Land
Use: Creating Healthy, Sustainable Communities
Our
programs on land use and sustainable communities help educators
use their local community as a context for learning. Focus areas
include the demographics and geography of the community, how it
is changing, and the associated environmental and social impacts.
Questions addressed by include:
- How has the community changed in terms of population,
demographics, and land use?
- What are the environmental and social impacts of 'sprawl'-type
development?
- How do economic policies such as subsidies affect how
communities develop?
- How does community design affect our health?
- How can we create communities that promote well-being
for all?
Programs and Resource for K-12 Educators
"Lessons
from the Land: Land Use and Decision-making in Southeast Michigan": "Lessons
from the Land" provides curriculum and professional development
focused on land use, public policy, and sustainability in southeast
Michigan. Designed for science and social studies courses, the
program covers demographics, economic policies, water quality
and land use, the zoning and planning process, sustainable community
design, regionalism, and local history.
Land
use & sustainable communities workshop:
If you're outside Southeast Michigan, our introductory workshop
will help teachers of all levels use their local community as
a context for learning. Workshops give teachers an interdisciplinary
knowledge base, teaching strategies and resources they can integrate
into existing curriculum.
Curriculum
resources on land use:
Our "brick and click" curriculum library has hundreds
of lessons, articles, project ideas, assessment tools, and other
resources for teachers and students. If resources aren't available
on-line, we work with schools to compile a customized selection
of print materials.
Examples from Classrooms and Links to Standards
See
examples from actual classrooms: View student projects
and summaries of teacher-created units about land use resulting
from our programs.
Michigan
and National standards addressed by land use: Integrate
standards within and among content areas by teaching about land
use and sustainable communities. (The link takes you to PDF
files that provide standards information on all of Creative
Change's content areas.)
Services for Research and Policy
Organizations Creative
Change can turn research and academic content into engaging education
programs for adults or youth. Learn more about our
work with nonprofit organizations. |
