What this is
You take one Chennai area (a ward, a named neighborhood, or a defined 15-minute catchment) and redesign it as a 15-minute neighborhood. You allocate the area across 8 urban land uses, quantify how your plan performs across 7 objectives, name the trade-offs you made, and write implementation recommendations addressed to a real municipal body. You then present the redesign as a public activity, with a shareable artifact, at the school's environmental showcase.
The intellectual core is the same one the whole year has built toward: real design has no win-everything answer. Your plan is scored on whether you name and quantify the trade-offs honestly, not on whether it scores high on every objective.
GRASPS framing
| Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Goal | Design and present a 15-minute redesign of a Chennai area that balances access, housing, green-blue space, heat, flood resilience, equity, and mobility, with the trade-offs named. |
| Role | Neighborhood planner / sustainability consultant. |
| Audience | A real municipal body (Greater Chennai Corporation, CMDA, or a ward office), plus the public audience at the school's environmental showcase. |
| Situation | A growing, flood-prone, heat-stressed Chennai neighborhood needs to meet daily needs on foot without displacing the people already living there. Resources and land are limited; objectives compete. |
| Product | Sustainable Neighborhood Plan (brief plus map, OR map-based infographic, OR captioned video) + AI Documentation Template + an Earth Week public activity and shareable artifact. |
| Standards | HS-ETS1-3 (anchor), HS-ETS1-1, HS-ESS3-1, HS-ESS3-4 (primary). HS-ESS3-3 (secondary, via the Land Allocation Optimizer), HS-LS2-7 (secondary). SEP-2, SEP-5, SEP-6, SEP-7, SEP-8. |
The 8 urban land-use categories
Your allocation must cover the whole area across these eight, in any mix you justify:
- Residential (low and mid density)
- Mixed-use (residential over commercial)
- Commercial, retail, and markets
- Civic and services (schools, clinics, government, libraries)
- Green space (parks, street trees, urban ecology)
- Blue space (waterways, eris, canals, wetland buffer)
- Streets and mobility (roads, bus and metro, cycle, pedestrian)
- Existing fabric and informal settlements (the area as it actually is)
The 7 objectives you quantify
- 15-minute access (the headline metric): share of residents within a 15-minute walk of daily needs
- Housing capacity: people housed and density
- Green-blue cover: ecology, shade, amenity
- Heat comfort: thermal and heat-island performance
- Flood resilience: permeable land and water retention
- Equity and displacement: who is displaced, affordability, treatment of informal settlements
- Mobility: car-dependence versus walking, cycling, and transit
The 8 steps
- Choose your area (Chennai ward, neighborhood, or 15-minute catchment).
- Area Profile (about 1 page): current land-use mix, density, green-blue assets and losses, flood and heat vulnerability, who lives here, and the current 15-minute-access baseline. (K/U)
- Propose Allocation: assign the area across the 8 categories; place by real geography. (T/T design move)
- Trade-off Analysis: quantify across at least 4 of the 7 objectives, and name what you sacrificed, not just what you gained. (T/T heart)
- Implementation Recommendations: 5 or more concrete steps, each naming what, who, when, and cost-or-equity, addressed to a named municipal body.
- Work both AI partners: the Urban Planner and the Equity & Resilience Partner; synthesize their disagreement.
- Evaluate your sources + AI Documentation: apply OPVL to at least 3 sources (one municipal or government planning source, one community or NGO source, one AI explanation), naming a specific Limitation for each. Complete the AI Documentation Template, including one specific thing the AI got wrong. (K/U gate)
- Earth Week public presentation: the Communication performance, a public activity plus a shareable artifact for a real municipal audience. (C)
- Trade-off naming is what T/T reads for. A plan that hides its trade-offs, claiming to improve everything, is what the lower T/T bands describe. No strand is capped.
- Quantification is a T/T expectation. Trade-offs named only in words, with no numbers, sit in the middle T/T bands.
- Generic recommendations ("protect green space") sit in the lower T/T bands. Be specific about what, who, when, and cost-or-equity.
- AI Documentation is required. If AI was used and the documentation is missing, the plan is not scored until it arrives; no strand is capped.
- Map and visual quality is a C signal. Strong text with a weak map sits in the middle C bands; the map is the primary planning artifact.
Public-artifact guardrail: the public piece must show the trade-off (to get this, we gave up that), not hide it behind a clean slogan. A polished message that erases the sacrifice undercuts the T/T gate.
