For your Urban Landscape Essay, you are to provide a description and analysis of an urban landscape in Metro Vancouver.
This analysis should explain how this place has come to be as it is and describe how humans have altered or are currently altering this space. It should also reflect on the values, tastes, aspirations of the people associated with it (or those of society at large). This should be the main content of your paper.
In your analysis, you are expected to interact with a minimum of three academic sources. These sources can serve a number of purposes. They can provide context on the particular kind of space you are working on, explanations of the kinds of neighbourhood you are looking at, or deeper examinations of the geographical concepts you are using in your analysis.
This guide will point you in the right direction to find academic resources.
When we use the terms scholarly resource, academic resource, or peer-reviewed resource, we are often talking about the same thing. Scholarly resources include books, ebooks, or scholarly (peer-reviewed) journal articles. Popular media resources include newspapers, magazines, films and movies, television shows, podcasts, and many of the free resources you find online. For all the sources you find, think critically about the information presented and how that information will help your analysis.
A well researched paper draws from a number of different sources, so read widely and deeply. While Wikipedia can be a good place to get general background and help wrap your head around a topic, you are discouraged from directly referencing Wikipedia in any of your assignments. This is because it is difficult to determine exactly who has written or updated a Wikipedia article; to conduct proper research at the post-secondary level, it is important to know who is writing a resource, why they are writing it, and how they intend the resource to be used. For more information, see our guide here: Scholarly Journals vs. Popular Magazines.
It is very likely that there may not be scholarly research written on the specific area that you are looking at. Instead, you should be searching for scholarly resources that examine the kind of area you are looking at (shopping malls, cemetaries, community centres, city parks, etc.), or the major concepts or theories you are using to analyze your area (immigrant communities, urban design, architecture, human geography). Think broadly about your topic and brainstorm keywords that relate to your area.
