Forming Authentic Civic Partnerships While Creating Joyful, Equitable Cities

Abstract

Berkeley Y-PLAN (Youth-Plan, Learn, Act, Now!) connects faculty, undergraduate and graduate mentors at the University of California, Berkeley, with young people in public schools. Together they tackle challenges posed by city leaders in their communities. Using the Y-PLAN educational strategy, children and youth engage in city planning and design projects focused on four areas of the civic domain: transportation, housing, public space, and schools/services. In the process, young people use their personal experiences and fresh insights to improve their neighborhoods and cities, while civic leaders are challenged to integrate those perspectives into civic policies and practices. This chapter shines a spotlight on elementary school children who respond eagerly when adults ask them to engage in the challenges of climate change and sea-level rise. Using the Y-PLAN five-step methodology, the students learn about and use professional tools to grapple with tough issues. They then study innovative best practices, and generate recommendations for how to respond to those challenges. With the support and scaffolding of adults and university mentors this case study shows that elementary age students are capable of being powerful agents of design and policy change, moving their community affirmatively toward justice and joy for everyone.

The bright multi-purpose room was packed with families, teachers, and students. Twenty-five fourth-graders proudly stood in front of the room next to an eight-foot-long scale model of the city of San Rafael. The model they collaboratively built and entitled Marin Red Cross featured their proposed strategies to protect the city from the impacts of climate change and sea-level rise. Some students were admiring the colorful 3-D features on the model they made from clay, paper, and natural materials. Others were holding graphic posters articulating their ideas in more detail. One by one the children bravely stepped up to the microphone to share their recommendations for levees, oyster bed reefs, protective walkways, bridges, and more. The people in the audience were impressed with the range of sophisticated strategies the children proposed to meet the challenges posed by climate change.

One of the students, 10-year-old Alex Macías, proudly showcased his model and poster as he described his vision for a “floodable park” adjacent to the San Francisco Bay. A local activist commended him on his detailed proposal, then asked him “What will happen when our toilets won’t flush?” At first Alex was confused. He couldn’t see the connection between sea-level rise and toilets. The activist explained how when sea levels rise, percolating groundwater impacts the sewers and storm drains. Alex scratched his head and dejectedly went back to his seat. Ten minutes later he was back, eagerly and earnestly telling the woman, “I think I have the solution about how to keep our toilets working.” He then described his idea for a plumbing pipe system to remediate flooding. Even though his plan may have needed more technical information, Alex clearly saw himself as an innovator, problem solver, and leader—ready to meet every challenge thrown his way.

Introduction

The scenario described in the vignette above was just one of many public encounters these students had as part of the year-long Bay Area Resilient by Design (RbD) Youth Challenge. Architects, planners, landscape architects, artists, university mentors from University of California, Berkeley’s Y-PLAN (Youth-Plan, Learn, Act, Now!), and the local non-profit, Youth in Arts engaged these children in a program which ran parallel to the 2018 Resilient by Design (RbD) Bay Area Challenge, a Rockefeller Foundation-funded initiative that enlisted international teams of adult professionals to work in nine cities around the San Francisco Bay (Siegel, 2019). Each team worked with local community leaders to generate proposals about how their city might best respond to the impacts of climate change and other environmental disasters. During the RbD Challenge, the children had many opportunities to speak out in public and share their knowledge and abilities with friends, family, and civic leaders.

This process gave the students the confidence and skills to face tough questions like the one Alex fielded, to ponder them, and to think things through further. This chapter explores how, with the support (and scaffolding) of adults and university mentors, the Y-PLAN methodology enables elementary age students to become powerful agents of design and policy change, moving their community or city affirmatively toward more justice and joy.

The sense of agency that young Alex spontaneously demonstrated in that community meeting was an expression of his experience in Y-PLAN. An initiative of the Center for Cities + School at UC Berkeley and part of the University-Community Links (UC Links) network, (https://uclinks.berkeley.edu/) Y-PLAN builds the foundation for academic success and civic activism for children such as Alex. It creates a framework within which students can cultivate their capacity to be leaders and innovators (McKoy et al., 2021).

