Teaching about urban regeneration and gentrification
Each month we’ll be sharing updates from our Education team and the work they do to help facilitate dynamic ways of teaching geography, from resource highlights to recent activities.
Today, we are spotlighting the collaborative work being done to support teaching on urban regeneration through a successful workshop that took place this summer, demonstrating how partnerships between the Society and Higher Education Institutions can provide high-quality, inspiring Continuing Professional Development for teachers.
Collaborative fieldwork activities in urban settings
In July, the Society’s schools team were out in the field alongside staff from University College London (UCL) and secondary geography teachers, learning about urban regeneration and gentrification through a one-day workshop in London.
Created in collaboration between the Society and The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at UCL, the workshop took place at the university’s new Stratford campus (UCL East) in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Led by Professor Jon Reades, Professor Adam Dennett and Dr Duncan Hay, participants gained real-world insights into how places evolve.
Through a guided tour of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and nearby neighbourhoods including Stratford and Hackney Wick, A Level teachers learned about the history of the area and the changes that have taken place over the past 150 years. Back at UCL East, teachers enjoyed a series of discussions and a talk from Professor Elsa Arcaute, covering complexity science and how to use free software tools to explore and explain what they encountered in the field.
The day was full of insights and hands-on learning. The local activities that took place were shown to be easily adaptable for use in many different urban settings. We hope to be able to offer more collaborative fieldwork opportunities in the future.
Additional resources
Teaching urban regeneration in school? Want to learn more? Explore the concepts we covered and additional resources.
This workshop introduced A Level teachers to new ways of examining and explaining changing places through real-life examples. It supported teaching on:
- Economic change and social inequality in cities.
- Using fieldwork to ground these economic and social ideas in practical questions of past and present connections.
- How to create simple simulations of residential gentrification and discrimination.
- How simulations of urban phenomena can be used to generate hypotheses about how cities work.
UCL’s Jon Reades and Adam Dennett have recorded a podcast on the workshop topics that you can listen to on Soundcloud.
Resources covering regeneration and gentrification are also available to support KS3 teachers. These have been created by Sophie Blake – Head of Geography at Channing School, London, available on our sharing portal – Share your fieldwork ideas and resources – a fantastic resource for teachers to help one another.
You can also listen to our Ask the geographer podcast on the topic of urban generation with Sophie at Battersea Power Station.
