This interactive time-lapse map takes students around the world to nine different locations to explore urban expansion over time.
Satellite imagery dates back to 1985 and each location includes a summary of the changes observed and some of the unique features of each location.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The descriptions provide information about the drivers of urban expansion, mitigating factors, and/or some solutions to the challenges faced in different locations.
Seeing these changes from satellite imagery is a powerful way to introduce students to a number of related topics.
Additional Prerequisites
If you are using wireless Internet or a slower connection, it may take longer for the images to load.
Pausing the progression of images allows students to compare the images from different years and identify all of the changes.
Differentiation
Students could use this resource as a whole-class activity, in groups, or as an individual activity.
Connections with social studies, history, or economics classes could be made when discussing how the distribution of people within a country and/or the overall population size of a country might affect various factors such as trade, education, living standards, pollution, or inequality.
This resource displays precise spatial locations of areas of urban expansion. The resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-4 Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.
ETS1: Engineering Design
HS-ETS1-1 Analyze a major global challenge to specify qualitative and quantitative criteria and constraints for solutions that account for societal needs and wants.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.10.9-12 Evaluate how changes in the environmental and cultural characteristics of a place or region influence spatial patterns of trade and land use.
