It's among the city's biggest industries, and it’s at the center of many complex problems, but you won't find a real estate development course in city schools. A group of volunteers is trying to change that. NY1’s Lindsey Christ filed this report.

The Elmwood neighborhood needs help: crime is up, jobs have vanished and a fire just gutted the remaining businesses.

Luckily, there are several proposals to turn things around, all coming from high school students role-playing as real estate developers.

"They also said they really want parks and community spaces, so we have basketball courts here," one student says, showing her group’s plans.

It's an unusual curriculum taught here at Brooklyn Tech High School, culminating in a presentation to a mock City Council Committee, comprised of actual real estate professionals.  

"The city puts a lot of various regulations and the challenging part of this project is you have to work within those and then still somehow try to make money for yourself and then please the actual people of the community," says student Sheldon Noel.  

The curriculum, called UrbanPlan, was developed at the University of California, Berkeley, and is now being taught in economics and government classes to about 2,000 New York City students.

"It's leaps and bounds beyond anything I could ever imagine regular economics class. It brings life to the class," says economics teacher Jackie Manduley.

It's sponsored by the non-profit Urban Land Institute, which also provides the professional volunteers, who serve as advisors to guide and critique the students.

"It gives them an experience that I don't think you get very much and schools these days anymore, where you're thinking about a complex problem over a long period of time and you're not just doing multiple-choice questions,” says real estate developer Mitch Wasterlain.

The volunteers come from some golden names in real estate, like Zeckendorf Development and Gensler Architects. They’re not easy on the students, though, making them defend decisions like proposing a homeless shelter by a magnet school.

The students say it's made them look at their whole city differently.

"You're going to question why they had this building here, not a certain other building and what the benefits are of having this," says student Saif Khalique.

Some students we spoke with say they don’t just want to question development decisions; they want to make them as urban planners some day.