A blog project about everyday living in the city

Emma Rawlings Smith, Head of Geography, British School Al Khubairat, Abu

Dhabi and Sin Yee Koh, a postgraduate student from the LSE

: The meaning

2008 was the year of the urban transition - when for the first time in
history more than half the people in the world lived in urban rather than
rural environments.
A Season of Urban Vignettes is a collaborative blog capturing the
different ways people experience, negotiate and engage with city life
as the world undergoes the largest wave of urban growth in history.
Vignette means small illustration and refers to the short length of the
blogs.
Sin Yee Koh explains how Urban Vignettes came to be created and

Urban Vignettes: The Idea

Collaborative
Sharing and networking on a common platform
Pooling of knowledge

Visual-based blog
A picture says a thousand words

The different ways people experience, negotiate

and engage with city life
Personal perspectives
Everyday experiences

Urban Vignettes: The Idea

Choice of own
themes

Respond to
weekly themes

Nut & Bolts:

Internal Recruitment & Funding
Recruiting team members
LSE postgraduate students in urban-related degrees
Positive response from people with diverse interests,
skills and professional experiences
Journalists/writers, photographers, architects, designers

Pitching for funding

urban@lse student-led initiative

Teamwork
Brainstorming ideas
Setting timelines and deliverables
Roles and responsibilities

Nut & Bolts:

Web-hosting & Doman name

Nut & Bolts:

Shopping for Wordpress Themes

Nut & Bolts: The Fine Print

Copyright
Terms and conditions

Nut & Bolts: External Recruitment

Call for contributors
CAPTURE YOUR CITY
What is unique about your city?
What do you love and hate
about it? Which sights, sounds,
smells and feelings make you
call this home? Where are your
favourite places, the hidden
paradises? How do you
negotiate the daily grind? What
is changing? What stays the
same?

Inviting potential
collaborators

Nut & Bolts: Social Media

First Season: Weekly Themes

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Mobility
Festivity
Family
Psst!
Sounds
Hope

7. Signs
8. Diversity
9. Youth
10. Renewal
11. Water
12. Food

First Season: Own Themes

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Brussels: Works in Progress

in the EU Capital
Cities and Folk/Traditional
Culture
Existing Between Extremes
(Stories of an Average
Londoner)
Fort-de-France, Martinique, A
Changing and Dynamic City
Land Developments in the
Urban Environment
Life in a Desert City
Life in a Modern, but
Medieval Town

8.
9.
10.
11.

Love Your City

Our City, Our Civilization
Street Art
The Everyday Histories of
Unseen Modernities
12. Urban Parks and Green
Spaces
13. Whose City is it by the Way?

Our Contributors: Geographies

The Scorecard: Visitors

The Scorecard: Geographies

129 countries
USA
UK

Northern
Europe

India
South Korea

Northern
America
Southern
Europe
East
Asia

The Scorecard: Geographies

1,488 cities
London, Tirana, Donghae, Hong Kong, New
Delhi, Lisbon, New York, Dubayy, Singapore,
Paris, Brussels, Sydney, Torun, Chicago, Fort de
France, Athens, Dublin, Helsingborg, Edinburgh,
Mumbai, Sevilla, Sheffield, Berlin, Belfast, Milan,
Melbourne, Adelaide, Toronto, Marlow, Helsinki,
Tbilisi, Pune, Sibiu, Shanghai, Washington,
Jakarta, Mahape, Phoenix, Old Lyme, Kuala
Lumpur, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Vienna,
Santiago,
Valencia,
Munster,
Brisbane,
Glasgow, Bangalore, Tanranto, San Francisco,
Pittsboro, Bhopal, Sao Paulo, Manila, Abu
Dhabi, Buenos Aires, Gurgaon, Cambridge,
Bangkok, Seoul, Barcelona, Nancy, Manchester,
Montreal, Rome, Malmo, Istanbul, Atlanta,
Boston, Detroiit, Caternury, Leeds, Chuncheon,
Madrid, Surabaya, Auckland, Cape Town, Perth,
Nassau, Munich, Copenhagen, Birmingham,
Budapest,
Venice,
Zurich,
Philadelphia,
Houston, Nanaimo, Rotterdam, Rio de Janeiro,
Hyderabad, Pescara, Cambridge, Liverpool,

End of Season: Feedback

Contributors enjoyed the project:
Stimulated their own work
Opportunity to network with others

