Roseville students learn about urban planning
Roseville students learn about urban planning
ROSEVILLE, Minn. -- A group of students stands nervously before a panel of three experts, looking for their opinion, and hoping for their approval.
"If you see on this side, we did give them a tiny bit of a view here," explained one student who was trying to defend the wisdom of placing a luxury condo high rise in an area with no real view.
This is the Advanced Placement Economics class at Roseville Area High School, and for three weeks every year, they take on "Urban Plan," sponsored by the Urban Land Institute in San Francisco.
"This is the most real-life simulation I have ever seen in a high school classroom," declared teacher Steve Bekemeyer.
The Urban Land Institute is a national organization of real estate professionals, and it provides all of the materials and instructions to schools free of charge. Members also volunteer to go into schools to judge students' projects.
Students are presented with a fictitious community in need of redevelopment. In teams, they determine how they will do that within guidelines set by the city council.
"Really, it's a balance between finding something that's finacially good; something that is socially good for the people living there, and something that is esthetically good," said senior Linnea Cederberg.
It's a tall order as students find out.
"To learn the economics, the decision making, the trade-offs behind the built environment that surrounds them," explained Bekemeyer.
"If you think about the new Vikings stadium, and you talk about the ancillary development that will go on around the stadium, these students know what that is," he added.
"It just kind of opens your eyes about how people create cities and they keep them going and functioning. It was a great experience," said senior Will Florek.
While the culmination of the project is the presentation to professional where one team will actually win the "contract" to redevelop the city, the students are graded primarily on the background work.
Right now the program is offered through Roseville, Benilde St. Margaret and The University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institite.
Bekemeyer has been overseeing the program at Roseville for seven years. He now has students who have gone into urban planning as a career. And that is the payoff for the Urban Land Institute, which bankrolls the venture.
"They get a group of students who now understand the built environment. They understand the process, the local government element that is all a part of this as well," said Bekemeyer.
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