Teaching with and through Maps

Connecting Sustainability To Big Issues Using Maps

When surveyed each fall, every class I have taught in the last six years, wants to learn about the causes and solutions to pressing societal issues. They are deeply troubled by gun violence, food security, poverty, income inequality, the opioid crisis’ impact on our city, their families and community.  They also, of course, are troubled by climate change. Our young people cannot navigate these challenges without guidance, structure, and opportunities to explore these issues through grounded, place-based inquiry - and opportunities to show how interconnected these issues, and potential solutions are. 

Every one of these current concerns connects to the environment, history, geography, and the people who lived here in Philadelphia before us.  Poverty and income inequality can be tied to the practice of redlining, where literal red lines were drawn around sections of specific neighborhoods, on maps, to prevent home loans to the black, immigrant and Jewish residents of these communities. These exclusionary mapping practices from the 1930s -1960s in Philadelphia shaped how neighborhoods developed, and the resources such as schools, parks, and grocery stores that exist in these neighborhoods today.⁸ 

In this unit, we will draw our own (metaphoric) lines across time, using maps of Philadelphia, to expose a range of conditions in our current moment, which are layered over the decisions, divisions, and systems of the past. Through this work, students will see how history is embedded in the landscape and how they can use mapping to better understand, question, and ultimately influence the world around them. 

Because we are an Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources class, we will be focusing on sustainability and food systems; the impact of agricultural practices on the environment and immigration; and the Anthropocene’s influence on water and air quality, as well as ecosystem collapse. Prior to this unit, students will have briefly explored the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These seventeen interconnected objectives are designed to “protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all by 2030.”⁹ As a framework, sustainability is often conceptualized through the lens of three interdependent pillars: social (people), environmental (planet), and economic (profit). This lens helps students evaluate the impacts of a plan, policy, or project—such as how building affordable housing with non-union labor and shoddy materials, or bottling everything in single use plastic even if this creates good paying jobs and makes money for a large corporation, fails to meet sustainable criteria.

To deepen this analysis, we introduce mapping and spatial thinking as useful tools for sustainability planning. Maps allow us to visualize where and how these sustainability challenges unfold, whether in relation to land use, access to resources, environmental degradation, or community health. As McFarlane and Ogazon point out in an article titled “The Challenges of Sustainability Education”, the slowness to adopt sustainability education in schools reflects a broader undervaluing of geography as a discipline—and a failure among U.S. decision makers to recognize how geographic knowledge is essential for understanding and responding to complex, place-based issues like climate change, food justice, and environmental inequality. By integrating mapping with sustainability, students gain both the conceptual frameworks and the practical tools to engage in meaningful future planning .¹⁰