This resource details the benefits, potential financial and economic outcomes, and hurdles of increasing the number of walkable cities worldwide.
Students will learn about the benefits of walkable cities, the design needed to increase walkability, and how more walkable cities could help reduce greenhouse gas concentrations.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This resource makes complicated concepts easy to understand.
Students will benefit from text features that add to comprehension, such as meaningful headings and subheadings, sidebars, and data.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should have prior knowledge of carbon emissions and climate change.
Differentiation
Cross-curricular connections can be made in social studies classes discussing city planning and design or health classes thinking about how walking impacts human health.
After reading, have students brainstorm how to increase walkability in their city or town using the design principles from the article.
As an extension, have students design walkable cities of their own in groups or individually.
Economics classes could research the costs involved with adding more sidewalks and paths for non-vehicle transportation in their city.
Scientist Notes
This resource introduces a solution to reducing emissions by creating more walkable cities. It includes a brief introduction of urban spaces and making these spaces more walkable. A methodology, scenarios, and models are provided; along with results and a discussion about creating more walkable communities. This resource would be a great addition to a lesson discussing alternative methods to reducing carbon emissions. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
HS-ESS3-5 Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Reading: Science & Technical Subjects (6-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts, attending to important distinctions the author makes and to any gaps or inconsistencies in the account.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.2 Determine the central ideas or conclusions of a text; summarize complex concepts, processes, or information presented in a text by paraphrasing them in simpler but still accurate terms.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.4 Determine the meaning of symbols, key terms, and other domain-specific words and phrases as they are used in a specific scientific or technical context relevant to grades 11-12 texts and topics.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.10 By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend science/technical texts in the grades 11-CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.