Day 2: Advantages and Disadvantages of Urban Renewal

Lesson Summary

Students will briefly study the effects of urban renewal and how it specifically affected Detroit. They will use online resources to identify the effect urban renewal had on Detroit. Students will then create a chart writing bullet points of the advantages and disadvantages of urban renewal for the communities that were affected by it. They will be asked to give examples of urban renewal by being able to point out the amount of money and work that was put into a city.

Objectives

  • Students will be able to identify the effect of urban renewal in Detroit.

  • Students will be able to identify the advantages and disadvantages of Urban Renewal in people’s lives.

  • Students will be able to give examples of Urban Renewal.

Standards

Social Studies: 6 – G6.1.1 Identify global issues.

Social Studies: 6 – G4.2.1 Identify and describe the advantages, disadvantages, and impacts of different technologies used to transport people and products and spread ideas throughout the world.

Resources

Teaching Strategies

  1. Students will receive a chart and use the first presented website to assess the advantages and disadvantages of urban renewal for the people living in that current area. Note: not all "primary sources" are old! This site can serve as a primary source as long as you talk to your students about it. Who wrote this blog post? What's their perspective? Don't take everything you see online as a "fact"!

  2. Using that same website and with the help of their chart, they will each form an opinion about how urban renewal affected Detroit. 

  3. Students will separate into two different groups based on whether they believe urban renewal had positive or negative effects on Detroit and work together to form a paragraph explaining why they believe that.

  4. They will then look at the second website and write down the examples that complicate their previous opinions.

Assessment

Students will each write a short paragraph explaining their opinion on urban renewal and whether it affects people in a good or bad way. They will also be given a list of cities that displays the amount of money spent on it within the span of 5 years and the amount of new housing that was made. From the list, they will have to choose and identify which cities went through an urban renewal.