For the Resilient by Design (RbD) Challenge, Alex was among 45 other 9- and 10-year-old children at Laurel Dell Elementary School in San Rafael, California, who worked side-by-side with adult architects, planners, and landscape architects to generate strategies to respond to rising seas projected to impact their city. Through the Y-PLAN experience, Alex and his classmates had the opportunity to build their skills and knowledge while they generated innovative solutions to an authentic community development challenge (Bishop & Corkery, 2017). They conducted research and made models and posters featuring their recommendations and visions to respond to climate change. They shared their findings and their proposals at community meetings, nights for families, and even a Flood Fair at their local park. Throughout the process, students applied core academic skills as they thought critically, used their voices, and experienced themselves as active participants in shaping the future of their city.

At its heart, Y-PLAN is a participatory planning and civic learning strategy and methodology that brings together the fields of city planning and education (McKoy et al., 2021). Since its inception in 2000, Y-PLAN has centered on youth engagement in city planning. Through civic learning experiences in public school classrooms, Y-PLAN’s practice is underpinned by a set of core conditions. These conditions include:

• 1. partnering young people with an authentic civic client;

• 2. maintaining a social justice and equity focus;

• 3. focusing on a hands-on place-based project;

• 4. aligning with public school-based curriculum/working within school classrooms;

• 5. adhering to a rigorous five-step research methodology (Fig. 15.2).

In Y-PLAN, university students partner with K-12 classrooms, city planners, and civic leaders to form intergenerational communities of practice using the Y-PLAN methodology to take on authentic city planning projects posed to them by city leaders. The Y-PLAN teams focus on four areas of the civic domain: transportation, housing, public space and schools, services, and amenities. Woven through all four domains are themes of resilience, health, and sustainability (McKoy et al., 2021).

Access, navigation, and transformation are the three critical components that form the conceptual framework for understanding how the process embodied in the Y-PLAN Theory of Change supports student agency while addressing the challenges facing our cities (Fig. 15.1).

Fig. 15.1

Y-PLAN Theory of Change

According to the Theory of Change, using the Y-PLAN process in a community of practice enables young people to have access to—and meaningful interaction with—adult professionals and civic leaders focused on civic challenges. At the same time, this process enables city planners, leaders, and activists to directly access the lived experiences of the residents they serve. For children and youth, this access creates the opportunity, time, and guidance for them to learn about and use professional planning tools, vocabulary, and knowledge. The process often grants young people access to information, public officials, agencies, and places of power from which they and their families may have traditionally been excluded. On the other hand, this two-way access enables adult professionals and civic leaders to develop authentic relationships and trust across traditional barriers of age, race, class, and place enabling them to implement civic policy and design decisions more equitably and respectfully.

When children and teens participate in the Y-PLAN process, they often gain access to people, organizations, and places where policy and design decisions are being made. This enables them to see and learn about how our cities function, and why they look the way they do. When young people have the opportunity and space to participate as stakeholders and navigate within this decision-making process, they can contribute in crafting a city’s future. Young people are often eager to be part of the solution to the problems they see around them. As the opening vignette illustrates, when they have opportunities to be active participants in planning our collective future, children bring insightful voices to the table. When adults and young people can navigate these networks of power together, they are able to help cultivate more diverse social networks and reach across historically established societal divides (Hart, 1997).

When planning professionals and civic leaders work effectively for and with children and youth, together they can leverage young people’s expertise and lived experience in order to transform city systems to favorably impact all city communities and populations. Achieving meaningful transformation requires tapping into the capacity of young people to use their imagination to meet challenges, to apply the tools and skills they have learned to address real-life problems, and to think critically and creatively about the communities in which they live. Working alongside adult allies, students of all ages can navigate and transform those places, policies, and processes to help their cities and schools better meet the needs of their diverse residents (Derr et al., 2018).

