In Designing a Liveable City - Part 1, students designed a town
In Designing a Liveable City - Part 2, students completed a self-assessment of their town.
In Designing a Liveable City - Part 3, students gave and received peer feedback on their towns and responded to the feedback.
In Designing a Liveable City - Part 4, students developed their towns working in a larger group, by applying the 5Cs of community building.

When students arrive in the class all group tasks have been attached together to make one large city. Some additional land/building spaces has also been added (additional pieces of paper). Students are still responsible for their own area and ensuring the liveability of their residents, but they will now have a say in how the whole city develops. Students will be provided with a number of development proposals that will go before a combined council meeting involving the whole class. They are provided with 5 minutes in their original group to determine which of the developments they might like in/near their original development area. They will also need to assess how each of the developments will impact on liveability of residents. ​

In Designing a Liveable City - Part 1, students designed a town
In Designing a Liveable City - Part 2, students completed a self-assessment of their town.
In Designing a Liveable City - Part 3, students gave and received peer feedback on their towns and responded to the feedback.

When students arrive for this lesson, their towns have changed. The work of two groups has been joined together, so that two towns are now stuck together with some blank space in between. After working together with the one group for a while, at first students may be a little reluctant to work with others in a bigger group, but before long you will find that they will get on board knowing that they have more space to expand their town.

Begin the lesson by revising content about Community and the characteristics that influence community identity. Discuss different suburbs or towns close to the school and how each of them have different identities and why. Discuss the culture of different places, and how the culture is expressed through public events and architecture. Revise the role of transport, technology, open spaces, meeting places and employment in building community.

Read: The 5 "Cs" of community planning

The students will be able to use the 5 "Cs" to guide the way they continue to develop their towns. Students move to their new, combined town and begin working with a larger group. They need to begin by explaining the different aspects of their initial town with the other half of the group and vice versa. Next they need to join the two towns together with roads and public transport and negotiate on how the land between the two towns will be used. Give them a set period of time (5-10 minutes depending on how much is left of the lesson) to work on each of the 5 'Cs'. At the end of the lesson they need to do a quick reassessment of the liveability of their new town based on the criteria provided in the previous lesson.

In Designing a Liveable City - Part 1, students designed a town.
In Designing a Liveable City - Part 2, students completed a self-assessment of their town.

Peer feedback provides an opportunity for students to assess liveability in a practical way, and also allows students to reflect on the feedback of others to make improvement in liveability. 

​Hints on providing feedback.
It is important to provide some guidance to students on how to provide effective feedback to their peers. If feedback is too harsh or personal it will not have the desired effect on progress. 

Provide the students with a brief criteria to base their judgements on, and go through the items listed to ensure the students know what all of the terms mean and the purpose of the task. In this case the criteria is a list of items that contribute to liveability. Students might just make simple suggestions such as "You need to build a high school" or "You need to build a hospital", but hopefully they will provide more detailed responses that indicate more knowledge of course content.

In this lesson there were 6 groups of students, and each group rotated around to comment on the town plans of each other group. They were given "Peer Pointer Postcards" to write their comments on. They then returned to their own town map and had to reflect on the feedback given and consider changes to make to their plan. It is worth asking students to hand in their peer feedback to the teacher so you can check the comments that are made. This can then enable the teacher to ask the student to review any comments that are too personal or not detailed enough. 

Hints on receiving feedback
Students who aren't used to peer feedback, may initially become defensive or upset about negative feedback. As the teacher it is important to prepare the students so they are ready and willing to accept ideas from others. 

​A few tips for students:

1. Pause first; don’t react negatively.
2. Understand what the person’s concerns are.
3. Assess if the feedback is true.
4. Recognise that negative feedback is a positive thing – it helps you improve.
5. Learn from the feedback.

In Designing a Liveable City - Part 1, students designed a city.

Once students have planned their city, they need to undertake a self assessment of their work. As a group they can sit and talk about the different aspects of their city and how they have addressed liveability. Provide them with a criteria to refer to. This might also be a good opportunity to provide students with a summary of the content that has been covered in class in relation to liveability, so that they can make connections between the activity they have been undertaking and course content.
​

Phase 3: Enhancing liveability
Students will need to respond to the scenarios above, and should have started to consider some of the additional needs of a community. As a class discuss the content related to liveability that you have already  covered in class, and then provide students with time to make changes to their town plan.

Phase 3: Liveability
Students spend some time reviewing their towns and providing initiatives and strategies to make their town more liveable. They also need to address the scenarios provided by the teacher.

Writing task
Students need to write a description of how their town addresses different aspects of sustainability.

Peer feedback
Students rotate around to visit other groups' town. They provide feedback on the liveability of each town and make suggestion on how to improve liveability for each town.

