Details for Urban Environment

Awards offering Urban Environment

This unit is offered as a part of the following awards:

• Bachelor of Arts
• Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Education (Secondary)
• Bachelor of Education (Secondary)

Unit Content

Curriculum Objective

Like all Geography courses at Alphacrucis University College, Urban Environments is designed to help students understand the distinctive nature of Geography as a subject that links the physical and human facets of our environment, focussing on the processes of spatial interactions and their patterns in both time and space. GEO303 Urban Environments examines one of the world’s most significant geographical phenomena – the fact that over 50% of people now live in rapidly growing urban environments, many of them in megacities. Building upon the understandings of population dynamics and economic development developed in GEO101 and through the use of illustrative case studies, this course studies the characteristics and distribution of urban places, the processes leading to urban change, the environmental consequences of rapid urban growth, and measures underway to improve urban sustainability and the quality of urban environments.  The course helps students develop skills of critical thinking by applying creative problem-solving, reflection and discernment to the interactions between people and their urban environments, thus exploring patterns of behaviour that aid understanding of how we know what we claim to know.

Outcomes

1. Assess how adequate statistical data is in describing and explaining significant contemporary global changes in urban patterns over recent decades.
2. Compare and contrast global urban trends with the trends of urban growth over recent decades in Australia and two other countries with contrasting levels of economic development.
3. Rank the significant urban processes in a local urban area, and justify the ranking with reference to primary and/or secondary data.
4. Summarise the challenges for residents that arise from urban processes and explain how urban challenges can be ameliorated.
5. Compare and contrast the policies and practices of urban sustainability (including spatial justice and traffic congestion) in a local urban environment with overseas cities displaying exemplary urban sustainability.
6. Formulate a proposal that succinctly explains realistic ways of improving urban sustainability (including spatial justice and traffic congestion) to local administrators based on the gap between current local practice and overseas cities displaying exemplary urban sustainability.

Subject Content

• Urban places
• Urban morphology
• Changing urban environments
• Growth of urban systems
• Environmental and social stresses in urban environments
• Building sustainable urban environments for the future

This course may be offered in the following formats

• Face to Face (onsite)
• Distance/E-learning (online)

Please consult your course prospectus or enquire about how and when this course will be offered next at Alphacrucis University College.

Assessment Methods

• Minor Project (30%)
• Minor Essay (30%)
• Major Project (40%)