Option G: Urban environments

Option G: Urban environments

1. The variety of urban environments

• The characteristics and distribution of urban places, populations and economic activities

• Characteristics of urban places, including site, function, land use, hierarchy of settlement (including megacities) and growth process (planned or spontaneous)

• Factors affecting the pattern of urban economic activities (retail, commercial, industrial), including physical factors, land values, proximity to a central business district (CBD) and planning

• Factors affecting the pattern of residential areas within urban areas, including physical factors, land values, ethnicity and planning

• The incidence of poverty, deprivation and informal activity (housing and industry) in urban areas at varying stages of development

2. Changing urban systems

• How economic and demographic processes bring change over time to urban systems

• Urbanization, natural increase and centripetal population movements, including rural-urban migration in industrializing cities, and inner city gentrification in post-industrial cities

• Centrifugal population movements, including suburbanization and counter-urbanization

• Urban system growth including infrastructure improvements over time, such as transport, sanitation, water, waste disposal and telecommunications

• Case study of infrastructure growth over time in one city

• The causes of urban deindustrialization and its economic, social and demographic consequences

3. Urban environmental and social stresses

• The varying power of different stakeholders in relation to the experience of, and management of, urban stresses

• Urban microclimate modification and management, including the urban heat island effect, and air pollution patterns and its management

• Case study of air pollution in one city and its varying impact on people

• Traffic congestion patterns, trends and impacts

• Case study of one affected city and the management response

• Contested land use changes, including slum clearances, urban redevelopment and the depletion of green space

• Detailed contrasting examples of two affected neighbourhoods and their populations

• Managing the impacts of urban social deprivation, including the cycle of deprivation and geographic patterns of crime

4. Building sustainable urban systems for the future

• Future possibilities for the sustainable management of urban systems

• Urban growth projections for 2050, including regional/continental patterns and trends of rural-urban migration and changing urban population sizes and structures

• Resilient city design, including strategies to manage escalating climatic and geopolitical risks to urban areas

• Two detailed examples to illustrate possible strategies

• Eco city design, including strategies to manage the urban ecological footprint

• Two detailed examples to illustrate possible environmental strategies

• Smart city design and the use of new technology to run city services and systems, including purpose-built settlements and retrofitting technology to older settlements

Synthesis (Sy), Evaluation (Ev) and Skills (Sk) opportunities

• How urban changes over time are affected by a place's economic and demographic spatial interactions with other places [Sy]

• Contrasts in the scale of changes and challenges facing different urban areas [Sy/Ev]

• Varying perspectives of different social groups on the costs and benefits of different urban strategies, and priorities for action [Ev]

• How urban patterns, movements, flows and trends/temporal changes can best be represented graphically [Sk]