The construction and infrastructure of a city provide the foundation of an ideal urban lab for high school students to discover how to dissect the multifaceted layers of a place and make it their own. For six weeks in the winter of 2008, ninth-grade students in Providence, Rhode Island's Hope High School/Hope Arts Community learned to look closely and imagine change for their city's downtown while working with graduate students in the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) InsideOut Studio. The team of RISD students and ninth graders explored downtown Providence through direct experience and observation using mapping, photography, and modelmaking. This article describes how the students produced projects that demonstrated options for a more ecologically, socially, and economically vibrant Providence. (Contains 1 online resource.)