by Erin Aleman
11/3/09

Last month I gave a presentation at the American Planning Association’s Tuesdays at APA on engaging youth in the planning process.  I was interested to see who would show up for my presentation and was pleasantly surprised to learn that many of the audience members were involved in youth planning programs to some degree.  Engaging youth in planning isn’t a new idea. Wacker’s Manual is one of the lasting legacies of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago.  It was created for eighth graders so that they too would understand the benefits of good planning.

I have been involved in the development of CMAP’s Future Leaders in Planning (FLIP) program since its inception in 2008.  FLIP is a leadership development and regional planning program for high school aged youth living in northeastern Illinois.  FLIP has just begun its second year and I have to say we learned a lot from the first year of FLIP.  In putting my presentation together I spent some time reflecting on why our pilot program was such a success.

To figure out what might interest young people in what planners do for a living, we held a “focus group” with local high school students.  There’s no better way to discover what turns young people on to extra-curricular programs than to get it straight from them.  Did we, as adults, need to provide incentives?  How could this program be mutually beneficial to both CMAP and the students? 

Some other things to keep in mind when creating a youth program is to have the program at a time when youth are available – for us it ended up being Saturdays – and to have a clear goal for the program.  Finally, I would recommend any successful youth program reassess itself throughout the program with the help of student participants.  Often students have thoughtful, creative solutions that can improve your program and by way of doing so it empowers them to take ownership of the program and make it the best it can be.

There are a lot of resources out there for developing your own youth program.  Here are a few that might be useful:

National League of Cities: Institute for Youth, Education, and Families
APA’s ResoucesZine and other youth resources
National Engineers’ Week Future City Competition
Chicago Botanic Garden’s Fairchild Challenge
Planner’s Network: Young Planners Network
National Geographic’s Xpedition site

In case you missed my presentation at Tuesdays at APA, you can listen to a podcast of the presentation on iTunes or download the presentation here.