There has never been a more important time for young people to play a direct, visible role in calling for change, in schools, and within cities. When given the opportunities, skills, and knowledge to learn how to access social systems of power and navigate new ways of thinking about, planning, and managing cities, they can become active participants in transforming the very definition of city planning. In the process, young people use their personal experiences and fresh insights to improve their neighborhoods and cities. In turn, civic leaders access the lived experiences of community members and integrate those perspectives into civic policies and practices. Young people and civic leaders, deeply engaged in this process, can more fully honor local conditions and the socio-political needs and concerns of a diverse populace. Together all participants in this process gain a new and essential understanding of what it means to plan a truly inclusive, joyful, and just city.

Program Context

Each year, 20–25 undergraduate and graduate students enroll in a course taught by Dr. Deborah McKoy (chapter co-author) within the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley. The students typically come from Architecture, Urban Planning, and Education, but over the years have also come from departments such as Engineering, Business, and Landscape Architecture.

Meeting once a week in a 3-D hands-on studio, Dr. McKoy introduces the university students to the theory and practice of engaging and mobilizing young people as agents of change in their communities. They learn about how to mentor younger students across the K-12 age spectrum. Guest speakers come into the studio periodically to introduce theory and best practices in education, urban policy, planning, and design. Before working with children and youth, the mentors also learn about the Y-PLAN five-step methodology by going through the process themselves (Fig. 15.2). They also study inspirational examples in urban planning and design that they can share with younger people.

Fig. 15.2

The five-step Y-PLAN Roadmap

The university student mentors then go into elementary, middle, and high schools to work directly with children and teens engaging in the sequential Y-PLAN process, and grappling with challenges in their local communities. This chapter focuses on a Y-PLAN case study at the K-5 level, while Chap. 14 in this volume by Professor Ellen Middaugh at San José State University features a middle-school case study. At the elementary school level, the mentors work in Bay Area schools alongside seasoned architects, planners, and educators. The school sites change over the years, but many are long-standing partnerships. Together these teams collaborate with classroom teachers and civic clients to craft a project question and a curriculum plan for a 6- to 15-week period.

The project client is typically a city planner, a department head, or a leader in the community with a problem to solve. Project questions focus on the four domains: housing, transportation, public space, and schools/services/amenities (Fig. 15.3). Examples of project questions include: “How can we improve the main street in our community?” or “How can we re-imagine a ghost mall in our city?” Members of the Y-PLAN team, university mentors, then meet with the children in the public-school classroom for a 2-hour session once a week. Together, along with the children’s teachers, the mentors guide young students through the five-step Y-PLAN Roadmap to Change process (Fig. 15.2). In each session the children are introduced to information, skills, and best practices. Then everyone works together in a hands-on studio session—drawing, building, making models, mapping, and more. The client and other specialists may also come into the sessions for strategic one-time presentations.

Fig. 15.3

Y-PLAN project questions focus on four domains of public life, while also supporting the individual growth of each student and the optimal outcomes for cities

In a typical Y-PLAN program with elementary school children, Step One, Start Up, the team presents the project question to the young students and introduces the client. The team leads off a typical session with a slide show or presentation to introduce issues and ideas such as What is architecture? What is planning? To help focus on the strengths and talents each child brings to the table, the young students build a Tower of Power. These model structures feature the child’s name, plus affirmative adjectives such as creative, smart, or loyal to describe themselves. This step is important, as it builds the foundation for the collaborative work that is to follow during the next steps of the process. Children start to understand what qualities they, as well as their peers, bring to the table as they set out meeting their project challenge. When the landscape architects, Bionic, from the RbD Challenge, were the clients, they posed this question to the children: What will keep my family, friends, community, and me—safe, strong, and prepared for floods, earthquakes, sea-level rise, and other environmental challenges? The stage was set for the children to get to work on this challenge for the next 3 months.