Next... refer to Designing a Liveable City - Part 2.

This is part of a unit of work for Changing Places - Australia's Urban Future.

Lesson 1: Australia's Projected Population Growth
Lesson 2: Implications for Future Growth and Sustainability
Lesson 3: Sydenham to Bankstown Urban Renewal Precinct
Lesson 4: WestConnex - Sydney, Sustainability and Transport
Lesson 4: Sydney Sustainability and Transport (Teacher's Notes)
​Lesson 5: The GreenWay
​Lesson 5: Deindustrialisation
Lesson 6: Create an infographic
Lesson 7: Contributing to a Sustainable Urban Future
Lesson 7: WestConnex - Protest Movements and Impacts
Lesson 7: Conflict Over Dulwich Hill

OR See the ​complete unit on the Changing Places website.

​​Population forecasts for continued and accelerating growth or urban areas have a range of implications for sustainability.

Sustainability is development that meets the needs of the present population without endangering the capacity of future generations to meet their needs. Indicators of sustainability in urban areas include air and water quality, biodiversity, integration of green building initiatives, health and well being measures, employment rates, transport infrastructure and access to employment.

Implications of growth of urban areas include loss of agricultural land, habitat areas and open space, increased pressure on transport infrastructure resulting in heavy flows of commuter traffic and traffic congestion.

Planning for the future growth of urban centres in Australia needs to address the provision of:

• public transport,
• more efficient use and upgrading of existing infrastructure and the provision of additional infrastructure,
• land-use and infrastructure planning which takes into consideration equitable access and reduction in carbon emissions,
• provision of green and public space,
• creation and support of employment centres

Priority Precincts and increased density
An increase in density of urban areas creates more compact, “efficient” urban areas. This allows for services and infrastructure to be provided for a greater number of people and can allow residents to access public transport more easily and become less reliant on cars. The State Government’s Priority Precinct Program encourages population growth and increased density in specified areas. The Sydenham to Bankstown Urban Renewal Corridor includes the Inner West suburbs of St Peters, Sydenham, Tempe, Marrickville, Dulwich Hill and Hurlstone Park. For further reading click:
http://www.urbangrowth.nsw.gov.au/assets/Living-Cities/CfS-Discussion-Paper-Making-Great-Places-Density-Done-Well.pdf

​Connectivity and Infrastructure
Public infrastructure such as hospital, police centres, schools, trains, buses and roads is required for cities to function effectively. Upgrades of schools include Ashfield Boys, Ashbury Public, Croydon Public, and the construction of NSW School of Languages at Petersham. An ambulance super centre is being built at Haberfield. Transport infrastructure includes the construction of the Metroline and the M4 East extension, M5 extension and the M4-5 link. 

This post was originally written in January 2017, and edited in March 2018.
This is part of a unit of work for Changing Places - Australia's Urban Future.

Lesson 1: Australia's Projected Population Growth
Lesson 2: Implications for Future Growth and Sustainability
Lesson 3: Sydenham to Bankstown Urban Renewal Precinct
Lesson 4: WestConnex - Sydney, Sustainability and Transport
Lesson 4: Sydney Sustainability and Transport (Teacher's Notes)
​Lesson 5: The GreenWay
​Lesson 5: Deindustrialisation
Lesson 6: Create an infographic
Lesson 7: Contributing to a Sustainable Urban Future
Lesson 7: WestConnex - Protest Movements and Impacts
Lesson 7: Conflict Over Dulwich Hill

OR See the ​complete unit on the Changing Places website.
​​
Changing Places  (Year 9)
 
The Changing Places topic requires students to explain processes and influences that form and transform places and environments (GE5-2) and to assess management strategies for places and environments for their sustainability (GE5-5).  The topic requires students to examine urbanisation, the impact of migration and strategies to address change in urban places and how they enhance sustainability.
 
As a part of examining the causes and consequences of urbanisation, students will have investigated spatial distribution patterns of urbanisation (for example the influence of transport corridors), and the social, economic and environmental consequences of urbanisation (this could include traffic congestion, costs of tolls or costs of constructing new infrastructure, average times people spend commuting to work, the impact of car exhaust on air quality). In examining urban settlement patterns students will specifically address the impact of transportation networks in Australian and another country to explain differences in urban concentrations. While there is scope to deal with a range of issues and influences related to urbanisation and urban settlement, there is certainly an opportunity to develop a unit of work that develops students’ understanding in car dependence, traffic congestion, public transport, road networks, etc. to lead them to be able to examine this issue of the WestConnex development from a range of perspectives and with detailed background knowledge.
 
