These activities are meant as starters. You do not need an architectural background to successfully do these activities that explore your immediate surroundings. Of course, you and your visiting architect will want to expand these activities to suit your class for good teaching units, like good architecture, are constructed to meet the needs of the users. Maybe you would have many things that cities today do not have. Each city is special, composed of many of the same elements put together in different ways.
All cities are places in time.
People, nature, and people-made things make places that change with time. Cities have a past and we can certainly look around and see the cities of today. Some cities just happened and grew in many different ways. Other cities were thought out before they were built and grew according to a plan. Most cities grew in both ways.