In Y-PLAN, during Step Two, Making Sense of the City, the children go on a “site visit” to collect data, make maps, and/or to interview community members about their project challenge. Based upon their observations, the information gleaned from community members, and research about the history of the site, they then conduct a SWOT analysis: a planning method used to document and tell the story about the cumulative Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats at that site. During this phase, planners with expertise in mapping or engineers specializing in public transportation may come for a session to share their knowledge and teach the children how to use technical tools such as maps or visualization techniques. They also introduce the students to authentic language used by professionals grappling with these issues. For the Laurel Dell Resilient by Design Youth Challenge, strategic planners specializing in climate change and sea-level rise came into the classroom and showed the children map images projecting where sea level was going to impact San Rafael in 10 years, 50 years, and 100 years. The children were in awe as they could see how their own homes and neighborhoods were projected to be under 12″ of water or more during their lifetime.

Into Action is Step Three of the Y-PLAN process. Here, the children view images of inspirational best practices in relevant projects around the world—with a special focus on issues that will inform their visioning process. This is where the students and faculty from the university play a key role, as they collect and present images to inspire the young students—based upon their expertise and academic knowledge of best practices (Lange, 2018). The children then work in brainstorming teams to generate ideas to respond to their SWOT analysis and their project question. The university mentors help the young students articulate and professionalize their visions and recommendations—in the form of posters, models, digital and oral presentations. They offer the children guidance, inspiration, and individualized attention as the young students build their technical skills and capabilities. For the Laurel Dell students, images from Amsterdam and New York City helped them visualize how people could affirmatively “live with water.” They loved seeing canals, floating homes, oyster beds, bridges, and levees that protect people from rising seas while improving the quality of life in those cities. They voted on the best practices and ideas they felt were applicable in San Rafael (Fig. 15.4). Then they collated the results and created charts that guided their own visioning process, as they generated proposals for the city (Fig. 15.5). Hence, their proposals included visionary ideas such as horizontal levees with walking paths, floodable parklands, floating structures, and uniquely designed bridges.

Fig. 15.4

After learning about a range of best practices to respond to sea-level rise, the students voted upon the strategies they felt could best be applied to local conditions in San Rafael

Fig. 15.5

The students created a bar chart to represent the top strategies they felt would be most effective, and which they could adapt and develop in their models and drawings

In Step Four, Going Public, the university mentors support the young students to prepare to present their visions for change to their clients at Youth Summits or culminating events in civic venues such as City Hall. Mentors help the young students create graphics or digital presentations. They coach the children on their public speaking and help the children practice how to field tough questions about their ideas. For the Resilient by Design Challenge, the students at Laurel Dell School gave a presentation to their families and others at a school community meeting. They used their public-speaking skills while displaying the large 3-D model of San Rafael they created (Fig. 15.6). The model illustrated the neighborhoods to be impacted by rising seas in the coming years, and the students’ various proposed strategies for protecting those neighborhoods. During this event the children fielded some tough questions, such as the one Alex grappled with, as described at the beginning of this chapter.

Fig. 15.6

Students presented their collaborative map of San Rafael, featuring strategies to respond to the impacts of sea-level rise in the neighborhoods along the creek and canal, as well as downtown

That spring the landscape architect team, Bionic, sponsored a Flood Fair in a local park. The weekend events featured a tricked out Flood Mobile, informational exhibits, and activities such as a real-time glacial melt display. The event was packed with families with children, community leaders, and participants in the Resilient by Design Challenge (Siegel, 2019). The Laurel Dell children created T-shirts to be distributed for free to community members (Fig. 15.7). They also exhibited their models and posters designed to encourage people to prepare for climate-induced emergencies such as floods, fires, and heat waves. They also created an interview booth, where they asked residents and community leaders about their emergency preparedness plans (Fig. 15.8). Finally at the end of the school year, the students presented their projects and recommendations to a panel of civic leaders, urging them to consider their recommendations in future policy and design decisions in the city.

Fig. 15.7

Alex with the posters and T-shirt he helped design for the San Rafael Flood Fair

Fig. 15.8

At the Flood Fair, the students created an interview booth, where they asked community members and civic leaders about preparedness plans

Throughout the full arc of this Y-PLAN process, especially during Step Five, Looking Forward, Looking Back, the college mentors give the young students feedback on their work. They also answer questions the children may have about college and careers, such as “What is college?” “How do you get into college?” “How much does it cost?” “What do you want to be after college?” The cohort of students at Laurel Dell continued to work with mentors from Y-PLAN the following year. They had many opportunities to reflect upon and integrate their work on sea-level rise and climate change into a 2050 visioning project sponsored by a Bay Area-wide coalition and the San Rafael 2040 General Plan (McKoy et al., 2019).

