Educational Resources

Many cities have experienced flight from the city into the suburbs. This has often left the cities in desperate straights with empty buildings and unsafe streets. Main Street America looks at Akron, Ohio; Port Gibson, Mississippi; Springfield, Illinois; and Portland, Oregon to see what steps have been taken to revitalize their downtown areas.

On the Web site, a pre-viewing lesson allows the students to make a poster of a city of their choice to advertise its features. Sections of the Web tell of the goals of the revitalization effort, the philosophy of revitalization, benefits incurred from the effort and two lesson plans. One plan goes to a site that explains the job of a city planner and offers activities kids can do both on- and off-line. The second lesson plan uses the Places Rated Almanac and has students ranking their city based on the rankings used in the book.

Copyright 2001-2003, Northeastern Educational Television of Ohio, Inc. All rights reserved.