Engaging Youth to Engage Community in Sustainable Grassroots Planning

Abstract

*Youth Transforming Their Environments and Communities | Reports from the Field

This paper recounts the story of working with youth to create neighborhood designs. What started out as an exercise in revealing the perspective of youth in Salt Lake City’s West Side ended up being a revelation on the incredible potential of youth to become players and leaders in creating and implementing visions for the cities we all inhabit. Many have written about the capacity of youth to take on more responsibilities and to become more engaged in the concerns of society. Many others have written about the need to give youth the opportunity to develop new skills and to feel empowered. If we add to these two directives the need to find creative ways to reach diverse constituents with the ethic of environmental civic engagement, then the imperative of a youth based movement becomes irresistible.