Ariel H, Bierbaum, MCP is the Program and Operations Manager at the Center for Cities & Schools at the University of California, Berkeley. She manages the Y-PLAN project and is developing collaborations and research around expanding stakeholder participation across the region's public planning processes to include youth, their families, and schools across the Bay Area. Ariel brings over eight years of academic and professional experience in strategic planning and communications, community engagement, and university-community relations.
Ariel holds a Master in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
Deborah L. McKoy, PhD, MPA is the Executive Director and Founder of the UC Berkeley Center for Cities and Schools at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development. Deborah is also a Lecturer in the Departments of City and Regional Planning and Graduate School of Education where she has taught the interdisciplinary Y-PLAN course since 1999. She has worked at the intersection of urban policy and education for fifteen years at national and international levels both as a researcher and professional policy maker. Dr. McKoy's research looks at the intersection of educational reform, community development and public policy. She holds a Master's Degree in Public Policy and Administration from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Educational Policy from UC Berkeley.
"Why are we not asked what we think - we live here - we go to school here - why are we close to invisible to folks here [city hall]?" --Ashley, Y-PLAN 2003, McClymonds High School
While city planning practitioners and community development professionals often seek to include diverse constituents, particularly as a way to ensure equitable development across regions, they often overlook young people as key stakeholders in the community. Youth are too often invisible to policy makers and planners alike despite having unique and important perspectives on how cities function for them, their peers, and other families/residents. Engaging young people in the practice of planning has multifold purposes, on individual and institutional levels.
Individually, active participation can enhance young people's daily experience in their own environments. This type of engagement also increases their commitment as active citizens, building a personal identity as an empowered and informed civic actor in government. Finally, young people learn about planning processes that create friendly and livable places, which also can introduce them to a range of career opportunities. In addition, and equally important, is recognizing youth as an important resource to enhance city planning practice by opening up public processes and institutions to a broader set of stakeholders, including youth, their families, and their school communities.
This article showcases the Y-PLAN (Youth - Plan, Learn, Act, Now), an initiative sponsored by the Center for Cities and Schools at University of California, Berkeley that connects youth and their schools to actual planning projects in their communities. We first elaborate on the citizen participation theory that grounds this work, detail the structure of Y-PLAN, offer a brief history of past Y-PLAN projects and their outcomes, and finally provide a more detailed and illustrative case study from the past two years working in Emeryville, California. The article concludes with a discussion of how Y-PLAN students and adult partner, "allies", learn from each other over time and how this initiative, based on a course at UC Berkeley, is expanding throughout the Bay Area region.
The Context for Citizen Participation in City Planning
Community participation first appeared as a vague requirement in urban renewal programs with the Housing Act of 1954. A more concrete set of criteria for "maximum feasible participation" was established with the Model Cities Act of 1966. Although this law required that communities participate in defining interests and values for redevelopment, the process of eliciting and incorporating community input remained poorly defined. In fact, public participation received plenty of lip service without clearly articulated requirements.
Against this backdrop, Sherry Arnstein (1969) constructed her "Ladder of Citizen Participation," which created typologies for citizen participation in a public decision-making process. Arnstein's fundamental point was that participation without redistribution of power leads to an empty and frustrating process for the powerless. As a result of this frustration, plans fail to win community acceptance, and the community itself feels further marginalized and may engage in public protest. The ladder has since become a central component in city planners' training. The rungs of the ladder correspond to the extent of citizens' power, that is, their ability to determine planning outcomes. The ladder metaphor is useful in recognizing and categorizing the different types of public participation that occur in planning projects.
Rodger Hart adapted Arnstein's ideas, by developing the "Ladder of Young People's Participation" as a tool for thinking about children and youth working with adults in community and environmental development projects. Hart placed his ladder against the backdrop of "adultist" planning and decision-making, referring to attitudes that result when adults presume that young people, because they lack life experience, have little to offer to community revitalization processes (Armstrong 1996). Confronting "adultism" means scrutinizing and reflecting on the way that we interact and communicate with young people, especially in community development strategies. We find that this ladder is also useful for analyzing high school students' engagement in their community.
The first three rungs of Hart's ladder show adults to be in positions of control, where young people play predetermined and often marginal roles. If and when youth are involved in planning processes, they are usually considered token participants typically involved only in the start up or design phase of a program. Higher rungs shift toward giving young people more ownership through close reflection on issues and work with adult partners. The sixth rung takes participation to a critical new phase: the involvement of young people in the entire process from conceptual design to the development of technical details and implementation. The top two rungs represent youth-initiated projects, which require high levels of competence from young people.
