Lesson video

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to our Geography lesson.

We're learning all about villages, towns, and cities.

I'm Mr. Hutchinson, and hopefully you've had a chance here to do the quiz that before doesn't began.

So they've already had some amazing success at remembering all the things that we've learned about in this unit already about different settlement types.

Make sure that you're nicely organised that you've got a pen or a pencil or something to write with, and you've got something to write on maybe a notebook or a pad or maybe even a book, an exercise book or something, and we're ready to get started.

So what we're going to be learning about in today's lesson? About villages, towns, and cities.

Well, in today's lesson, we're going to city.

We're going to talk about how cities are organised.

Now of course, there are lots of different types of cities and no two cities are the same.

Cities are organised in different ways for different reasons.

And we'll have a little bit of a think about how different cities are organised and why.

Today I can't wait to get started.

This is what our lesson will look like.

First of all, we're going to think about the features that are common around lots of cities, the main features of a city.

Then we'll think about how those features can be organised, and we're going to look at two and then compare two cities in particular.

Then we're going to just get a chance to compare, to plan your own city, that seems to be very exciting once you know about the different features and how they can be organised, you're going to get a chance to be a city planner, that's a real job you know, it's a real job to be a city planner where you can plan out how a city might look and where the different things will go.

What exciting job that sounds like planning your own city.

You'll get a chance to practise that today, but first you need to learn what goes into a city.

We'll finish with our end of unit quiz to make sure that you lock all of that knowledge into your brain, easily retrieved in the future.

So, first of all, what are the features of a city? Well, let's look at the United Kingdom, let's look at a map of the United Kingdom and just see if we can remember some key facts about where we live in the United Kingdom.

So you should know, for example, where England is.

Can you point to England? Now there's no nation boundaries here.

You can also point to the general area of England.

Excellent, well done if you're pointing to England here.

Can you pick out the capital city of England point to it? Can you point to the capital city of England? Well done if you're pointing to London, excellent work.

Now let's go a little bit North up to Scotland.

Can you point Scotland for me please? Excellent if you're pointing here is Scotland and what's the capital city of Scotland? Can you point to the capital city of Scotland? Lovely if you're Edinburgh, Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland.

Let's go a little bit to the West and let's go to Northern Ireland.

So the Island of a Ireland is split into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is the part that's near the, that's a part of the United Kingdom.

So they point to Northern Ireland.

Excellent, you should be pointing here.

There's so that you can see the boundary here, all of this bit is Northern Ireland.

The rest is the Republic of Ireland, that's a separate country.

And what's the capital city of Northern Ireland? Can you see it? Can you point to it? Can you say it? Can you say the capital city of Northern Ireland? Excellent, Belfast well done, which leaves us with Wales.

Where is Wales? Can you point to the nation of Wales? Lovely, so Wales is this country here, and what's the capital city of Wales? Excellent, Cardiff is the capital city of Wales.

So we've got England with its capital city London.

We've got Scotland with its capital city Edinburgh.

We've got Northern Ireland with its capital city Belfast, and we've got Wales with its capital city Cardiff, and they are the four nations that make up the United Kingdom.

Let's look at some of the cities of the United Kingdom.

So here we've got New Castle.

Look at that beautiful city by night here, all lit up, it looks really wonderful as you can see, bridges and the river there, the River Tyne running through the city with all the different buildings.

There's another city here.

This is the city of Liverpool.

And there are lots of examples of beautiful cities around the United Kingdom.

One of the things is that one of the features of cities is that they will have these stunning buildings, like the ones that you can see in these pictures of Liverpool and New Castle here.

But that's not the only features, amazing buildings isn't the only feature of a city.

There are other features as well that you'll find in different cities.

So let's look at what some of those are.

So the first of all, you might see something like this.

There's a tram line there, running through.

So major cities that are so large that people need to be able to move around easily, and very often the people in charge of the cities will want to discourage car use because if there's lots and lots of cars on the road that causes lots of pollution, it can cause it to traffic jams, which means that people can't get to where they need.

And so they will put lots of public transport and transport that the public can use.

That could be something like a tram line, or it could be a bus route, or it could be a train, different train system, even some cities have underground train systems And here you can see the transport, so transport links within a city are common feature of cities, what else? You might see something like this, have a look at that picture.

What can you see that's happening there? Well you might see that there are some factories there, so these are known as industrial areas and they are where factories are and production happens.