In recent years, the UC Berkeley Y-PLAN mentorship model has expanded to other higher education “hubs” at UC Davis, San José State University, Cal Poly Pomona, and more. Together at each of these locations, university, school, and community partners are using the Y-PLAN methodology as inspiration to authentically engage and mobilize youth in the civic arena in their local communities. Lead professors are also adapting Y-PLAN to align with academic and social goals specific to their respective departments. Professor Ellen Middaugh’s chapter in this volume (Chap. 14) is one example showcasing the Y-PLAN process with San José State University students working with middle school youths at Escuela Paolo Freire in San José, California.

Key Ideas

The Laurel Dell case study illustrates how—when asked—children want to be real players in larger community efforts. They have a key role to play in an intergenerational community of practice. When adults consider young people’s basic needs first, develop mutual understanding, build trust, embrace the K-12 age spectrum, maintain high professional expectations, and forge connections between all participants, the results are powerful. Embracing these six essential axioms are key to engaging children and youth meaningfully in planning and designing just and joyful cities (McKoy et al., 2021).

Focus Upon Basic Needs First

As members of our most vulnerable groups, these fourth-grade students, many of whom were also newcomers to the US, had a unique understanding of their neighborhoods and community. They were able to instinctively speak directly about how basic needs for safety, security, and stability are critical to their families and neighbors. When we discussed sea-level rise, students had firsthand knowledge about the hardships caused by flooding from storms and tidal surges. Many live by the San Rafael Creek/canal, which is connected directly to the San Francisco Bay, so rising seas are not an abstract issue for these children. Many of their strategies for this project focused on the quality of life and basic needs such as safety, food, and housing. One girl remembered, “When it rained and the drains overflowed, my father had to wear really tall boots to get to his truck to go to work. We were pretty scared and worried.” Another wondered, “If it floods again, people might have to share water and food.” While thinking about the future, the children rightly asserted the primacy of keeping the prerequisite focus on the basics. Our youngest residents have clear, creative visions of how their community could better respond to their own and their peers’ needs for features such as enhanced safety, mobility, access to nature and joy.

Mutual Understanding and Sharing

The Resilient by Design process granted the young students and a wide range of adults access to each other. This reciprocal dynamic helped open up opportunities for mutual understanding across the youth/adult divide. Adults and university mentors on the Y-PLAN team listened with interest and humility to the youth voices and gained fresh insights and approaches. They gained a deeper appreciation of the lived experiences and perspectives of young people. Conversely, the children gained a better understanding of, and respect for, the wisdom, experience, and abilities that the adult professionals and university students brought into the equation. Youth and adults together participated in an interactive process where all voices were valued and needed while everyone worked for the common good of the community. The Flood Fair put this partnership on display as the RbD Bionic team, the Y-PLAN team, and the Laurel Dell students brought lively, informative educational experiences into the park in the heart of the community. The children brought their families and friends into the park to see their friendly, interactive exhibits (Fig. 15.9). The Bionic team brought the Flood Mobile, put maps, renderings, and scientific information on display alongside the children’s work.

Fig. 15.9

At the Flood Fair, the students showcased their model for families and friends, participated in a question and answer session, and participated in a press conference with local leaders

Trust and Genuine Connections

For the RbD Youth Challenge, the Y-PLAN team met consistently with the young students, every week for months. This enabled the mentors to forge honest and authentic connections with the children. Repeated interactions over time established the foundational trust necessary for successful collaboration with youth. Being genuinely included and heard by adults imbued the children with a sense of purpose and pride. This was on display when Alex spoke at the community meeting and later engaged with the community activist. When young people such as Alex feel heard, understood, and genuinely included and respected, it enables them to see themselves as innovators and leaders, with the courage to speak and interact confidently with adults.

