Urban Planning in AP Economics

The students in Michael Lemon’s AP Economics class had a unique opportunity this semester: to redevelop a city center. Through a program developed by the Urban Planning Institute (UPI) the students worked in groups to develop proposals for the district of Elmwood in the fictional model city of Yorktown. The project culminated in presentations of their bids to a panel of UPI volunteers. This project is usually conducted in university economics classes, and Newman is the first high school in the state to participate in the program. 

 

The project, called Urban Plan, came at the end of the students’ study of microeconomics. The program asks students to use what they have learned to redevelop the Elmwood district and to weigh complex tradeoffs in the redevelopment that take into account market demand and non-market interests from the city and neighborhood groups. Students synthesize their understanding of core economic principles with a real-world case study.

 

The project has two phases. In the first, students work in teams to develop their plan for the district. They must synthesize everything they have been studying and to evaluate the district’s prospects for job creation, tax revenue, and return on investment, while also considering the interests of the city and diverse community groups.

 

Senior Izzy Lane noted the complexity, saying, “We had to figure out how to satisfy the needs of both the city council and various neighborhood groups while also maximizing our development group’s profits, so there were a lot of moving parts involved.”

 

In the second phase, students build prototypes of their redevelopment and receive feedback from their teacher and two panels of volunteer facilitators from the Urban Land Institute. These volunteers are professionals in New Orleans real estate and urban planning.  Next the students deliver a presentation to a “city council” comprised of Urban Land Institute volunteers, which selects the winning development based on the presentations and submitted proposals.

 

The project let the students apply the theories learned in class to a real-world exercise and use their critical thinking and analysis to come up with solutions to a multifaceted problem. An open-ended project, Urban Plan has no “right answers,” but rather affords an opportunity to see the problems and solutions that communities face each day.

 

Senior Grant Carey found the exercise’s reliance on collaboration valuable.

 

“I learned to appreciate the intricacies of working on a team with preselected roles,” he said. Lane added, “I think every student walked away with greater critical thinking skills and a better understanding of how AP Econ can apply in a real-world setting.”