What Makes a City?

In the morning the city
Spreads its wings
Making a song
In stone that sings.

In the evening the city
Goes to bed
Hanging lights
Above its head. 

Langston Hughes

We had such wonderful discussions today, all about what makes a city. Cities can be magical places, full of beauty and adventure. But they need things to make them run efficiently, too.

We divided into three groups today to start exploring. Children were given the barest of outlines: What do you think is important for a mid-size city (like Ann Arbor) to have? Students took about 20 minutes to list all of the things they would put in a city, if they were city planners.

Then we got together in a whole group to list about 30 ideas on the board (about 10 from each group). This time, we tried to divide the ideas into "needs" and "wants". This lead to some interesting distinctions - a library was passionately argued for as something that was needed, while a bookstore was a "want". And, at first, most children thought that cars were definitely needed - but I think I convinced them that if we managed public transportation better, many people could do quite well without. Our young environmentalists would not let go of the idea that a land preserve was a "need" - right on! I'm so proud that they even thought of this in the first place!

One of the funniest conversations (to me) happened about the inclusion of a jail. One child did NOT want this in the "need" column. He just didn't want to think that jails were needed. He has the tenderest of hearts. But others argued, "But what will we do with the bad guys? What if we have robbers?" There were heated discussions about alternatives, but no real conclusions. Finally, a third child rather sadly shrugged his shoulders and said, "I guess we'll just have to kill 'em." (Jail was decided as a kinder alternative after all.)

After all that good discussion about what a city needs, I wanted to show the students that we should always keep in mind that great cities should be beautiful and unique. While the video I showed them is not made for children, they loved it, understood it, and were inspired by it. We will be doing some art pieces soon, keeping this in mind. I hope you enjoy it too. (You will need to go directly to the blog to access the link to the youtube video - thanks!)