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BERKELEY — The 25 students enrolled in UC Berkeley’s newest class are shooting for more this semester than a good grade. In addition to earning an “A,” they intend to help solve the Bay Area’s housing shortage, prevent wildfires in the East Bay hills and slow climate change.
In any other setting, such lofty ambitions might seem foolish. But in the university’s new “Hacking4Local” class, those goals and more are part of the syllabus. In teams of four or five, students are tasked with solving real-life problems, with the knowledge that local organizations and city officials are standing by, ready to adopt any promising solutions the students uncover.
“We’re hoping that at least one of these teams comes up with something that really makes a huge difference,” said Steve Weinstein, one of the professors teaching the course.
The class is the latest offering dreamed up by a teaching team that includes startup guru and author Steven Blank, who launched the “lean startup” method that has become a well-known roadmap for building a company quickly and efficiently. Their prior classes include Stanford University’s Hacking for Defense, which teaches students to use the nimble strategies of entrepreneurs to tackle real-world problems in government, intelligence and the military.
Hacking4Local is the team’s attempt to take that same strategy and make it, well, local. Students will work on five problems: creating lower-cost housing in the Bay Area, preventing displacement in Oakland by coming up with a standard for “equitable development,” proposing better vegetation management strategies to prevent wildfires in the East Bay hills, improving the health of South Berkeley residents by drawing health care providers to the area, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the use of public transportation in Berkeley. The solutions could be tech-focused, or students could go another route by suggesting a change to city regulations or identifying other road blocks.
During the class’ second meeting last week, students sat in groups around small tables, using ice-breaker exercises to get to know their teammates. Each table was marked with a sign that spelled out the problem they’re supposed to work on for the rest of the semester.
James Martin, a 22-year-old student pursuing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, sat at the “lower-cost housing” table. His team is hatching a plan to erect small, manufactured in-law units in backyards throughout the Bay Area, working with San Leandro-based women’s impact organization WeAccel and high-tech real estate company, Dragonfly Group. Specifically, Martin and his teammates will gather and analyze data about Bay Area cities’ zoning and planning rules, local leadership and community sentiment to determine which jurisdictions may be most receptive to the backyard units. Recent state legislation has made it easier to build in-law units, but WeAccel says not every city is amenable to the small structures.
Berkeley students are the perfect candidates to figure out which cities are because they can tackle it in new ways, said WeAccel CEO Deborah Acosta.
“Out of the box thinkers — that’s the thing that really excites me always about working with students like this,” she said.
Martin, who grew up in Orinda but has called Berkeley home for the past five years, chose the lower-cost housing problem because he’s bothered by the region’s shortage of affordable housing. Astronomical rents force his fellow students to cram too many people into a home, he said.
“It’s unreasonable,” Martin said. “And solutions really need to be found.”
Martin tried once before, during a product development class a few semesters ago. His team proposed space-saving furniture, like partitions that divide a room, as a way to help people get more out of tiny living spaces. But the team ran out of time, and the idea never took off.
This time, Martin hopes to have more success.
The first assignment for all students in Hacking4Local is to conduct dozens of interviews to help them understand the scope of their given problem. Then, they will generate and test as many as 30 hypotheses and form between 15 and 20 possible solutions, said course advisor Pete Newell. They will be graded on their weekly progress reports and final presentations.
In addition to solving some of the Bay Area’s most pressing problems, the course aims to convince students they don’t have to join Facebook or Apple to have challenging, stimulating careers — they can go into the public sector.
It worked in Hacking for Defense. In the three years since the class began, nine companies have launched as a result of its coursework, Newell said, and 60 percent of students who took the class continue in some capacity to work with their government sponsor on the problem they started during class.
Pratik Sachdeva, a 26-year-old physics PhD student, hopes the Hacking4Local class can teach him how to use his analytical skills for the public good.
“I’m pretty excited about this,” he said, “and I can’t wait to see where it goes.”