And you remember from our lesson on the industrial revolution, it's one of the reasons then that cities started to grow and grow in the 18th and 19th centuries and because of these, all of these factories that were there and are still be there, modernised producing all of that stuff.

Well as might you see, well, even within the city, people need places to live, and so there'll be residential areas there might be flats, there might be tall buildings with lots and lots of flats in, or it could be houses, streets with different houses.

What's sometimes called suburbs where there's just outside the city, lots and lots of houses altogether, little community of houses, different types of places to live in a city.

So there's residential zones.

What does this look like? You might have visited one of these in the past.

This is a shopping centre.

So there'll be a commercial centre.

So commerce is anything to do with money and trading, and so there'll be shopping centres and places where you can buy things, and there's then this commercial areas.

So here, we've got some of the main features of a city.

We've got commercial areas, businesses, offices, shops.

We've got residential areas, different housing of all types, where people live in the city.

We've got transportation, which could be roads, bus ways cycling paths, railway lines, train line, tram lines.

And then there's industrial areas, so factories and warehouses, which are like big buildings where things are stored.

There could be rubbish recycling facilities, where all of the waste that's produced in the city, if you've got a large city, then everybody's going to be producing waste and rubbish, that all needs to go somewhere, so it goes to recycling plants or rubbish plants, and cities will have all of these different areas and they need to be organised.

So let's see if we can recap that I'm going to give you a little bit of a task just to see if you can remember the different features of a city before you plan your own.

So there's a picture there, which is of the commercial area, there's a picture there of the residential area, there's a picture which shows the sort of transport links, and there's a picture of the industrial areas.

Can you link those up? So could you match up the label with the particular area or feature of a city? Pause the video and have a go at that now.

Super work, well done.

Let's see if you've got those answers correct.

So I'm going to show you now the lines that link them up and let's see if your finger went to the same place to link up these different areas or features of a city so that you are ready to plan your own city.

So the first one is the commercial area, point to the commercial area now, which one did you choose? Well done if you chose the shopping centre, that's an example of a commercial area in a city.

The residential area? Well done if your fingers on those houses there.

Can you point to the transport, the picture showing transport, different tram areas, features of transport in a city? Excellent if you chose that.

And lastly, the industrial area.

Put your finger on that photo.

Lovely, as it's the last one is left of course.

So we've had a bit of a think there about the different features of a city, but those different areas can be organised in lots of different ways.

So let's think about how they can be organised in different ways.

So the next part of our lesson is going to be around organising a city and cities are organised in different ways depending on how old they are, depending on the natural features, the physical features of the land, and all sorts of other reasons and factors.

So here's a map of the world, have a look at this.

And the first thing I'd like to do is we're going to look at two cities okay, we're going to focus on two cities.

We going to look at London and New York okay.

So New York city and London, especially Manhattan, which is a part of New York City.

So let's see how good your locational knowledge is.

Can you pick out these different cities? We should be getting good at starting to look at maps and be able to spot different places around the world and just know where different places are.

So let's have a look, do you know where New York is? Can you point to New York? Put your finger on it now.

I'm going to zoom a circle to New York and if your finger is here well done, I'm so impressed, if was just nearby, then that's great too.

So we can see here with New York City on the East Coast of the United States of America, and it's just over here.

What about London? Can you put your finger on London? Put your finger there and I'm going to zoom a circle there in a moment, finger on London.

Awesome work if you've got that well done.

So London, in the United Kingdom, it's just sort of here in the Southeast of the United Kingdom and the bottom right of the United Kingdom, so it's just around there, that's where that should be.

So two cities on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

So they're across different sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Let's have a look at those two different cities and compare them to see how that organised in different ways.

'Cause in many ways they're very similar, but in some ways they're quite different.

So we're going to start off first of all, with London, okay.

So we're just going to look at London, let's zoom right into London and here's most of London as you can see here.

So what's the name of the river that runs through London? You can see it running through London here, that river is called the River Thames, well done if you knew it.

So have a look at London and you might want to pause the video, just really have a close look at all the different things that you can see in London 'cause this map is really helpful, it's like a bird is flying over, our plane is flying over.

Sometimes called a bird's eye view, just like a bird is flying over and looking down at the city.

Now it has to see all the different features of a city, the physical features like the river, and the human features, like the things that have been built.

So have a pause the video and have a good close look at London.

Excellent works, so the first thing I'd like you to do is have a look at what's sometimes called green spaces, okay.

