Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: I prefer living where…

20 minutes

Find Out: 20-minute neighbourhoods

25 minutes

Take Action: Reimagine your neighbourhood

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions and success criteria

Students will:

understand subjective and objective factors that influence and enhance liveability by examining features of sustainable urban neighbourhoods.

Students can:

explain the difference between subjective and objective factors in creating sustainable urban neighbourhoods
describe the benefits and challenges of the ‘20-minute neighbourhood’ concept
create a map of their ideal 20-minute neighbourhood.

Tune In: I prefer living where…

Step 1

Invite students to stand up out of their seats and explain that you’re going to read out a series of statements. For each statement, students will need to decide if they agree or disagree. Students move to the left of the classroom if they disagree with the statement and move to the right if they agree.

Step 2

Read out the following statements (or select ones that you think are most relevant to your class or create your own):

I like to walk or ride to school.
I prefer living close to public transport.
I like being able to play sport in my local area.
I like being able to ride my bike, skate and rollerblade on the street/road I live on.
I prefer to be driven everywhere.
I like being able to walk or ride/skate to the shops.
I prefer living where there are nearby parks and leisure facilities.
I prefer living where there isn’t much traffic congestion and noise pollution.
I like living where there are lots of people around.
I like living where there are trees and a natural environment/green spaces.
I prefer living close to entertainment activities e.g. cinema, mall, beach; or cultural institutions e.g. places of worship, public libraries, museums, etc.
I prefer living where it rains a lot.

Step 3

Ask students to return to their seats and facilitate a discussion about what everyone’s responses to this exercise suggest. Some ideas that might be elicited include:

We have different preferences about what we like to live close to (or not).
What makes a place ‘liveable’ can depend on individual needs, likes and dislikes (i.e. subjective).

For a literacy extension you may want to check in with students to ensure/recap they understand what ‘liveability’ means – how suitable a place is for humans to live in.

Step 4

Instruct students to fill out the brainstorming template on their Student Worksheet, where they complete the sentence stem ‘I prefer living where…’.

Students should list their preferences of what they’d like to live close to (whether based on their current location or aspirations) and what is important to them to make a place liveable, taking into account the ‘agree/disagree’ activity. For example, responses might look like: I prefer living where…

‘I can catch the bus to the shopping centre.’
‘My grandparents are on the same street.’
‘It doesn’t rain very often.’

Extension opportunity: Enter students' responses into a word cloud generator to establish the most popular and least popular preferences for liveability across the class.

Find Out: 20-minute neighbourhoods

Step 1

Explain to students that the things we consider that make a place liveable are influenced by our own opinion (subjective), which is why, no doubt, there were different preferences in the previous activities. Inform students that liveability can also be influenced and measured by objective factors (based on facts or data) - ask students to discuss what they think these might be (they may have listed some in the previous activity).

Compare students’ responses to the Subjective and objective factors of liveability factsheet.

Highlight to students that we can think of these subjective and objective factors as ‘ingredients’ of liveability and that in some parts of the world, some of these ingredients are used to carefully plan what many consider as sustainably liveable places and create healthy communities.

Step 2

Write ‘20-minute neighbourhood’* on the whiteboard and invite students to predict what this means. (*Sometimes these are also referred to as ‘15-minute cities’).

Explain that a 20-minute neighbourhood is a concept of ‘living locally’. It’s a place where people have the ability to meet most of their daily needs, all within 20 minutes of their homes via walking, public transport or cycling. The idea is that these places are more sustainable for living a healthy and happy life so that people don’t need to travel long distances to live, work and play.

Step 3

Outline to students that we’re going to examine a case study that shows how the principles of the '20-minute neighbourhood’ concept have been applied to Barcelona’s Superblocks. Ask students if they know where this city is. You can show them a map here to put the city in context. Allow students five minutes to read the case study and invite them to identify any vocabulary or phrases that they don’t know the meaning of so you can explain them.

Step 4

Organise students into small groups. Students should work together to answer the two questions on their Student Worksheet. (Try to elicit for Question 2 that the concept of the 20-minute neighbourhood mostly applies to urban spaces, less so in regional places and not in remote areas. If time permits, you could probe to discuss what the issues are with this approach to designing liveable places in terms of equity, regional/rural/remote VS urban access to amenities.)

Take Action: Reimagine your neighbourhood

Step 1

Drawing on students’ knowledge and understanding of what influences liveability in the earlier parts of the lesson, the ‘20-minute neighbourhood’ and Barcelona’s Superblocks case study, explain that they are now going to map, label and annotate their ideal 20-minute neighbourhood. Students can create and design their map using the attached activity worksheet, based on their memory and knowledge of where they live. Remind students to use BOLTSS (Border, Orientation, Legend, Title, Scale and Source).

Step 2

Before students get started, encourage them to think about how they would transform the liveability of where they currently live into an ideal 20-minute neighbourhood by considering:

which principles or features from the Barcelona Superblocks case study they could apply to their design
how to create social benefits (the positive effects on society as a whole)
the diverse needs of their street or local community (i.e. residents’ ages and stages of life)
what infrastructure already exists and what would need to be built.

You can show students these examples (theconversation.com/cars-have-taken-over-our-neighbourhoods-kid-friendly-superblocks-are-a-way-for-residents-to-reclaim-their-streets-187276), where streets have been transformed to ensure people and shared public spaces are prioritised (instead of cars), and kids can play safely.

Extension opportunity: Write a letter to your local council or state MP with some of your suggestions.

Step 3

Invite students to share their maps and explain their decision-making.

Reflection

Questions for students:

How has your understanding of sustainable liveability changed from what you thought at the beginning of the lesson?
What are some possible challenges or limitations in applying the 20-minute neighbourhood concept to different geographical contexts?
How might the design of your ideal 20-minute neighbourhood be viewed from different perspectives in your community? E.g. by younger children, parents, young adults, the elderly, people with disabilities, etc?

Design a 20-Minute Neighbourhood

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