Youth Participation in Community Planning (Community Advisory Service Report Number 486)

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 13 No. 1 (2003) ISSN: 1546-2250 Youth Participation in Community Planning (Community Advisory Service Report Number 486) Mullahey, Ramona and Susskind, Yve and Checkoway, Barry (1999). Chicago: American Planning Association; 70 pages. $32.00. ISBN 1884829325. Interest in and support for “child and youthparticipation” has increased significantly in recent years. But moreoften than not, attention has focused on young people’s participationin the arenas traditionally ascribed to them: schools, youth centers,youth employment programs, etc. Rarely are young people seen ascitizens who should be engaged in decisions that affect thecommunity as a whole. Land use planning and related policy-making-which have significant impacts on the lives of children and youth- havelargely remained the exclusive domain of adults. Youth Participation in Community Planning provides a valuableoverview of communities in the U.S. and Canada that are attempting tobroaden the range of issues in which young people are engaged,communities committed to providing meaningful opportunities for youthparticipation in community change. Developed as a Planning AdvisoryService Report for the American Planning Association (APA), the reportspeaks specifically to practicing planners and community decisionmakers in North America- those at the local level who are most criticalto opening doors for increased youth participation in communitydevelopment. However, the report will be useful to planners andcommunity decision makers elsewhere too, as well as others who areinterested in examples of youth participation in community development.Educators in particular may find the land-use planning case studies tobe of interest, as nearly all of them involved some form of schoolcurriculum or class-based activities (from third grade up). Youthorganizers will be particularly interested in the two detailed casestudies of youth-initiated, youth-directed programs in Seattle (seebelow). 226 The goal for the report, as stated by the authors, is “todevelop an informative guide that provides planners with practicaltools for their citizen participation tool box.” To achieve this end,the authors draw upon their extensive experience- Mullahey as a“Community Builder Fellow” with the U.S. Department of Housing andUrban Development and as the APA’s national advocate for involvingyoung people in planning; Susskind as a doctoral candidate at theUniversity of Michigan engaged in research on social changeorganizations where teenagers are in leadership roles; and Checkoway,Professor of Social Work and Urban Planning at the University ofMichigan and founder and director of the University’s Center forCommunity Service and Learning, well-known for his prior work andpublications in the fields of urban planning, youth, and communitychange. The case studies represent the bulk of the report’s content,and its most significant contribution to the literature on youthparticipation. Eleven case studies are presented, two in considerabledetail and the other nine in summary form with varying degrees ofsubstantive information regarding the specific methods and activities,helping to keep the report to a manageable 70 pages. Contact detailsare provided for each case study to obtain additional information. Organized according to three “forms” of youth participation incommunity planning (youth in community land-use planning, youth-basedinitiatives for social change, and youth in policy making), the casestudies are drawn from a variety of cities, all of them in the U.S.with the exception of Toronto. These range from small communities suchas Lemon Grove, California, to larger cities such as San Francisco,Seattle and Toronto. The geographic slant towards western U.S. citiesis likely due to the authors’ locations (Mullahey in Honolulu andSusskind in Seattle) than to any other factors. However, withoutexception the case study examples are, not surprisingly, fromcommunities with a strong culture of citizen participation. Youthparticipation in nearly all of the land-use planning examples tookplace as part of larger citywide, long-range 227 planning programs withsignificant community outreach and participation. The most extensive case studies describe two “youth-based initiativesfor youth empowerment” in Seattle: the Seattle Young People’s Project(SYPP) and Youth-N-Action (YNA). Drawing on Susskind’s doctoralresearch, these cases provide considerable detail regarding theorganizational structure and operations of both programs. Using youngpeople’s observations and reflections, each case study illustrates howyoung people developed their own initiatives to address issues ofimportance to them, and developed democratic structures to facilitatetheir group decision making processes. Both cases provide a very realportrait of the challenges and...