Key to Harts' theory is what is placed at the top rungs. Hart places shared decision-making with adults; he argues here that young people realize that collaborating with adults as partners will improve a project's success. Thus, everyone participates and everyone brings something to the table, in effect creating a community of practice.1 Hart's ladder demonstrates that the partnership between youth and adults is one of mutual benefit, understanding, and activity.
While not exhaustive, Hart's ladder can be seen as a tool to address the isolation of many urban public schools and their students from local community planning initiatives, an issue rarely addressed by the planning field. Urban youth often feel that their school environment and educational process have little relevance to their present lives or future trajectories. Involving them in community projects may help to eliminate this alienation, but only if their contributions are respected and the projects are authentic. To engage students as marginal or "token" participants will only confirm their sense that they are at best ignored and at worst disparaged by the community at large. If a project is authentic rather than a simulation or academic exercise, discrete skills might be gained and the ability to influence neighborhood change becomes a reality.
What Is Y-PLAN?
Y-PLAN (Youth-Plan, Learn, Act, Now!) is a model for youth engagement in city planning that uses redevelopment of urban spaces as a catalyst for community revitalization and education reform. Established in 2000, and housed at the UC Berkeley Center for Cities & Schools (CC&S), Y-PLAN facilitates positive community outcomes by partnering university "mentors," local high school students and teachers, government agencies, private interests, and other community parties to work on real-world planning issues. The Y-PLAN is based out of an interdisciplinary course between the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Graduate School of Education called Neighborhood Planning with High School Youth. Graduate and undergraduate students serve as "mentors" to high school students as they learn about the field of community development.
Y-PLAN projects serve as a pedagogical and professional development tool, and a planning studio that addresses specific issues in local communities. The goal of the Y-PLAN is not only to engage schools and students/youth in community development projects, but also to foster learning experiences for all participants. Y-PLAN rests on three conditions for success:
- Authentic problems foster a "community of practice," including city and school leaders, professional planners, elected representatives, residents, and students
- Adults share decision-making with youth, giving them a role in outcomes
- Projects build individual and institutional success, promoting sustainability of students and schools working on redevelopment projects (McKoy and Vincent, 2007)
Y-PLAN provides the opportunity for project-based learning in classrooms, and CC&S works with high schools in the Bay Area to integrate Y-PLAN curriculum and lessons into standards-based curricula. The goal is also to challenge current and aspiring professional planners to explain what they do in youth-accessible terms. CC&S supports clients to critically assess how current planning practice limits the involvement of youth, families, and schools, and to create alternative access to public processes.
Now entering its ninth year, Y-PLAN has itself moved from engaging students in simulation types of activities to giving them a pivotal role in which they are truly legitimate partners with adults and capable of impacting social change through engagement in authentic community development projects. In the early years, for example, in a redesign of the MacArthur BART Transit station, students' input on projects "was limited to consultation," in large part because the public agencies had "no vehicle for incorporating student comments" (McKoy and Vincent, 2007). Y-PLAN's first three years lied on the first three rungs of Hart's ladder. Following years strategically emphasized engaging clients in a more meaningfully way, so that their engagement of youth proposals was authentic and integral to their projects. For example, in 2003, Y-PLAN worked on a mini-park planning process in West Oakland, identified by the City of Oakland as "one of the six most dangerous parks in Oakland." With this project, Y-PLAN moved up the theoretical ladder (to rung four) as they demonstrated more authentic participation. Students were consulted and directly influenced the park design process in legitimate ways, crafting the park theme, making concrete design proposals such as the need for intergenerational park benches for seniors to watch little children playing. The engagement of youth also played a role in bringing together diverse neighborhood constituencies such as the housing authority and local high school leadership who came together for the first time in local meetings to learn about the youth's ideas and vision.
The next Y-PLAN project in 2004, focused on retail spaces at an Oakland Housing Authority HOPE VI project. Again, OHA fine tuned their questions for Y-PLAN, so that the students could contribute their expertise on what sorts of activities and retail young people would access at this site. Students surprised the adults in many meetings by making many suggestions for the creation of more educational spaces such as a computer lab and homework help station for mentoring in addition to recreational spaces.
