It stands to reason that people who live near the ocean or a lake might go swimming more often than those who live in or near a desert. Similarly, most people from rural communities who want to see a movie or a play will travel a greater distance than people living in urban or suburban settings. Those are just two obvious examples of how the size of one’s community, its geographical features, climate, and natural resources all affect the lifestyle of the people who reside there.  

What Primary Sources Can Tell Us about Communities and Geography

Many of the items people create and use are influenced by their surroundings.

• Written forms – Public signs, newspaper articles, and letters are written to inform others about a community and ways the community interacts with its environment. Official documents, such as reports related to air quality and traffic congestion, help citizens understand how government institutions address issues related to their surroundings.
• Physical artifacts – The clothes people wear, tools they use, their modes of transportation, and the structures they build illustrate ways that people adapt to the climate and geography of their communities.
• Images – Maps and photographs display the tourist attractions, natural resources, landforms, and important landmarks within a community.

 Primary Sources 

Photographs of Signal Hill, California

The Story of Oil in California

Signal Hill Park

Oil derrick at sunset

Oil first began gushing from a Signal Hill oil well on June 23, 1921. By June 25, the well was producing more than 1,000 barrels of “black gold” per day. Not surprisingly, this changed life forever in this scenic undeveloped area near Long Beach, California. Soon, lots that had been sold to build homes had sprouted oil wells instead. Because these parcels of land were relatively small, the oil wells created a forest of derricks, as can be seen from Signal Hill photos taken in the 1920s and ’30s (see first link above and the photograph on page 14 of your Primary Sources Handbook).

Signal Hill’s economy remained dependent on oil production until the 1970s. Declining oil prices forced the community to take action. In 1974, the Signal Hill Redevelopment Agency was formed with the goal of improving the area, and making sure its economy did not remain quite so dependent on oil production. Many would say that, given how the area looks today, that goal was accomplished.

Sun setting on Los Angeles

 

 Background Information 

What City and Regional Planners Do

City planning in its broadest sense began when people first formed communities. As people built homes and public buildings and established common agricultural areas, they thought about the best locations for fields, marketplaces, worship structures, and residences. They had to decide how buildings with different functions would best serve the community. Today’s city planners work at the local, county, regional, state, and federal levels—as well as in the private sector—to do almost the same tasks. They rarely get the opportunity to plan an entire community, but instead work to solve problems created by poor decisions made as a city or region grows. When these problems develop, planners help identify practical solutions and put them into action. As students will find out in this activity, city planning requires collaboration, especially to insure that community leaders are not working at cross-purposes. For example, one city planner who is focusing on economic development may want to build a new mall in a particular location. Meanwhile, another city planner may want to use that same location to build playground equipment and plan fields for a park.

 

 Classroom Activity 

Creating a Class of City Planners

1. Display for students a photograph of Signal Hill, California, in the 1920s or ’30s, and another one showing how that same area looks today. Ask students if they find it hard to believe that these photographs are of the same neighborhood, many years apart. Of the two, which one would students guess was taken most recently?

2. Share with your students some information about Signal Hill and how it developed, as described above. Emphasize the role that the area’s geography and natural resources played in the changes that were made there.

3. Explain to students that during times of dramatic change, such as those that took place in Signal Hill, city or regional planners work hard to help improve communities in rural, suburban, or urban settings. Encourage students to help you list some of the fields that interest regional planners. Here are some that you may want to include on the list:

• Transportation Planning
• Environmental/Natural Resources Planning
• Economic and Community Development
• Housing
• Parks & Recreation
• Historic Preservation

4. Tell students that city and regional planners are at work in their own communities. Organize students into teams and assign each to one of the categories of planners that your class has listed. Focusing on their own town or city, have the members of each team identify a type of improvement that they want to see in the area that they have been assigned. For example, as transportation planners, would they like to see more people travel by bicycle, bus, subway, or automobile? What types of changes would they need to make in order for this to happen? As environmental planners, can they identify any places in their community that could use a good clean-up? If they feel that their area has a pollution problem due to the over-use of cars, are there any recommendations they might make to resolve that problem? If so, how might your class’s transportation planners need to get involved?

5. Once each team has agreed on the improvement(s) that they would like to see made, have them put together a poster presentation and written report to persuade others of their conclusions. Offer students an opportunity to make their presentations to the class.

6. Optional: Hold a class “public forum” in which students, still acting as regional planning “specialists,” discuss the merits and possible shortcomings of each group’s plan. Use questions like these to encourage discussion:

• Were there one or more ideas that you felt were stronger than others?
• Do you see any ways in which some of the plans that were presented might possibly conflict with each other? If so, in what ways do you think these conflicts might be handled or addressed?
• What might be some next steps to take if you want to see your group’s plan put into action? 
• Do you think the ideas can really happen? What makes you think so?
• In what ways might our community’s geography be a factor in determining whether or not these ideas are possible?   

7. Invite a regional planner to your classroom to describe his or her job. Share with that person some of your class’s ideas.