Building on the Land

This activity is adapted from "Building a City on the Northern Great Plains," copyright Archaeology Laboratory, University of South Dakota. Some text has been copied directly from that activity and used with permission.

Lesson Introduction

While our individual actions have ecological significance, the design of a city affects the ways that its inhabitants use resources, dispose of wastes, and live their day-to-day lives. There are potential advantages and disadvantages of a city with regard to its place in the surrounding ecological setting. Since people are in close proximity to one another, they can minimize their use of energy in transit. Since people tend to live in apartments and in smaller spaces in the city than in the country, they may use less energy in heating and cooling than in large homes. All those people, though, may produce the same amount of waste, that must be disposed of, as a much larger area of the country. This puts more stress on local resources such as river, groundwater supplies, and land.

The Great Plains has many built-in environmental benefits to be taken into account. An elaborate system of wetlands and flood plains provides natural flood control. The soil, enriched for thousands of years by the growth and decay of prairie plants, supports a wide diversity of edible crops. The growing season is sufficiently long to grow enough crops to support people through the whole year, and there is plenty of rain in most of the Great Plains.

There are also dangers and limitations to be considered. There are hot summers and occasional droughts and harsh winters. The hot summer days facilitate the formation of ozone, a toxic chemical that builds up in the atmosphere, and combine with nitrous oxide (NO) from car exhaust fumes can cause respiratory damage to humans and animals alike.

The growth of large cities throughout the Great Plains and the modernization of farming techniques has enabled cities to consume natural resources on an unprecedented scale.

Illinois State Goal	Standard	Learning Benchmarks
17	B	4b. Analyze trends in world demographics as they relate to physical systems.
17	D	4. Explain how processes of spatial change have affected human history (e.g. resource development and use, natural disasters).

Lesson Objectives

• design an ecologically-sound city.
• recognize the potential advantages and disadvantages of cities for the environment.
• learn about the particular benefits and constraints associated with living on the Northern Great Plains.

Advance Preparation

Obtain a guest speaker who is a conservation biologist or an environmental historian or who somehow addresses changes to the land and changes in society over the years on the Great Plains. Contact the Illinois Natural History Survey at (217) 333-5986 for a listing of a variety of speakers who are free of charge.

Time Allotment

2 one-hour sessions

Materials

• 1 piece of large paper per group
• colored markers and basic drafting implements
• board for displaying plans that are drawn on the paper

PROCEDURE

Tap Prior Knowledge

1. Discuss the following with your students:

Where are you more likely to find public transportation - the city or the country?
Where are there more people per square kilometer - the city or the country?
Let students know that cities have high population density. This means that people are closer to one another and to the resources they need. It also means that a large number of people are depending on a small amount of land, water, and other resources for all their waste disposal, fresh water, and living space.

Share with Neighbor

2. Ask students to work with their neighbor to answer the following questions: Compared to the Great Plains, would it be easier or more difficult to build a city in the Rocky Mountains? the Desert Southwest? an island off North Carolina? Why?

The Great Plains region is uniquely abundant in fresh water and easily accessible farm land. It also exhibits a wide range of weather patterns, with harsh winters and occasional droughts.

Hands-on Activity

3. Tell the students that they are going to design an ecologically-sound city. In their groups they are to discuss, plan, and then draw the master plan for a city, observing the following requirements:

Laws to help make all citizens aware of their ecological responsibilities.
Power sources for light and heat. These sources do not have to be the same.
One river that runs through or around the city.
Some ecologically sound method of waste disposal.
Two productive industries to employ the town's people.
Homes for the population.
Recreation areas, such as parks.

4. Each group should produce a map of its city, showing clearly each of the main components listed above, and a list of the environmental laws to be enacted in the city. Each group will present its plan to the class, justifying the plan and explaining how the city generates power and heat, how it disposes of its waste, and how its laws will encourage the citizens to be ecologically responsible.

Introduce Scientific Principle/Environmental Issue

5. Explain to the students that processes that take place on a small scale in the country take place on a very large scale in the city, processes such as waste disposal, and food consumption. This tends to stress the land, air, and water in the city in most cases, but in the case of food consumption, the city puts a stress on the surrounding country or other places that produce the food for a large number of people. For example, natural processes can quickly biodegrade the waste from one household without contaminating or significantly altering the local water supply, but when a city attempts to manage all the waste from hundreds or thousands of households, there is sure to be creation of foul odors, contamination of the water supply, or alteration of the biological makeup of the local stream system if that is where sewage is dumped.

6. Have the students discuss how other processes which are done on a grand scale in cities may affect the natural environment and the availability of natural resources.

Relate Activity and Concept

7. Ask the students why living in the city is attractive to so many people. Do most people think on a daily basis about the impacts that their city has on the environment? Why or why not? People do not realize that their actions have such an impact on the environment because those actions are very small in relation to the grand scale of the land, water, and air, but cities enable the cumulative effects of all those people to be great. This is why cities incorporate master plans into their growth - to enable the city to grow and function in ways that minimize pollution, degradation, and overuse of natural resources.

Learning Outcomes

• understand why cities use master plans.
• design an ecologically-sound city.
• recognize the potential advantages and disadvantages of cities for the environment.
• learn about the particular benefits and constraints associated with living on the Northern Great Plains.