Suggestions:
More interactions/collaborations between contributors
Collate contributions into a physical publication (e.g.
book, calendar, exhibit)
Frequency of submissions: Weekly to bi-weekly
More critical thought, discussion and analysis but also
remain creative, light and engaging to a wide
audience who want to learn about cities informally
and personally

Learning Points:
Looking Back, Projecting Forward
Project
Potential beyond that originally envisioned
Thinking about next steps

Difficulties of continuity
Team members moving on
Temporary nature of postgraduate student life

Personal gains
Skills: Setting-up and maintaining website
Creative thinking: How to inform teaching and
learning about geography

2013 will see a new season of Urban Vignettes in the Autumn

IN THE CLASSROOM
WHY COLLABORATE? WHAT IS
ABU DHABI LIKE? HOW CAN
STUDENTS DEVELOPED A SENSE
OF PLACE?

This tweet stimulated

my sense of curiosity

My first Urban Vignettes blog

inspired by the view out of my window

Place
A particular position, point, or area in space; a location
Oxford English Dictionary

Place is itself part of the way we see, research and write

Cresswell (2004)

Place is the ways in which students lives are connected with other
places
Roberts (2003, p.166)
Place is constructed out of a particular constellation of social
relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular locus.
Massey (1994)

A sense of place may be defined as the constellation of attitudes a

resident or community has with regards its place of residence
Relph (1974)

My Place - Abu Dhabi

Desert outpost to modern paragon in 50 years

my home

The drivers of change in Abu Dhabi

Petro-dollars - Abu Dhabi sits on 98 billion barrels or 8% of
proven global crude oil reserves, worth some $12 trillion at
current market value (The Report: Abu Dhabi 2010).
Rapid development and economic diversification - Sheikh
Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan set out a vision for developing
the nation (Abu Dhabi 2030 Plan)
Technology desalinisation and A/C are technological
solutions for living in the desert, both are highly
unsustainable uses of oil
Strategic location between East and West

sense of place more urban, less nature

Source: E Smith

sense of place cars, nationalism, Islam and desire

Source: E Smith

PAST

my home

A rapid urban transition for a planned city

FUTURE

Water facts:
1 billion cubic metres of
water are desalinated
every year
People use on average
590 litres of water every
day
Groundwater levels are
dropping rapidly
Salinity increase from
18,000 to 36,000 ppm

24% 70%
Desalinated water

Groundwater

Population of Abu
Dhabi
1975
211,812
2005
1,374,200
2009
1,826,700
2010
1,967,700
2011
2,120,700
Life expectancy
is 77 for
men and 80 for women (in
the UK it is 79 for men and
83 for women)
Healthy Life expectancy is
only to 68 years of age

Me
My students
Fertility rates have fallen
from 4.4 to 2.3 children
per women over 20 years

The population structure for the

United Arab Emirates 2008

My identity affects how I see the world

Living in Britain

Living in the UAE

insider

outsider

majority

minority

local

expatriate

us

them

in place

out of place

worker

economic migrant

A framework for learning through enquiry

Roberts (2003) Learning through Enquiry

Learning objective:

To develop both a sense of place

and the skills to produce
informative extended writing about
place

Strategies for teaching about place

Eliciting existing knowledge of a place
Spider diagram

Bubble diagram

Total Recall Mind Map

WordFoto app

Strategies for teaching about place

Developing the links between existing knowledge of a
place

Wealth
rts
o
p
Ex

Oil
reserves

4
t2 h
a
ed nort
t
a
c
Lo rees
g
de

Abu
Dhabi

re
u
s
res nt
p
h ina
g
i
H om
d

Tropics

al
u
n
an
m
m fall
0
0
1
rain

Desert

Arid
Concept
mapping with
hexagons

Humid

Strategies for teaching about place

Question generating using place-based images

Question grid @JohnSayer

Strategies for teaching about place

Representation of place
Key Questions:
How has this place been represented?
How far do you agree with this
representation of place?
How have places and people in the
text been described?
Describe some of the people and
places you would include when
writing about Abu Dhabi

Strategies for teaching about place

Enquiring as to why places are similar and
different, using the Urban Vignette themes

compared with, in contrast, as with, unlike, like, similarly, equally, more than, greater, lesser

Strategies for teaching about place

From Pam Hook

Enquiring as to why places are similar and

different

compared with, in contrast, as with, unlike, like, similarly, equally, more than, greater, lesser

Strategies for teaching about place

Comparing different known places

Students in one Year 7 class had

lived in Doha, Bahrain, Australia,
Pakistan, South Africa, Saudi
Arabia, America, Malaysia,
Germany, Great Britain, the
Republic of Ireland and France.
Students are currently creating a
report about a migrants journey, the
migrant being someone they know.

