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Housing in Hong Kong and rural Java

Source

Access Asia: Secondary Teaching and Learning Units

  

Learning area
Studies of society and environment

Level
Lower secondary

Description
Students read and discuss accounts of high-rise housing in Hong Kong and a village in Indonesia and complete related activities.

Purpose
To introduce students to various forms of housing and to develop an understanding of their advantages and disadvantages.

Duration
Two 50 minute sessions

Possible outcomes
In relation to Studies of society and environment — a curriculum profile for Australian schools, this lesson can contribute to outcomes in the following strands:

Materials required

Procedure

  1. The need for shelter
    Point out to the class that shelter is a basic requirement of human beings. Ask students to suggest the functions of shelter and list responses on the board. A typical list will include:

    • protection from weather
    • privacy, a place to sleep
    • a meeting place
    • a place to store possessions.

    Ask students to suggest types of housing they know about.
    Explain that this lesson is going to look at two different types of housing in Asia.

  2. High-rise housing in Hong Kong
    Ask students to read High-rise apartment blocks, Hong Kong.
    Clarify any unfamiliar words or expressions.
    In small groups, have students discuss the following questions and then report back to the whole class.

    What might it be like living in a housing estate with 25,000 other people in an area about the size of your school?
    What would be the advantages and disadvantages of living on the 39th floor of a Harmony Block?
    Would you like to live in a Harmony Block? Why? Why not?

    Handout 1
    High-rise apartment blocks, Hong Kong
    Hong Kong has many tall buildings and the streets are full of people at all times of the day and night. Where do these people live? In 1992, about half of Hong Kong's six million people lived in high-rise housing estates up to 39 storeys high, built by the Hong Kong Housing Authority. The Authority provided 146 rental estates and 95 estates where people owned their own apartments. All estates have facilities like shops, banks, restaurants, clinics, markets, elderly hostels, nurseries, kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, gardens and play areas, car parks and bus terminals. Prices for other private accommodation are extremely high.

    New `Harmony Blocks' are now being built. This is a new design based on improved space requirements and a better quality of construction and design. There are standard layouts of one, two or three bedroom apartments, with floor areas of between 30 square metres and 60 square metres. A `new town' consists of 25,000 to 30,000 people living in about 20 Harmony Block estates. This is about the same population as an Australian provincial city but the area taken up is little more than that of a large Australian high school complex with ovals and sportsgrounds.

  3. A village in Indonesia
    Read Naga village, Java, Indonesia with the class.
    Clarify any unfamiliar words or expressions.
    Ask students to use the information in the extract to draw a map of the village and its surroundings. Display students' work in the classroom. Then hold a class discussion based on the extract and set a writing task based on the discussion.

    Handout 2
    Naga village, Java, Indonesia
    Naga village is next to a river in a deep valley in central Java and is surrounded by rice paddies and terraces where villagers work during the day. There are 500 steps from the main road to the bottom of the valley and the village is one kilometre further away. The village consists of 25 similar houses close together in orderly rows, clustered around the mosque, a meeting hall and a village square, which also has a volleyball court. Each house is rectangular, about 5 metres by 6 metres, and is supported on wooden stilts about half a metre high. Walls are made of woven bamboo and roofs of coconut fibre. Each house has a cooking room with an open fire and three other rooms used as bedrooms or sitting rooms. There is very little furniture and people sleep on the floor. The only piece of furniture in the village leader's house is a television.

    Food is grown in and around the village. People keep goats, chickens, ducks, water buffaloes and cows and there are three fish ponds near the river. Small cubicles on the edge of the fish ponds are used for washing and as toilets. Small animals are penned in cages above the fish ponds and both human and animal waste filters into the fish ponds.

Extension activity
Students compare their own housing (including floor area) with the two forms of housing described above, then write an account of the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Acknowledgements
Access Asia: Secondary Teaching and Learning Units is part of the Access Asia series, funded by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training through the Asia Education Foundation.

Related resources
Dufty, D. & Dufty, H. 1995, Asia 2000 Curriculum Corporation, Carlton, Vic. (out of print)