Traditional and Sustainable Urban Planning

  • The most impressive presentations of sustainable and simultaneously traditional Urban Planning were made by the host school, Liceo Artistico in Matera of their city which is actually the second oldest city in the world after Jerusalem.

    They opened this virtual meeting with this video:  

    Then the Italian students showed us around Matera with their artistic video Urban Planning in Matera and the slides presentation Matera: environmentally friendly

    The Czech team showed us what Sustainable Urban Planning entails as well as a presentation of Sustainable Urban Planning in the Czech Republic.

    The Spanish team presented their good and bad practices of Urbanism in Spain.

    The Turkish team showed us their video about Urban Planning in Izmir and so did the Greek team who presented three videos about Urban Planning in Greece; one about the urban problems in their city Athens, another one about their local area Nea Philadelphia and a last one about Trikala, a smart city in Greece.

    After watching all presentations some students cooperatively created the common presentation Our cities depicting the most striking similarities among the cities presented by each partner school which also reflect our common cultural heritage.

    Our cities.pptx

    Next, an international team created a presentation of  Urban Planning across the world and then all students responded to the Urban Planning Quiz identifying good from bad practices in cities across our countries from those included in the presentations of all schools. The quiz can be used as a follow-up activity at our schools for future lessons and projects and is available at: 

    https://forms.gle/wwcc5Y9BfnBV62rx9

    Last, we all interacted on the Padlet entitled "You are the most beautiful in the world" and dedicated to our Cities. It was created by the Italian team that hosted this virtual meeting to facilitate all students to interact and share materials about several aspects of their cities both within and beyond the scope of this meeting which was Art and Sustainability. We dealt with Festivals and Traditions at celebrations in our cities, Traditional Folklore Art that is typical of our cities, as well as the cities in our countries that have been or are to be declared European Capitals of Culture.

    We took the opportunity to exchange information about films shot or set in our cities and to do interactive activities on the International Earth Day focussing on Urban Planning (which coincided with the second day of our meeting). On the last day, we all dedicated the song "Isn't she lovely?" to our virtual hosting city, Matera, to our own cities and to the Earth that cries for sustainability.