So a green space is where there's a park or there's grass or there's fields very often park land in cities.

So cities as they build up and lots of buildings all start to build up, they often don't have much green space, they often don't have big parks where people can go to.

But London does have lots of green space, we're quite lucky there's lots of different green space and parks.

Can you find them? Have a look and see if all different parks or green spaces that you can find, I wonder which ones you can see.

Awesome, so here are just a few there's a, I'm going to point to a few here that you might have picked out.

One of the most famous parks in London is Hyde Park, a very large park, and it actually got a lake in the middle here called the Serpentine, there's Regent's Park at the top here, again with the lake in the middle, there's Victoria Park over here, Battersea Park down here, Burgess park.

And there's lots of other smarter green spaces.

Some of the just teensy, just tiny little green squares, some of them are medium size, and some of them have these huge parks here.

You might have also noticed these little red circles where the blue lines through them, these are underground, the London underground stations.

So it's sometimes called the tube and London is such a large city and people want to get around very quickly, and it's quite difficult when you're going on top of the land because there's so many cars and things around, that an underground train system has been built, which means that people can get on escalators or lifts go underground, get on a underground and quickly zip along to their location they would like to get to.

So have a look here and see all of these different underground stations they're all sort of might link together on different lines that people can use.

So why there so many underground stations around in London, you can see here's one here and here's another one here, points to the different ones that you can spot, put your finger on all the different underground stations that you can see.

There are lots of underground train stations.

So why do you think that they might be necessary? You could pause the video and write down your answer.

Why are there so many underground stations that are necessary? Pause the video and write down your answer to that.

Awesome, so there could be lots of different reasons, but as we mentioned before, it can be difficult to get around London because it can be so busy.

And so if there are lots of underground stations, then people, wherever they live, they can quickly just walk to an underground station and it doesn't take them a long time, there's always an underground station nearby that they can go to and they can get the underground train.

And there will also be a station near to that location, near to where they're trying to get to.

It's not much good getting on an underground train if it takes you somewhere, that's far away from where you're trying to get to.

So there are lots of underground stations that mean that wherever you are, you can quickly find an underground station and get your location.

And so cities will think about all of those different things.

How did different people move around in a way that's easy for them and stops the city being too crowded.

So let's go back to our big map now, let's zoom back out to the world.

It's not all over the world, we can see North America, some of South America, most of Africa, and most Europe there, most of Europe, some of Asia.

So this time that zoom in to New York city.

And again, let's take that bird's eye view, okay.

So is a matter of a bird flying across and let's take a bird's eye view.

So this is what New York city, well, part of New York city, I zoomed right in, and this island very famous island, you might have seen it if you've watched films and you might have seen it in films, 'cause often films, this island is known as Manhattan.

Have a look at Manhattan, and again, pause the video and look at and see if you can see all the different human features, all of the different natural features of New York City to get a good sense of this place.

Excellent, so you might have noticed that there is a green space, a bit like in London that we saw, but this green space is long and rectangular.

It's called Central Park, Central Park 'cause it's in the centre of the island.

Now there aren't too many other green spaces, and you might have noticed that in New York, the roads are in these beautiful straight lines.

Like they've been been with a ruler.

They crisscross across like, like a hash.

And then inside some of those lines, there is this Central Park.

So let's see if we can compare these now, here is New York City, I've just zoomed right in.

So if you notice here, I'm zooming into this section here and here's a little bit of London, I've just zoomed into a teeny bit of London as well.

So these are two different cities and there are some similarities and they're both huge cities.

More also in similarities that you can notice from studying this map and what are some of the differences.

So jot down all the similarities that you can think of from looking at these maps of the two cities and all of the differences.

And you might like to use if you've got some of your own knowledge, bring that in as well, it's great to have lots of background knowledge 'cause the more you know, the better you're able to tackle these questions.

So looking at those maps and any background knowledge you've got, what are the similarities and what the difference between New York City and London? super work, well done.

So there are lots of similarities and there are lots of differences.

In both New York City and London have an underground or a subway system and underground train system to move people around 'cause there were so many people living there, they both have green spaces and you can see some of these green spaces.

There were some differences as well though, if you look at London, the way that the roads are in London, you'll notice that there are a bit higgledy-piggledy, there are a bit squiggledy as London is naturally sort of emerged naturally sort of like around the different geography, the roads have sort of like swerved around.

