My Kind of Town

1
My Kind of Town

• The making of a city.

2

• Chicago less than 40 years after a devastating
  fire.
• Why do some communities grow and thrive faster
  and greater than other communities?
• What are major reasons that make a town a city or
  even a metropolis?

3
Objectives

• Identify and interpret primary source documents
  within an historical context
• Integrate creative writing, historical analysis,
  and technology
• Evaluate the components that generate to a
  metropolitan community
• Plan and create a starter community that has the
  necessary components to evolve to a metropolitan
  area.

4
You will

• Fill in a graphic organizer comparing small towns
  and large cities based on what you know before
  beginning this unit.
• Read the lesson in the student text about
  settling the midwest
• Explore the primary resources available on the
  internet to begin answering the question, What
  makes a town grow into a city?
• Complete your graphic organizer with your group
  and begin planning your own town.
• Build a new community
• Write a radio commercial that advertises the new
  town that clearly describes the new community.

5

• List 3 observations about this drawing of Chicago
  in 1868.

6
Waterways

• List 3 advantages of using water transportation
• What other forms of transportation were available
  in the early 1800s?
• List 3 disadvantages of traveling on waterways.

American Environmental Photographs Collection,
AEP Image Number, e.g., AEP-N73, Dartment of
Special Collections, University of Chicago
7

• Look at this map, can you identify the lake in
  the upper center of the map?
• The lines are railroads that are being built
  from the Mississippi to the east coast.
• How did the railroads affect communities?

8
Compare and contrast railroad transportation with
other forms of transportaion
9
How do communities move from individual
settlements to small towns and in some cases to
major cities?
What would your NEW town look like? What type of
geographical features would we notice? How would
you convince others to settle in your town?