City Planning- Building Fun in Social Studies

This module covers the educational concepts of design, problem solving, critical thinking and group decision making. Students are given a pre-built scenario within the software program SIMCity* and asked to try to improve the situation by various techniques.

All activities begin with students looking at a city that contains poor zoning and transportation problems. It becomes their task to attempt to improve the city by using only transportation solutions, zoning solutions or a combination of both.

	Estimated Classroom Time		Module Contents
Activity 1	10 minutes prep, 20 minutes class time		One SIMCity Module contains 5 copies of SIMCity 3000 or SimCity 3000 Unlimited Software.  Each copy includes a single license.
Activity 2	10 minutes prep, 40 minutes class time
Activity 3	10 minutes prep, 50 minutes class time

The module is broken into three activities. Each activity could be used independently or could occur at the same time within a given classroom setting depending on available equipment and materials. The activities could likewise be done in small groups or pairs of students, again depending on equipment as well as the teacher’s goals and time permitted.

(© 1999 Electronic Arts Inc. SIMCITY 3000 is a registered trademark of Electronic Arts in the U.S. and/or other countries. All rights reserved. )