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04/17/2012 14:25

Teaching Sustainability to the Land Users of Tomorrow

Sybille Wenke-Thiem Stabsstelle Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Deutsches Institut für Urbanistik

    The „CircUse“ project publishes brochures for secondary schools on the topic of sustainable land management in six languages

    Berlin. Year by year, the amount of land consumed by developments for housing, industry, shops and transportation is on the rise. This is driven by cheaper land prices found on the periphery of the city as compared to the inner district. This trend is becoming so strong that it has reached the point of becoming an everyday occurrence. Unfortunately, such a trend causes for valuable soil to be lost through new construction. Such dispersed development also strains important infrastructure such as utilities and streets. This trend is overall harmful to the ecology, economy, and infrastructure of our cities.

    New ways of engaging this problem with the younger generation was creating in the scope of the Central Europe Project “Circular Flow Land Use Management (CircUse)” with two the CircUse partners the Environmental Agency (UBA) of Austria and Telepark Baernbach (Austria). An experimental two-day course focusing on sustainable land use was given to students. The project was successful in creating a new method of educating future land users in secondary schools. The brochure “CircUse – Land Use and Environmental Effects” summarizes the format and contents of this school course.

    The school course presents various issues of sustainable land management to the students, such as the im-portance of saving undeveloped land. Also, the themes of “how would I like to live?”, “comparing living standards now and then”, and “calculation of daily commutes” are included. Throughout the course, students are engaged with these issues through group work and class discussions. An excursion to show the students actual land consumption by construction increases the effectiveness of the course.

    The course, developed for school grades 9 and up, is available as a brochure in six languages (English, Polish, German, Italian, Slovak, and Czech) and can be downloaded for free from the CircUse website http://www.circuse.eu.

    The project is implemented through the CENTRAL EUROPE Programme co-financed by the ERDF. The programme is funded by the Central European Program of European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation.

    More Information:

    CircUse Website
    http://www.circuse.eu

    Brochure for Schools
    http://www.circuse.eu/index.php?option=com_showdown&typeid=1&Itemid=33

    Fourth CircUse Newsletter
    http://www.circuse.eu/images/NaszePliki/Home/news4/4_CircUse_Newsletter.pdf

    This text is of course free for publishing and we would be very pleased to receive a copy or link of the material!

    Contact:
    German Institute for Urban Affairs, Zimmerstraße 13-15, 10969 Berlin, Germany
    Maic Verbuecheln and Thomas Preuss
    phone: +49 30 39001-265, +49 30 39001-263
    e-mail: verbuecheln@difu.de; preuss@difu.de

    German Institute of Urban Affairs (Difu) – Partner in Solving Municipal Problems

    The German Institute of Urban Affairs (Difu) is the largest urban research institute in the German-speaking area and is the research, further training and information institution for cities, municipalities, administrative districts, municipal associations and planning departments.

    Difu deals with all the topics which municipalities have to deal with now and in the future: whether in urban and regional development, municipal commerce, urban construction, social issues, environment, transport, culture, law, administrative subjects or municipal finances. The independent Berlin Institute, which was founded in 1973, and has another department in Cologne (Environmental Division), works on a comprehensive range of subjects on a scientific level but also in a practical way.

    Der Verein für Kommunalwissenschaften e.V. (Association for Municipal Sciences) is the sole shareholder of the research institute, which is run as a non-profit organization.

    http://www.difu.de/en/institute

    https://facebook.com/difu.de (german)


    More information:

    http://www.circuse.eu CircUse Website
    http://www.circuse.eu/index.php?option=com_showdown&typeid=1&Itemid=33 Brochure for Schools
    http://www.circuse.eu/images/NaszePliki/Home/news4/4_CircUse_Newsletter.pdf Fourth CircUse Newsletter
    http://www.difu.de/en/institute
    https://facebook.com/difu.de (german)


    Images

    CircUse-Logo
    CircUse-Logo

    None


    Criteria of this press release:
    Journalists, Teachers and pupils
    Construction / architecture, Environment / ecology, Politics, Teaching / education, Zoology / agricultural and forest sciences
    transregional, national
    Schools and science, Transfer of Science or Research
    English


     

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