Grantown Grammar Pupils Design Sustainable Towns for World Town Planning Day 2023
This month the Academy9 Team worked with S1 pupils at Grantown Grammar School for a STEM challenge like no other – designing a sustainable town as part of our annual Town Planning event!
Pupils worked in small groups over two weeks, to plan and design a sustainable town that they presented to a team of Academy9 judges. All aspects of the town had to be considered, such as: transport links; utility supply; employment and education; citizen health and wellbeing, and housing.
The towns had to be suitable for a population of 50,000 people and all decisions in the plan had to be justified to our judging panel. Young people developed their skills in problem solving, communication and team work as well as learning how to use a Geographical Information System (GIS) software, ArcGIS.
Sustainability was a key focus within the judges’ brief this year. This required teams to incorporate imaginative and innovative ideas into their town designs to enable their towns to be ready for the future.
“I really enjoyed being involved in this year’s event and seeing all the fantastic towns the students had created. There were some outstanding innovative ideas; such as an electric tram system for sustainable travel and schools intentionally positioned close to residential areas so residents could walk to school.”
Ben Thomas, Academy9 Professional – GIS Analyst
It was evident that all teams worked extremely hard throughout the two weeks and put all the knowledge gained from our town planners and GIS analysts into their town plans.
“There was a great focus on renewable energy sources across most of the groups. Some stand out ideas for me were those that used advances in technology to support resident welfare. For example, one town had robots that would carry out services such as night shifts in hotels and preparing breakfast so that residents could maintain healthy sleep cycles.”
Rachel Stewart, Academy9 Professional – Senior GIS Analyst
Check out some snapshots from our judging day in the slideshow:
However, there could only be three winners and after much deliberation between the judges the winning towns were selected and awarded their ‘sweet’ prizes. A massive congratulations and well done to the Most Sustainable Town winners!
- Group 3 – Beathan, Jonah, Andrew, and Elijah
- Group 11 – Morven, Ophelia, Sofia, Eve, and Zara
- Group 17 – Harris, Aila, and Ali
“We feel proud of ourselves because going into this I don’t think any of us really knew about town planning. So it’s like going into something new, you can see what you’ve done over the course of two weeks and you’ve created something big. “
S1 Pupil, Grantown Grammar School
Discover more on careers within the area of Geospatial on the Geospatial UK website and take the GoConstruct quiz to see which job within the construction industry best fits you!
Town Planning is an annual event in our calendar, in recognition of World Town Planning Day which falls on the 8th of November each year.
If you would like to integrate Town Planning into your teaching and learning, you may find some inspiration from our Town Planning teacher guide here.
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