Get into groups of two or three people and pick any major American city
to research. You can choose any major American city. In order to complete
the assignment, you will also require maps at various scales to analyze
the city's site and situation. That means you need to zoom in to look at
your city's morphology, and zoom out to analyze its relative location and
hinterland. You'll need to do additional research on the internet,
and in the library to find out about the city's geography and history.
Each group will hand in one illustrated essay on paper or disc. The essay should include about 300-500 words of text and at least three maps or aerial photos from the online atlases to make it a 3-5 page document.
To submit the essay on paper: If you do not know enough about computers to illustrate the essay, simply print out the maps, cut and manually paste your assignment together.
To submit the assignment on disc, the final illustrated essay must be saved as an html document and submitted as 2 copies on 2 discs. Beware that pictures and maps on a computer may have a large file size. (save as a jpg or gif to reduce file size).
Create an illustrated essay describing the geography of your city in terms of its
Explore some of these relevant questions:
When doing library research, photocopy relevant maps to illustrate the points you make in your assignment.
When doing internet research, print the map, or save it as a file
to be edited, formatted, and printed.
U.S.
Historical City Maps
City
Maps from about.com
Maps
of U.S. Metropolitan Areas (1970))
Links
to city maps