And London is a much older city than New York City, is much, much older.

And New York City because it's a bit newer was planned to be a bit more organised.

It was planned to have these nice straight lines, it's sometimes called a block system.

So there are each one of these is a block, each one of these tiny little squares is a block and there are roads and avenues.

Roads are going across and avenues going up and down.

Whereas in London, there are all sorts of different size roads, all sort of squiggling around.

So there are some similar similarities and some differences.

The planners of New York City I've thought hard about how, because there are so many people living there about how they can make sure that New York City is as efficient as possible, as sustainable as possible that people can get around easily without too much pollution so that there's some organisation and that needs to be done.

And you can see that there are these all blue people.

Now these blue people mean that these roads that are sort of blue are closed to cars there are only open to pedestrians, to people walking at certain times.

So what's an advantage of closing down a road to only people, only pedestrians, people walking can use the road.

What would an advantage of that be from a city point of view? Why would that be helpful from the city point of view? And what could a disadvantage of that be? 'Cause we're now the way that the city is organised.

I'm sure you've got some great ideas, awesome work about the advantages and disadvantages.

So some that I jotted down and compare your answer to mine is I thought an advantage of this, if there were no cars allowed on those roads is there would be less pollution.

There'd be less pollution 'cause there'd be fewer cars on those roads that are putting out exhaust fumes.

But a disadvantage could be that those shops might not get the goods that they need as easily, if there's a shop on one of those roads, they might need a vehicle to deliver the items that they need to them.

So it could have an advantage of less pollution, but a disadvantage of, you want your city to be well-stocked.

You want the shops and the different commercial areas to have the things that they need.

So there are advantages and disadvantages to these different organising principles.

Let's look at a different city and how this city has also tried to think about how it can be planned and organised.

So here, this is Amsterdam city in Europe, in the Netherlands, sometimes called Holland.

And in the Netherlands in Amsterdam, they're using technology.

So they've got special sensors in city and those sensors can tell whether there are people around at nighttime.

So if there's no people around, then what these sensors will do, the sensor will say, nobody's been around for a little while and they dim the lights and that saves energy, it saves electricity.

And then if somebody was walking along because they were trying to get somewhere at nighttime, then the sensors will see them, the sensors will notice that they're there and the sensors will turn the light back up so that they can still see where they're going, and be nice and safe.

And that saves the city lots of electricity.

Well, in fact, I'm giving you some of the answers already.

What are the advantages and what are the disadvantages of having that sort of system? Awesome work, hopefully you thought about some of the advantages and disadvantages.

So one of the advantages here could be that it saves electricity because the electricity is going down, fewer lights are being used and they're being dimmed when there's no people around.

However, if you can imagine if you have decided that you were in charge of the city and you wanted to do that, installing all of those sensors around the city is going to be very expensive 'cause you have to pay for people to go and put the sensor, you have to pay for the sensors, you should pay for people to put the sensors up.

And so investments like that, especially in a city which are very large, you'll need lots of them can be really expensive to put in place.

So you now have thought about all the different things that go into a city, the different features of a city, how you can organise them, how cities differ, what people need to do in cities.

I think that you're ready to be a city planner, or I think you're ready to plan your own city.

So please don't forget that you need to have commercial areas, you need to have residential areas, you need to have transportation, and you need to have industrial areas.

You can choose what that, you might choose that your city has an underground train system, in which case you need to show where the stations are going to be.

You might choose that your city is going to have a tram line system, in which case you'll need to show where the tram lines run.

You might decide that your city is going to have a block system, like New York City have nice straight lines with the streets and the avenues and the roads and the streets.

Or you might decide that your city is going to be a bit higgledy-piggledy a little bit like London, where the roads sort of naturally curve around the different areas.

It's your choice 'cause it's your city.

Love to see what you come up with, so pause the video and take your time now planning your perfect ideal city.

Excellent, excellent, excellent work, well done.

I bet you've planned an amazing city that would be wonderful to live in.

So that's us finished for today's lesson, you planned your city, you know what goes into a city, and you planned your city, great work, well done.

If you'd like to share that city, then you can.

So what you can do is you can ask your parent or your carer to share your work with Oak National on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

And they'll just need to tag in the message @OakNational, #LearnwithOak and then we'll be able to see that, and I wonder who's going to get the best city.

I wonder who's going to design the city where everybody would love to live.

Great work today and I'll see you next time.