Students Design a Car-Free City

In Earth Doctors Cars & Transport Week, students explore one of the biggest questions in designing a low-carbon city: How do we help people switch to lower-emission vehicles—or leave the car at home altogether?

Students begin with Car Coders, a hands-on data investigation into why some vehicles burn much more fuel than others. They survey cars on a local street or investigate their family vehicles, recording the miles-per-gallon (MPG) of different models. Back in class, students graph their results into a bell curve, compare vehicles, and explore the connections between fuel efficiency, carbon emissions and car dependency.

Then we zoom out from individual cars to the transportation system.

Students map their local bike action network, identifying the organizations, community groups, schools and government agencies that can influence how people get around. They then take on a design challenge: How could we redesign the school drop-off to make it car-free?

Finally, students put their ideas to the test with Bike to School Week. They design a simple data-collection experiment, measuring how students travel to school before, during and after the challenge to see whether their intervention actually changed behavior.

Along the way, students explore gamification and behavior-change techniques including color grading, comparison and disclosure, discovering how information and feedback can influence transportation choices.

Students will:

• Investigate and compare the fuel efficiency of different vehicles
• Graph real-world MPG data and explore a bell curve
• Connect transportation choices with carbon emissions
• Map their local bike and active-transportation network
• Identify organizations and government actors with the power to create change
• Design a car-free school drop-off
• Run a Bike to School Week challenge
• Collect and compare data before, during and after the intervention
• Explore gamification and behavior-change techniques
• Discover how transportation systems can be redesigned to make low-carbon choices easier

Comes with:

• Educational lessons and slideshow
• Printable activity worksheets
• Car Coders data-collection resources
• Community bike-network mapping activity
• Car-Free School Drop-Off design challenge
• Bike to School Week measurement worksheets and downloads

Earth Doctors workshops are designed for teachers, parents and environmental educators looking to bring more hands-on, action-oriented environmental learning into classrooms and communities.

Our live sessions support you throughout the program—a co-design space where we mentor, troubleshoot and refine activities together.

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