A year ago the Miller-Orchard neighborhood in southwest Iowa City requested the help of Urban and Regional Planning graduate students in the Field Problems course. The neighborhood issues included deteriorating housing, development presures in terms of conversion of single family homes to student housing, unsafe pedestrian routes, heavy traffic and crime. Nathan Kabat, Doug Ongie, Theodore Patton and Milton Thurmond created a 43 page neighborhood plan to give the residents direction. The plan is now being put into action. One of the area residents who was involved with the Urban and Regional Planning students says, "those guys are great." 

The Press-Citizen newspaper ran a full story about the plan being put into action on October 28, 2009.