In the last part of the Changing Places topic students investigate the management and planning of Australia’s urban future, including Australia’s population projections, implications for growth and sustainability, strategies to create sustainable urban places and ways for individuals and groups to become involved. WestConnex provides a great case study to examine this. Obviously you need to address the points at the national scale, but the WestConnex project impacts on such a large are of Sydney that you might find that many of your students are already engaged with (or at least aware of) the project in some way.
 
Urban Places/ Urban Dynamics (Year 12)
 
If you choose to do Sydney as a large city case study for Urban Places the WestConnex project could also tie into the - growth, development, future trends and ecological sustainability dot point. 

This is part of a unit of work for Changing Places - Australia's Urban Future.

Lesson 1: Australia's Projected Population Growth
Lesson 2: Implications for Future Growth and Sustainability
Lesson 3: Sydenham to Bankstown Urban Renewal Precinct
Lesson 4: WestConnex - Sydney, Sustainability and Transport
Lesson 4: Sydney Sustainability and Transport (Teacher's Notes)
​Lesson 5: The GreenWay
​Lesson 5: Deindustrialisation
Lesson 6: Create an infographic
Lesson 7: Contributing to a Sustainable Urban Future
Lesson 7: WestConnex - Protest Movements and Impacts
Lesson 7: Conflict Over Dulwich Hill

OR See the ​complete unit on the Changing Places website.
​
Lesson Activity: Create an infographic
Below is an infographic about the WestConnex. Create your own infographic using picktochart or a similar program. Your infographic should be on the topic of change in Sydney's Inner West. It should include themes such as transport, green space, housing, and land uses.

You have been given the job of designing a new city. It will be located at Warnervale on the Central Coast between the M1 and the Pacific Highway. The aim of your city design is to plan the most liveable city possible.

Task 1: Brainstorm your ideas and begin planning.
Create a list or mind map of all the features that your city will need. At this stage you are just coming up with ideas. You may change your mind as your city design develops.

1. What transport infrastructure will you provide? What main roads will you have? Will the roads be in a grid structure to facilitate movement, or will you direct traffic by having irregular patterns? What public transport will your city have? Will it have light rail, heavy trail, buses, etc? How will you encourage people to walk or use bicycles? What areas of your city need to be connected by public transport? How will you connect your city with surrounding areas, regional cities and Sydney?
2. What electricity, water, sewerage and telecommunications infrastructure will you provide? How will the services be laid out? Will/does the city have its own sources of water (dams, water tanks, rivers, etc). How will you provide power (e.g power plant, solar panels, wind turbines, etc)?
3. What type of housing will your city have? What have we learnt about how density impacts on services, transport, etc? Will your city have low density, medium density or high density housing (the mix/combination)? What will the buildings look like (style of architecture)? Will you have regulations in place to ensure that the buildings are both liveable and sustainable (e.g. minimum/maximum size backyards, minimum/maximum sized houses, rules about mature trees and gardens, etc)?
4. What will the main commercial centre of the city be like? Where will it be located? Will most retail areas be located in a shopping centre, in malls or on a main street? What types of commercial/ retail outlets will be there (what types of shops)? What will the main street look like? What other types of businesses will you try to attract to the Central Business District (CBD)?
5. What types of community facilities will be provided in your city (e.g. health, education, aged care, etc)? How will you make sure that the facilities and services provided are of a high quality? How will you ensure that people can access them? How will you make sure that they are affordable?
6. What public spaces will you provide, (e.g. parks, monuments, Nature Reserves, etc)? How can you make sure that they are safe, well kept, clean and useable? How will you encourage people to use these spaces? Can you use any of these spaces to conserve the environment and provide public access?

Task 2: Design your city plan
You have been provided with an outline map. Use your mapping rules to begin designing your city. Include border, orientation (north point), a legend, a map title and scale. On your map label the M1 motorway, Sparks Road and the railway line. Draw and label all the key features of your city.

In 1989, Maxis (later purchased by Electronic Arts) released the first version of SimCity. In junior high school, playing computer games on my dad's computer, I was hooked. I think this is the game that turned me into a lifelong geographer and tech enthusiast. I loved designing cities, experimenting with the parameters of what would make a great city. Even early on I would try to add lots of parks and build the city around the appealing features of the natural environment like rivers, bushland, etc. I would be devastated if one of the natural disasters hit and wiped out parts of my city. As the game progressed over the years it really did get better and better. There were also variants of SimCity released such as SimFarm SimCopter and my favourite spin-off Sim Safari.

Unlike a lot of games at the time of its original release (and I would argue even now) SimCity encouraged players to consider multiple interconnecting concepts and ideas, and plan strategically for a result with positive (if virtual) social outcomes. While many "shoot 'em up" games common now do involve strategic planning, for most of them the end result is killing something or someone. This game was a real stand out.