Students will participate in a neighborhood walk and listen to insights from local urban planners to explore and document the diverse needs and challenges faced by their community, marking the beginning of their understanding of how California communities change over time.

Students will analyze insights from community partner workshops and the neighborhood walk to articulate specific changes and challenges in their neighborhood, defining a focused problem statement for their design solutions.

Students will brainstorm diverse solutions to community challenges, drawing from previous insights, collaborating in groups to sketch and propose innovative neighborhood improvements, which sets the foundation for creating prototypes.

Students will use feedback from their ideation phase to build simple, low-cost models or sketches of their neighborhood design projects, allowing them to visualize potential improvements, engage in iterative testing, and prepare for peer reviews, thus deepening their understanding of community change dynamics in California.

Students will test their neighborhood design ideas by presenting their prototypes to community partners for feedback, iterating on designs based on insights gained, and preparing to showcase their refined models at the neighborhood improvement fair.