Field trips have been acknowledged as valuable learning experiences in geography. This article uses Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning model to discuss how students learn and how field trips can help enhance learning. Using Kolb’s experiential learning theory as a guide in the design of field trips helps ensure that field trips contribute to internalizing relevant geographical theory and concepts. Three types of field trips are presented: an informal survey of a neighborhood, a more formal scavenger hunt, and a virtual field trip using Google Earth.

Urbanization increasingly means that the poorest, most vulnerable people move into large, highly distressed informal areas. These areas exhibit high levels of poverty and inequality. This paper uses Kampala, Uganda to identify drivers of vulnerability in informal communities that are a consequence of urbanization. Specifically, this paper adapts a vulnerability framework, developed for Uganda as a whole, for an urban environment. Using data collected by the NGO ACTogether along with interviews, this paper determines that the most important drivers of vulnerability in Kampala’s 57 slum communities are water and sanitation. Vulnerability caused by water and sanitation issues can be alleviated with adequate urban planning. However, planning in Kampala is difficult and not well implemented. This paper concludes that informal settlements are a critical part of the fabric of the city, yet poor planning creates risk which in turn increases vulnerability. As these cities grow, the burden on environmental resources, such as water, will continue to increase making adequate municipal services and infrastructure even more important. Bottom-up approaches to urban planning capture the individual requirements of each community and can more effectively inform urban planning and policy that focuses on reducing overall water vulnerability.

Models used to test whether an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) can be used to describe the relationship between GDP and energy use and/or carbon emissions may be biased by the omission of energy prices. Here we include real energy prices and fuel shares in models that describe energy use and carbon emissions. We test if these models show a turning point in OECD countries. Results indicate that including energy prices eliminates statistical support for a turning point and suggest that the relationship between income and both energy use and carbon emissions is represented most accurately by diminishing returns. These results imply that economic growth per se will not reduce energy use or emissions that cause global climate change.