High school students map urban systems in their neighborhood

Taguatinga, Brasilia, DF, Brazil

By Mariana Bomtempo
urban pedagogies, school mapping, high school students, brasilia,

This is a collective mapping about urban systems did in a partnership pilot project with the students from JMJ School in Taguatinga, Brasilia.

This map is the result of an activity with high school students to map urban systems in the neighborhood of Taguatinga. It is part of a longer pilot project of urban pedagogies to promote the right to the city in high schools. Initially the students started talking about cities using the game SimCity to have the first contact with the overwhelmingly amount of information that are part of the daily life in cities, but usually we are not use make connections.

Virtual city done by the student Gabriela Gaspar.

Through the game the students were also introduced to relation between data and location of information. SimCity allows the students to make maps about the systems that compound the cities and to visualize them as a tool to improve those systems.

Maps about virtual city by Gabriela Gaspar.

Later we give each student a system to map in the neighborhood and specially relate the topic with the school. The activity was one of the ways to bridge the gap for the conversation between the virtual city and real city. All the students did their map using Google Maps and I compiled the data using GIS, CartoDB and coding.

The idea of the project is to learn how to compile collective data and how to deal with it. Through this map, the students could learn mora about their own city and we can also share the students’ findings about the community where they live.