The potential for explosive urban sprawl is what motivated these authors to create a unit on community planning and the visual environment. They thought this unit would be an excellent way to engage students in a real-world issue that was relevant to their lives, while at the same time addressing social studies, language arts, and science content standards. How and where community growth occurs, and what it looks like, impact a student's quality of life and the environmental and economic landscape in which they live. Identifying and measuring changes to the environment as a result of community growth and sprawl, and suggesting ways to minimize environmental impacts, were important goals. A brief list of resources concludes the article.