The simulator
A planned Land Allocation Optimizer will let you redesign your area on a grid and watch the seven objective scores respond, with a Pareto frontier that lights up where you hit a real trade-off, and an export that drops into your plan. It is in development. See the simulator hub.
Deliverable formats: same rubric
- Written brief plus map: about 4 pages, with the map as a full-page artifact.
- Map-based infographic: one large annotated visual that carries the allocation, the scores, and the trade-off.
- Captioned video: about 7 minutes, fully captioned, with the map and scores on screen.
Whichever format you choose, the map is the primary planning artifact. The public Earth Week activity and shareable artifact (the artifact is posted through a student takeover of the school's Instagram account for this unit) are separate from the plan format and required of everyone, with consent, an opt-out, and a non-public fallback available.
Sources, OPVL, and AI Documentation
Your Plan rests on sources, and planning sources are rarely neutral. Apply OPVL to at least three sources: one municipal or government planning source (a corporation report, a master plan, a ward document), one community or NGO source (a residents'-association statement, an advocacy report), and one AI explanation of urban planning. Name at least one specific Limitation for each, and cite them in the Plan. The Source Evaluator walks the four letters if you need it.
Every substantive conversation with the Urban Planner or the Equity & Resilience Partner that informs your plan must be logged in the AI Documentation Template. Capture what you asked, what you accepted, what you rejected, and at least one specific thing the AI got wrong (both partners are confidently wrong about quantitative claims, so there is almost always something to catch). The AI explanation you OPVL above counts as one of your three sources. Missing documentation when AI was used triggers the K/U gate below.
How this is scored
Scored against the AISC strand rubric (K/U / T/T / C). See the full rubric for the strand definitions. Each strand mark is read holistically from the whole body of evidence this assessment produces. There is no weighted average of parts.
K/U: Knowledge & Understanding
| Band | Descriptor |
|---|---|
| 7–8 Exemplary | Area Profile is accurate and specific (current land-use mix, density, green-blue assets and losses, flood and heat vulnerability, who lives here, and a real 15-minute-access baseline). Urban-systems vocabulary used correctly throughout (the 8 land uses, the 7 objectives, permeability, heat island, ecosystem services at city scale). AI Documentation complete, including a specific thing a partner got wrong. |
| 5–6 Proficient | Profile mostly accurate with minor gaps; vocabulary mostly correct with small slips. AI Documentation present but thinner, or the "got wrong" entry is general. |
| 3–4 Developing | Profile superficial or partly incorrect; vocabulary inconsistent. AI Documentation minimal. If AI was used and the documentation is missing, K/U is described by this band. |
| 1–2 Limited | Little understanding of the area or the urban systems. Profile missing or incorrect; vocabulary largely absent. AI Documentation absent. |
T/T: Thinking & Transfer
| Band | Descriptor |
|---|---|
| 7–8 Exemplary | Allocation is a genuine design response to this area. Trade-offs are named explicitly and quantified across at least 4 objectives ("to get X, this plan gives up Y," with numbers on each side). The plan synthesizes the two partners' disagreement rather than averaging or ignoring one. Recommendations are specific (what, who, when, cost-or-equity). |
| 5–6 Proficient | Reasonable allocation. Trade-offs are named but mostly in words, with few or no numbers. Recommendations somewhat specific. Trade-offs named only qualitatively is described by this band. |
| 3–4 Developing | Trade-offs are hidden or absent (the plan claims to improve everything), or recommendations are generic ("protect green space," "improve mobility"). Allocation weakly justified. Hiding the trade-off sits T/T here. |
| 1–2 Limited | No real design reasoning. No trade-offs named. Recommendations missing or unrelated to the allocation. |
C: Communication
| Band | Descriptor |
|---|---|
| 7–8 Exemplary | Plan is clear and well-structured. The map is a strong primary artifact that makes both the allocation and the trade-off legible at a glance. The public activity engages a real audience, keeps the trade-off visible (to get this, we gave up that), and fields questions substantively. |
| 5–6 Proficient | Plan mostly clear. Map is adequate but weaker than the text. Public piece is clear but softens or buries the trade-off. Strong text with a weak map is described by this band. |
| 3–4 Developing | Structure hard to follow. Map is poor or decorative rather than informative. The public piece hides the trade-off behind a clean slogan. |
| 1–2 Limited | Unclear throughout. No usable map. Minimal public engagement. |