Building with LEGOs and dressing up. It sounds like a children’s play-date, except it happens in 140 high school classrooms and 16 universities.
In economics, seniors act out the roles of a development team in the UrbanPlan project, a curriculum run by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley.
In 2009, economics teacher Gabrielle Kashani adopted UrbanPlan  in the economics course.
“I had been looking for a project, something that was real world, and in-depth, and challenging, and accessible, to replace some of the other things that were going on in economics when I got here,” Kashani said.
When she began teaching at PHS in fall 2003, the economics class used a project called Student Company. She followed that model until fall 2006 when a portion of the project was changed. The project requirements removed the need to raise funds for the student company, limiting the true economic lessons.
“Once that was eliminated, I felt like the true economic lessons in the project were really limited, so I then replaced it with a stock market project,” Kashani said. “I also thought that that was sort of limited and not super real world, and definitely not roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.”
A friend of hers, who began with ULI in 2009 got the connection started between her; Paula Blasier, the creator of UrbanPlan; and Marisita Jarvis, the San Francisco Director for UrbanPlan.
“When UrbanPlan fell into my lap, I thought it was perfect for what I was looking for,” Kashani said.
“I became involved because I am an economist that has worked in education a whole lot at Berkeley High,” Jarvis said. “So I started talking to all the people that were doing this project, and they tried to hire me because the combination of being an economist and understanding education was ideal for the job.”
After three years of being piloted, UrbanPlan was launched nationwide in 2009. In the Bay Area alone, the curriculum is taught in the San Jose State planning school, San Francisco State in the business school, as well as in Lowell in San Francisco, Middle College at College of San Mateo, Gunn High in Palo Alto, Alameda High and Berkeley High.
This year, ULI changed a few parameters of the project. One was to raise the minimum city revenue from zero to $1.5 million.
“I think now, because of the recession, where cities are really strapped for cash, the real world expectation for cities is that they’d like to not just make their money back, but to increase their revenue from something like this,” Kashani said.