A City for All Citizens: Integrating Children and Youth from Marginalized Populations into City Planning

Socially just, intergenerational urban spaces should not only accommodate children and adolescents, but engage them as participants in the planning and design of welcoming spaces. With this goal, city agencies in Boulder, Colorado, the Boulder Valley School District, the Children, Youth and Environments Center at the University of Colorado, and a number of community organizations have been working in partnership to integrate young people’s ideas and concerns into the redesign of parks and civic areas and the identification of issues for city planning. Underlying their work is a commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and children’s rights to active citizenship from a young age. This paper describes approaches used to engage with young people and methods of participation, and reflects on lessons learned about how to most effectively involve youth from underrepresented populations and embed diverse youth voices into the culture of city planning.

[1]  Bruna Tanaka Cremonini,et al.  Buildings , 1995, Data, Statistics, and Useful Numbers for Environmental Sustainability.

[2]  S. Cele.  Cities for Children , 2007 .

[3]  Robin L. Moore,et al.  ‘Don’t Just Listen – Do Something! Lessons Learned About Governance from the Growing Up In Cities Programme , 2005 .

[4]  A. Crouter,et al.  Does It Take a Village? Community Effects on Children, Adolescents, and Families. , 2001 .

[5]  T. Waterston,et al.  The Convention on the Rights of the Child , 2006, The Lancet.

[6]  J. Bates,et al.  It Does Take a Village , 2003, Psychological science.

[7]  Robert W Strack,et al.  Engaging Youth through Photovoice , 2004, Health promotion practice.

[8]  Caroline C. Wang,et al.  Photovoice: Concept, Methodology, and Use for Participatory Needs Assessment , 1997, Health education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education.

[9]  Karen Malone,et al.  Growing up in Cities , 1998 .

[10]  R. Hodgkin,et al.  Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child , 2000 .

[11]  R. Hart,et al.  Stepping Back from ‘The Ladder’: Refl ections on a Model of Participatory Work with Children , 2008 .

[12]  Scienze Politiche.  American Community Survey , 2011 .

[13]  F. Steinberg.  Creating better cities with children and youth—a manual for participation: Driskell, David (in collaboration with members of the growing up in Cities Project); UNESCO Publishing–Earthscan Publications, London, 2002, 208pp, price £19.95 , 2003 .

[14]  S. Bartlett.  Building Better Cities with Children and Youth , 2002 .

[15]  Daniel Charles Meadows,et al.  Digital Storytelling: Research-Based Practice in New Media , 2003 .

[16]  Beverly C. Edmonds,et al.  Children's Rights: A Reference Handbook , 1996 .

[17]  Tigran Nikoghosyan,et al.  United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) , 2018, Yearbook of International Cooperation on Environment and Development 1998–99.

[18]  B. Percy-Smith,et al.  From Consultation to Social Learning in Community Participation with Young People , 2006, Children, Youth and Environments.

[19]  Ada Verloren.  The United Nations Children's Fund , 2009 .

[20]  J. Morsink,et al.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent , 1999 .

[21]  L. Chawla,et al.  The Growing Up in Cities Project , 2006 .