Cities for Youth: A Pragmatic Approach to Engaging Youth Throughout the Urban Planning Process

Abstract

A wealth of perspectives exists in urban spaces; engagement opportunities in planning have the potential to collect theses perspectives and leverage them to shape urban futures. Recognizing the need for diverse and comprehensive community engagement opportunities in planning, this work looks towards how youth voices can be further integrated into the planning process. Youth represent active stakeholders in their communities, with a keen capacity to observe and recount their lived urban experienced. Existing literature details the challenges and opportunities that youth engagement represents. This research explores specific tools that urban planners and other allied professionals make use of when engaging youth-identifying communities. Through a series of semi structured interviews, this project led to the creation of an actionable youth engagement toolkit: Cities For Youth – Toolkit for Youth Engagement in Planning, This professional facing deliverable was supported by the production of a complementary podcast episode as part of the Spacing Radio series. Jointly, these two pieces look to expand on professional perspectives on youth engagement while bringing this issue to the forefront of urban journalism.