ACADEMICS
UrbanPlan Seminar
Join the UrbanPlan Seminar Slack space.
Course Description
The Urban Land Institute’s UrbanPlan for Universities Course is a project-based learning curriculum that engages both advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Over the course of the UrbanPlan seminar, students take on roles and form teams to respond to a Request for Proposals for a fictitious project site. They must reconcile the competing agendas and consider tradeoffs to create a well-designed, market-responsive, and sustainable project. Each student team creates a financial pro forma and a physical model of their plan and presents their proposal to a mock City Council that awards the development contract to the winning team.
The ULI UrbanPlan seminar fosters educational opportunity for students working toward a land use profession including development, planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and land use policy. This course creates a cadre of graduates who are more sophisticated and effective when they enter the workforce. UrbanPlan moves students from a theoretical and ideological understanding of their discipline to the practical realities and demands of the development team and process. In addition, the module is a challenging team building exercise and introduction to ULI and key leaders in the industry.
Throughout the 3-credit hour seminar, students address challenging financial, market, social, political, and design issues, develop a pro forma, and create a three-dimensional model of their plan. The module culminates when the teams present their proposal to a “City Council” of development professionals that awards the development contract to the winning team.
NC State’s course is taught in Spring semesters meeting Monday’s from 6pm – 8:45pm in Brooks Hall, Studio 117. The course is co-taught by Chuck Flink, FASLA and Adam Walters PLA, ASLA.
