Lesson 4: WestConnex - Sydney, Sustainability, Transport - Teacher's notes

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


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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.