Engaging Across the K-12 Spectrum

Engaging across the entire age spectrum is extremely powerful. Students as young as 5 or 6 years-old can contribute powerful insights about the environments they inhabit. When they are encouraged and supported to engage in projects in authentic and meaningful ways, they are eager and able to take on the challenges facing their cities. Children can grapple with complex issues, such as transit, housing, and sustainability, with intensity, intelligence, and creativity. Participating in these projects boosts their confidence and their appetite for higher learning and lifelong civic activism, and their proposals are consistently imbued with optimism and hope.

The fourth-grade students at Laurel Dell were excited about generating imaginative, insightful, and humane solutions to meet the challenges of climate change. Engaging with the very real challenge activated their sense of purpose and investment in their community. In community meetings, and at events such as the flood fair, they were proud to share their expertise and knowledge about immediately understandable topics such as emergency preparedness, as well as long-term visions for how to change the city infrastructure to protect from storm surges.

Real Tools and Responsibilities

Rather than engaging young people as “window dressing,” it is both possible and effective to introduce authentic professional terms, practices, and responsibilities to participants of all ages (Bishop & Corkery, 2017). Young students can analyze data, create models and maps, employ technical vocabulary, propose solutions, and provide leadership to help meet contemporary urban challenges. Once professional relationships have formed, students deserve the opportunity to shine, impress, excel, and be held accountable. Gaining access to and knowledge of rigorous, authentic practices, and expressing their ideas with rigor is an empowering experience for young students.

In an age-appropriate way, it is possible to introduce technical terms, tools of the trade, and complex concepts to children. Raising the bar of expectations, praising students’ early efforts, and letting them know how they can improve supports their growth, improves their projects, and most importantly is a valuable investment in our shared future. When young people use professional language, it legitimizes and amplifies the power of their ideas.

For the RbD Youth Challenge, Laurel Dell’s fourth-grade students showed how eager children are to use real tools to analyze data, create models, and generate imaginative, insightful, and humane solutions. The children loved being introduced to inspiring best practices from around the world. Images of waterways and floating buildings in other countries showed them how people live with water. Learning about the creative, protective strategies being implemented in New York City in the wake of Hurricane Sandy helped them think realistically. The students translated their research into models and posters featuring their own vibrant, yet realistic, proposed strategies for the future of the canal district and central San Rafael. Their proposals focused on protecting neighborhoods from flooding, while also enhancing livability, accessibility, and fun. Their solutions included lush living shorelines by the bay and delightful protective boardwalks along San Rafael Creek (Siegel, 2019).

Presenting in a high-level civic arena brings gravitas and credibility to students’ work and impresses adults. When students give speeches fortified with data and technical language it amplifies the strength and transformative potency of their proposals for change. Laurel Dell’s fourth-grade students were enthusiastic about presenting their work to stakeholders in community forums. To the astonishment of some of the adults in the audience, words and phrases such as “sea-level rise,” “floodable parklands,” “education stations,” “horizontal levees,” and “protective wetlands” rolled off their tongues with aplomb. They showed adults that they were capable of grappling with complex issues with intelligence, intensity, and creativity. And they were quite proud of it.

Connectivity: Bridge Gaps Between Disparate Networks

Children have the power to motivate adults and break down barriers. Young people’s participation in the planning process can be inspiring, heartfelt, and personal. Their activism, energy, and leadership can catalyze the engagement of the adults around them (Fig. 15.10). Authentically involving children in the planning process can have a transformational impact on everyone involved. When they convey complex information in accessible and compelling ways, young students can bring a broader audience into the city planning process. Their activism and leadership can catalyze engagement of adults who in some ways might see themselves as being powerless or on the margins. Children’s family members and neighbors who attend students’ events start to develop a more personal connection to the issues at hand. Through their honesty and their vulnerability, our children and youth embody the authenticity to bring people together, building bridges across differences in socioeconomic status, race, age, and more.

