The Places We Live

Just come across this superb site exploring 4 of the world's slums, including Dharavi:

Yr13 - Cities

Some nice presentations on Tuesday about Urban Development Corporations, City Challenge and some of the more recent regeneration initiatives such as Sustainable Communities. Check back to the previous post on this for some links, etc. if you need to check details.

On Thursday, we started to look at the LEDW case - we started by brainstorming our perceptions of shanty towns, based on the work you did last year, and on what we "know" from the media, etc.. We then had a look at Dharavi, the Mumbai slum where Slumdog Millionaire was filmed, and talked about whether we thought it was a "slum of hope" or a "slum of despair".

The links to the photos, etc. we looked at are here:

Audio slideshow from The Guardian
Images from the National Geographic
BBC Interactive Tour of Dharavi

There are various clips on YouTube that are worth a look too...

After the holidays, we will have a look at the plans for the redevelopment of Dharavi...

Yr13 - Cities

You should, today, have handed in your work using the Neighbourhood Statistics site and the Derby City Partnership site. Thank you to those of you who did - if you are one of the people who didn't, you know what you need to do...

We spent Thursday's lesson mapping the best and worst places to live in the UK (according to Phil and Kirstie) and we spent the first part of today's lesson talking about the patterns that the maps showed and the possible reasons for this.

We then went on to think about the causes of inner city decline, and discussed some of the problems of inner city areas and how they've come about, and the cycle of deprivation. Don't forget though, that I also gave you a piece of writing by Tony Cassidy, a geography teacher who lives in inner city Nottingham - an interesting alternative perspective.

Linking back to the Bradford work that we did recently, you might be interested to know that the Westfield development has been "put on ice" according to an article in the Telegraph & Argus. Unsurprisingly, there have been plenty of letters in response to the news, and if you search for "westfield" on the T&A website, you can look at those, as well as a number of other related articles. The "Bradford Metropolitan District Council, Pull Your Finger Out" group on Facebook is also worth a look!

Year 13 - Sustainable Cities

Found this video last week but forgot about it so thanks to Rebecca Annis for the reminder... Well worth a watch, and you might find some interesting ideas to incorporate into your plans for Bradford...

Year 13 - Tuesday

Below are links to various resources that we used in yesterday's lesson, and also the Urban Redevelopment Corporation.

Urbed

Urbed Design Guide

Bradford URC

City Centre Map

All of the photos that we looked at were from Flickr - a search for "bradford" or "west yorkshire" will bring up lots of excellent images for you to look at.

Your task, which you will be continuing with tomorrow (and probably on Tuesday) and which will be due in from everyone on Tuesday 27th January, is to come up with a plan for the redesign of the city centre. Your finished piece of work can be presented in whatever way you wish, but should include an annnotated map showing the key features of your plan.

You need to make sure that you are considering the issues and challenges that we talked about at the start of the lesson that are specific to Bradford, as well as the more general problems of CBD decline, and thinking about how to address these...

Have fun!

Yr13 - Tuesday

The increase in world population and the reasons for it in Miss Bradford's lesson... And don't forget that important WHO statistic that you finished the lesson with!

We then looked at cities and considered the issues and challenges that face cities today - those in MEDCs, those in LEDCs, and those that are common to both.

Dan's Urban Earth videos are here http://www.urbanearth.co.uk. And if you liked the Urban Earth idea, you might like to check out Noel's Rural Earth... Maybe we should be making a Semi-Rural Earth one - get planning a route!

We also started to look at the CBD and the key features of the CBD. We will continue this tomorrow, and consider what is happening to many CBDs.

"Northern cities beyond revival"

That's according to a "think tank" called Policy Exchange. Apparently, the regeration that is going on in cities such as Bradford (which I have posted about on Geogtastic before) and Liverpool is not working, and there should be a mass migration of poor northerners to southern cities such as London, Cambridge and Oxford...

Doesn't seem to me like the most sensible solution... Have a read of the article from the BBC here and see what you think!