What is UrbanPlan?

UrbanPlan is a project-based learning curriculum unit for high schools, universities, public agencies, and non-profit organizations. Bringing together disciplines such as economics, city government, real estate and urban planning, UrbanPlan engages students, elected or appointed officials, and community members to consider the myriad of complex decisions that shape our built environment. UrbanPlan is a realistic, engaging, and academically demanding curriculum in which participants learn about the fundamental forces that affect development in the United States. Participants experience the challenging issues, private and public sector roles, complex trade-offs, and fundamental economics in play when proposing realistic land use solutions to vexing growth challenges.

Mission

The mission of UrbanPlan is to create a more sophisticated level of discourse among local stakeholders involved in land use decisions through engaging today and tomorrow’s voters, neighbors, community leaders, public officials, and land use professionals so, together, we can create better communities.

Through UrbanPlan, participants discover how the forces of our market economy clash and collaborate with the nonmarket forces of our representative democracy to create the built environment. This insight provides an essential foundation for any sophisticated land use discussion.

How it Works

Through UrbanPlan’s workshop or classroom curriculum, participants learn the essence of development: how the forces of our market economy clash and collaborate with the non-market forces of our representative democracy to create the built environment – providing the foundation required for any informed land use discussion. Over the course of the exercise, ULI member volunteers who are local land use professionals interact with teams of participants on a regular basis. As “facilitators” in the classroom, they challenge participants to think critically about the UrbanPlan issues and the specific responsibilities of the participants assigned roles such as finance directors, marketing directors, community liaisons, and site planners. At the end of the exercise, the ULI member volunteers serve on a mock “City Council” to judge the teams’ proposals.

Get Involved!

• Real Estate and Land Use Professionals: Find out what it takes to be an UrbanPlan Volunteer
• Public Agencies and Non-Profit Organizations: Learn more about our one-day UrbanPlan workshops
• Teachers and Professors: Learn more about the Curriculum and bring UrbanPlan to your classroom

Contact Us

ULI San Francisco Staff

Pooja Sharma
Senior Associate
[email protected]

Marisita Jarvis
UrbanPlan Coordinator
[email protected]