Fig. 15.10

The students’ enthusiasm for the project enabled them to make these posters and effectively reach out to families and friends to invite them to the Flood Fair in the community park

At Laurel Dell Elementary, children’s involvement in the RbD Youth Challenge brought a broader audience into varied settings to grapple with complex issues. The students had multiple opportunities to present models, posters, and drawings representing their visions and recommendations to adult audiences. The students provided a gateway enabling more diverse participation in issues related to the impacts of climate change and sea-level rise on the local community. Teachers, friends, and family members became intensely interested in the children’s presentations at school family night, the Flood Fair, and in other civic settings (Fig. 15.9). At these events, the students had the opportunity to shine and showcase their capacity to be community connectors. Additionally, throughout the RbD Youth Challenge, students, family members, teachers, city leaders, local businesses, academics, and community activists had multiple opportunities to see that they shared many visions and values. These respectful and informative interactions encouraged these adults and university mentors to match the children’s optimism and creativity about the future of the city.

“Embracing the six essentials for planning just and joyful cities is core to interrupting historically entrenched patterns of unequal access to opportunity for so many young people” (McKoy et al., 2021, p. 194). To effectively engage young people, especially our very youngest, requires humility, resource-sharing, and retooling by planners, civic leaders, teachers, and mentors from our universities. The results of this collaborative effort can be profound.

Discussion: Impacts and Outcomes

What are some of the most powerful and long-lasting legacies and impacts of the children at Laurel Dell Elementary’s participation in the RbD Youth Challenge? This case study demonstrates how when adults and young people follow the Y-PLAN Roadmap to Change they contribute to dual outcomes. On the one hand, the Y-PLAN process builds the capacity of young people to learn about and utilize professional best practices as they contribute data and insights from their daily lived experiences to the planning and policymaking process. In doing so, they develop college, career, and community readiness skills. Through this process, students also develop their capacity to be agents of change for themselves and their communities. On the other hand, Y-PLAN engages participating adult professionals and civic leaders in authentic planning processes with young people, while building their capacity to respect and value youth insights. This enables them to integrate the youth perspective authentically and meaningfully into plans, policies, and designs for communities and cities (Hart, 1997).

In San Rafael, the project question posed to the children at Laurel Dell was a real challenge confronting civic leaders—one which also augmented and amplified the curricular goals and content standards for fourth-grade. This project was an excellent example of a thorny design or policy issue being grappled with by civic leaders, engineers, and design professionals. It enabled the young students to conduct research and apply their academics to a tangible issue of relevance to them and their families. Teachers were excited that the project brought social studies, writing, math, and science alive for the children as they saw how subjects that were taught in the abstract in school mattered when they were applying them to a real set of conditions (Derr et al., 2018).

The landscape professionals and civic leaders incorporated the children’s recommendations into their long-term strategies for climate change and sea-level rise. Four children wrote an OpEd piece that was published in the Marin Independent Journal. This experience enhanced the children’s writing and leadership skills, while also influencing community leaders and residents. Their impact even extended beyond the local community.

In subsequent years, these students and others went through the Y-PLAN process with adult professionals, university mentors, and community members on a range of issues focused on housing, transportation, and sustainability. The children featured in this case study worked with a high-level committee of adults working on the San Rafael 2040 General Plan. Some of the young people’s recommendations (as well as photos and models) were incorporated into that Plan, which creates a framework for development in the city for the next 20 years.

Subsequent classes of third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders at the school also contributed their visions and recommendations to developers of a project to re-imagine the local ghost mall in 2021, and to the San Rafael Housing Element Working Group in 2022. Their input was integrated, along with that of other community stakeholders, into designs and plans for those projects.

The intergenerational community of practice featured here, which includes youth in schools, adult professionals in planning and government, university mentors, and community stakeholders, can facilitate a meaningful process for all participants while yielding positive outcomes for our cities. When asked—in a genuine and authentic way—to engage with the challenges of sea-level rise, the children at Laurel Dell rose to the occasion and brought a serious, fresh, and optimistic perspective to the table. They showed us how young people of all ages are eager and able to take on challenges and invest in their community. The adults participating in this project integrated the children’s actionable planning and design proposals and recommendations into city planning processes, projects, and policies. Together this community is working to change the way civic leaders and decision-makers understand the role of young people in our cities.