Peripheral vision

Just sharing this thought. It's unusual how most city panoramas or city views remove the one thing that sustains them, people. We were doing an exercise this morning in an S2 class looking at changing landscapes and land use in Japan. Last period, the class had watched part of a clip from Top Gear where the presenters were racing across Japan from west to east. Since we were studying Japan as a crowded land, the class pointed out in their observations the lack of people. We discussed how the physical geography inflenced where people might live and kept a close eye on the landscape as the race approached Tokyo.

Due to a technical hitch, I couldn't show the Tokyo part of the race, but instead recycled an exercise I'd used before which involved a short memory sketch of the Tokyo landscape. We used a panoramic view, looked for the most important features to outline, label and present. The standard was very good, and I might post some example sketches later. I was, however, interested to see if the students could percieve what the picture didn't show. Some of the results could prompt further discussion, for instance, about the environmental impact of a city's growth, but I still find it interesting that the city cloaks the activities of the forces that drive its very being, its population, their movements (roads, transport), their everyday lives.