbanophile") argues that all our impressions about Detroit are inaccurate. 

Tags: Washington DC, urban, historical, unit 7 cities.

A promotional video shows planned development of a state-level development zone by government of Lanzhou, a provincial capital in China's arid northwest...

The Lanzhou province is lightly populated mainly due to it's semi-arid climate and rugged topography.  The goal is make a 500 square mile area (currently with 100,000 people) into a city with over 1 million people by 2030.  To make this new metropolis, developers are planning to literally remove mountains to create a more 'ideal' urban environment.  This makes some of the most ambitious environmental modification projects seem tame.  For more read, the accompanying article from the Guardian.  

Questions to Ponder: What potential environmental impacts come from this scale of modification?  How will this massive influx of the population impact the region?  Could this type of project happen in other part of the world? 

Tags: environment, urban ecology, planning, environment modify, China.

TED Talks Map designer Aris Venetikidis is fascinated by the maps we draw in our minds as we move around a city -- less like street maps, more like schematics or wiring diagrams, abstract images of relationships between places.

This video touches on numerous themes that are crucial to geographers including: 1) how our minds arrange spatial information, 2) how to best graphically represent spatial information in a useful manner for your audience and 3) how mapping a place can be the impetus for changing outdated systems. This is the story of how a cartographer working to improve a local transportation system map, which in turn, started city projects to improve the infrastructure and public utilities in Dublin, Ireland. This cartographer argues that the best map design for a transport system needs to conform to how on cognitive mental mapping works more so than geographic accuracy (like so many subway maps do).

Tags: transportation, urban, mapping, cartography, planning, TED, video, unit 7 cities.