Work from Oriane YEAR

7

How do students feel about the

place in which they live? Where
else have they lived? How do these
different experiences compare?

Strategies for teaching about place

A public critique of my blog, before a gallery critique
After reading my first blog entry about
Abu Dhabi, students critiqued my work.
Students highlighted ideas and phrases
that worked well and others that did not.
Students discussed what the success
criteria could be for their own work.
Students then created their own blog
posts which were displayed in the
classroom for a Gallery Critique.
Public Critique Rules (Ron Berger, 2003)
- Be Kind, Be Specific, Be Helpful
Nancy Year 7

Strategies for teaching about place

Providing fieldwork opportunities which allow time for
reflection
Do you feel satisfaction with this
place? How does it affect you?
What lyrics for songs or poems
have been written about this
place?
How is this city presented in the
media? What words are used to
describe this place? Are there
misconceptions about the city?
What evidence is there of
interconnection of this city with
other places

How do students feel about the places we visit and any plans for the
future?

Strategies for teaching about place

Feeling in place or out of place
Students were asked to take a
photograph of themselves in a place
they felt happiest in Abu Dhabi, then in
no more than 100 words explain why
they chose this place.
On a map of Abu Dhabi students then
added post-it notes for those places
that they avoided including the reason
why. Such affective mapping can be
very informative about a city.
Most students are members of the
British Club, here they felt in place but
downtown in Hamdan, the oldest area
of town, most students felt out of

Strategies for teaching about place

Work from Zaina YEAR 7

Predicting how a place may change in the future

Creating presentations about planned futures and imaginary futures

References:
I would start with Doreen Masseys essay A Global Sense
of Place From Space, Place and Gender (1994)
Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press
Cresswell, T. (2004) Place, A Short Introduction. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Cresswell, T. (2008) Place: encountering geography as
philosophy Geography 93 (3) 132-139.
Lambert, D. and Morgan, J. (2010) Chapter 6 Place in
Teaching Geography 11-18. Maidenhead: Open University
Press.
Rawling, E. Reading and Writing Place published in Butt,
G (ed) (2011) Geography, Education and the future.
London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Relph, E (1976) Place and Placelessness. London: Pion.
Taylor, L. (2004) Re-presenting Place Chris Kinston Press

Read about My
Place Abu Dhabi in
Teaching Geography
Spring 2013

Article about Abu Dhabi:

Rawlings Smith, E. (2013) My place: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Teaching
Geography Vol 38 (1) p.35-37
Rawlings Smith, E. (2012) Abu Dhabi goes green? Geography Review 25 (4) p.2-5.

A day on the Devonshire moors

(extended student writing about place)
Waking to a full English breakfast, with Jazz, the old sheepdog snoozing peacefully on our
feet, we headed out into the nearby wood to begin our journey through the moors. Dappled
light fell onto the leafy ground as with hiked through the wood, heading towards the local
village for the classic Devon cream tea. Despite our anticipated lunch, we walked on
accompanied, only by our own footfalls and the tweeting of birds in the trees. It is amazing
how you can discover a new part of Devon that one has never walked on before. You can
make a place your own, private space that you have been the first to discover. This is
another thing I love about Devon, the never-ending discoveries you can make, just by
enjoying a walk through the woods of a beautiful place.
Emerging onto a bramble path, we made our way up to the local village to the Crumbly
Sponge Tea shop, for the well-deserved cream tea. Despite our giant and delicious English
breakfast at the start of our day, cream tea and scones with homemade jam and of course
clotted cream is the something that Devon stars. No other place on earth could do it how
they do. But its not so much the amazing taste of the food, but the atmosphere of the tea
shop itself. Amongst the tinkle of tea cups and munching of cake, there is the sound of light
conversation, and always, as someone walks in, there are cries of welcome, and come sit at
our table, Even if the person is unknown to them. The close community and passion for
making people welcome, is also a thing I adore and much admired about this place.