In 2005, Y-PLAN was asked to make recommendations on the redevelopment of the West Oakland train station, a historic train station located at 16th and Wood. The project, which included the renovation of the train station, new affordable and market-rate housing development, and additional retail development, was proposed by a local developer, BRIDGE Housing. These adults identified Y-PLAN as an opportunity to get proposals on a community-centered design for the train station reuse. Ben Metcalf, the project manager from BRIDGE Housing, commented recently that while the students' designs would not necessarily be used completely, the idea to have a youth-centered space at the train station would not have "percolated up" without the participation of Y-PLAN students. Y-PLAN helped garner the attention of community members, politicians, and developers, and to focus the revitalization of the train station on youth-centered activities such as music and art stores tailored to the area youth's interests such as Rap and multimedia/digital forms of artwork. Some students and mentors remain involved in this large development project, and are likely to be included on the project's permanent advisory board.
The following table reviews the Y-PLAN projects from 2000 - 2005 tracking their development as the program design allowed youth participation to reflect increasingly higher levels to authentic participation and engagement.2
Y-PLAN in Emeryville, California
Each year, Y-PLAN seeks to deepen its work , learn from the previous year's students and partners, and move up Hart's ladder. Building on the history of work in Oakland, in spring 2006, Y-PLAN moved to Emeryville, California. Working with a 9th grade class in Emery Secondary School (ESS), the project focused on plans for the Center of Community Life (CCL) and the Family Resource Center (FRC), a school-based community wellness center. Students mapped and assessed community assets and needs, then developed visions for programming and physical design. Students learned about political and financial decision-making, and presented their proposals at Emeryville City Council. City Council and other working committees in Emeryville responded positively. While implementation on the project was held up for a number of reasons, the students' proposals were incorporated into working documents about the project.
Sustaining relationships in one school has deepened the experience of Y-PLAN. To that end, Y-PLAN 2007 returned to Emeryville. For ten weeks in spring 2007, 9th and 10th grade students grappled with questions posed by school and city leaders, State Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). Students expanded their thinking on the CCL and FRC, in coordination with other regional planning projects.3 ESS Y-PLAN students followed a curriculum that covered:
- City planning/community development principles
- Community mapping
- Governance
- Visioning
- Trade-offs
- Public Presentation and Communication
With their UC Berkeley mentors, students conducted community-based research in Emeryville and the region. Students mapped and explored connections between regional planning and local issues. They addressed client-driven questions in a local context, in accordance with the Emeryville General Plan Update. These innovative students developed strategies for accessible community spaces, housing opportunities, and vibrant street-life. They created a multimedia presentation for City Council detailing their experience, vision, and proposed implementation. Through Y-PLAN, students have successfully honed skills in data collection, critical thinking, and public speaking.
ESS Social Studies Department Chair Ruth Mathis sees Y-PLAN as a way to "give real opportunities to students to actively engage with themes such as the creation of democracy, conflict and revolution, and social justice." Mathis integrates Y-PLAN into their curriculum to meet "the needs of their diverse population [and] to create active, engaged, and socially conscious citizens." Teacher Max Monroy-Miller also notes the importance of Y-PLAN for the students' personal trajectories: "Instead of simply talking about our government, [students] were actually sitting in city hall, a place that they should be able to see themselves in one day."
Students made their final presentation to Emeryville City Council, school leaders, and their families on May 1, 2007. Students emphasized critical analyses of race and class disparities between the City and school district, and articulated actionable items for themselves, their teachers, City Council, and the planning department. Ms. Mathis reiterated the students' analyses by asking City Council members:
- What are tangible ways that Council can support Emery students?
- Can Emeryville create real spaces for diverse young people to participate in decision-making processes?
- Is Emeryville ready to do the necessary work of dismantling social and economic inequities identified by the Emery students?
Y-PLAN students are cautiously optimistic that their ideas can be integrated into city plans. In their final reflections, one student said, "I learned that the mayor of the community does listen to your plans." Another commented, "I've learned that the city is better than I thought...they seem really open to suggestions." Simultaneously, students continue to ask difficult questions about next steps, opportunities for their input, and sustainability of their vision. Individually, Y-PLAN provided opportunities to explore alternative careers and reframed possibilities for post-secondary education. Many have been inspired to improve their grades and explore two and four year colleges. One student says, "The past semester has shaped me for college." Another maintained that Y-PLAN "made me more focused on my future career. Now I...really want to go to college and be somebody."
