City Council Staff Participate in UrbanPlan for Public Officials Workshop

In July 2021, ULI Philadelphia hosted its first UrbanPlan for Public Officials workshop virtually with a small cohort of Philadelphia City Council senior staff, including those from President Clarke, Majority Leader Parker and Councilmembers Domb, Gauthier, Green and Quiñones Sánchez’s offices.

UrbanPlan is a realistic, intensive, and engaging land use planning curriculum, taught around the country, in which participants are exposed to the technical, layered and often tedious dynamics of the development process. This program can be delivered to high schools, universities, community groups and public officials, all of which are currently being piloted and scaled up in Philadelphia.

Participants are split into groups and assigned one of five roles (Financial Analyst, City Liaison, Neighborhood Liaison, Marketing Director, and Site Planner) with the intention of pushing them to think of perspectives outside of their everyday profession. Each team then works together to plan and finance the development of a 5.5 block area in a fictional city in response to the city’s Request for Proposals (RFP), which calls for “a developer who can create a sustainable, economically vibrant, distinctive district that reflects the historical activities and services of the area…”.

The program was led by ULI instructor Bridget Obikoya, LEED AP, Transportation Planner & Design Engineer in Arlington County, VA. Throughout the workshop the teams were questioned on their vision statements, site plans, and financial models by ULI member volunteer facilitators who provided feedback. At the end of the workshop, the teams, A1 Consulting and Destination Elmwood, finalized their proposals and presented them to a fictitious City Council panel made up of ULI member volunteers. Both received great praises from the volunteer council members for their presentations and after careful deliberation, A1 Consulting was chosen as the winner of the RFP for their strong vision statement, dedication to building affordable housing and emphasis on job creation, all while meeting or exceeding the financial requirements. The group was awarded with the coveted prize of ‘UrbanPlan bragging rights’.

Maleda Berhane, Principal & CEO at AR Spruce, closed the two days out with a presentation on how to apply lessons learned at UrbanPlan to real life projects, specifically highlighting various methods of community engagement. She highlighted two projects, The Exchange in North Philadelphia and Waterloo Playground in West Kensington, and facilitated an engaging conversation on the important relationship between developers and City Council.

Feedback from the workshop was overwhelmingly positive, and many of the participants expressed interest in expanding the program for their fellow colleagues. ULI Philadelphia would like to thank all the participants, ULI volunteers, UrbanPlan Co-Chairs Eleanor Sharpe and Tiffany Thurman and the rest of the committee, Bridget Obikoya and Maleda Berhane for their time and dedication to making this event possible.