As a seminar taught at UC Berkeley, Y-PLAN fosters new thinking among university graduate student mentors in planning, architecture, and education. They discuss how the intensity of Y-PLAN - working with professionals, learning dynamics of classrooms, connecting with diverse students - will inform their career trajectories. One master in city planning student described how the Y-PLAN 2007 project crystallized the connection between teaching and planning: "By breaking down highly structured relationships between planners and the public, meaningful participation can be achieved that engages participants and planners alike in shared learning and problem-solving."
Employing Y-PLAN as a professional development tool, CC&S worked with clients in the region, City, and school district to reframe planning questions in a youth-friendly way and to guide planning practice towards more inclusiveness. Locally, this work has inspired a deep commitment to creating opportunities for youth participation on city and school district governing bodies. The General Plan Update Steering Committee voted to recommend the appointment of two youth members to their committee. As Miguel Dwin, member of the Steering Committee and School Board said, "As leaders in this community, we have the chance to develop a model to bring students to the table and to let this sector of our community who is rarely heard be a part of the decision-making." The two student representatives are Y-PLAN alumnae. Further, the City/School Committee, a working committee that includes members of City Council and the School Board, voted to include student representatives.
City leaders recognize the imperative of building students' capacity around issues of governance and planning, while simultaneously building adults' capacity around hearing students contributions and challenging "business as usual" to accommodate new constituents. Over the next year, CC&S will continue to work with adults and youth to understand and develop the best spaces, processes, and mechanisms for deep, legitimate youth participation in decision-making citywide. Here in Emeryville, we see Y-PLAN as a vehicle for that substantive movement up Hart's ladder, to a place where youth and adults share in decision-making.
The Future of Y-PLAN across the Region
Based on the Y-PLAN work and ongoing commitment of city leaders in Emeryville, the Center for Cities & Schools is developing a research agenda, technical assistance tools, and professional development strategies around youth participation in city planning practice. Emeryville will serve as a model as CC&S expands work with the Assemblywoman's office and with civic, school, and community-based partners in the region. Over the next few years, CC&S will document and analyze the innovative and deep partnerships that bridge city planning and school district practices to meaningfully engage youth and school stakeholders across the region.
Nearly ten years of Y-PLAN experience has generated many important lessons learned about the vital importance of young people's participation in city and metropolitan planning and policy making. First, and foremost, Y-PLAN is about true partnership between youth and adult allies to create real change. This requires transformation on all fronts, especially for the adults who, while often saying they care about young people's input, still find it difficult to let go of the notion that they are professional experts. This shift is critical, however; when adults engage youth in token, or superficial ways, youth's ideas are marginalized and, too often, silenced.
Second, engagement of youth is not just about increasing youth development outcomes, but also about transformation of our cities and neighborhoods into family-accessible and vibrant places. Adult professional planners and policy makers need the insight, experience, and honesty youth bring to conversations about how their streets and cities should change.
Finally, intermediaries such as non-profits, community-based organizations, or educational establishments which provide safe spaces and structure around youth civic engagement processes are essential to maintaining and sustaining youth involvement. Policy makers often seek out youths' perspectives and thoughts on various initiatives, but rarely have places to go where they can engage with youth for any length of time. Involvement with youth is far too often a one day meeting or event, but rarely are youth really engaged over a longer period of time.
The Y-PLAN model demonstrates a core truth of planning and community-building: change takes time. Adults in community organizations and policy making circles alike must recognize that youth deserve time to learn about issues, brainstorm different ideas, and work collaboratively to develop potential solutions or innovative ideas to change the status quo.
References
Armstrong, L. 1996. Of ‘sluts' and ‘bastards,' A feminist decodes the child welfare debate. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.
Arnstein, S. 1969. A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35:216-224.
Lave, J. and E. Wenger. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
McKoy, D. and J. Vincent. 2007. Engaging schools in urban revitalization: The Y-PLAN (Youth-Plan, Learn, Act, Now). Journal of Planning Education and Research 26: 389-403.
Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
1The concept "community of practice" is grounded in theories of situated learning, which assume that learning takes place in the context of social participation rather than solely in an individual mind (Wenger 1998; Lave and Wenger 1991). Learning thus happens in a context whereby a group of people (the community) work collectively to find answers to solutions to a given problem (the practice).
2This ladder was previously published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research.
3Specifically, Assemblywoman Hancock sought youth feedback on her "Destination: San Pablo Avenue" initiative:http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a14/DestinationSPA.pdf.