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Abstract
Problem, research strategy, and findings: Youth are traditionally excluded from participation within planning venues, though planners increasingly recognize the value and knowledge that youth can bring to planning efforts. Yet planners struggle to find ways to incorporate youth ideas and decision making that are not exploitative, tokenizing, or coercive. Arnstein’s “A Ladder of Citizen Participation” provides useful insights into how youth can participate in decision making through partnerships with adults for whom the ladder was designed. In this article, we use case studies of youth-focused planning initiatives to examine the potential for including youth in Arnstein’s original ladder. These include Youth–Plan Learn Act Now (Y-PLAN), Youth Engagement and Action for Health (YEAH!), and Growing Up Boulder (GUB). Within each case study we analyze the goals, methodology, and projects of each program to determine how each expands or limits youth participation. The case studies vary based on the degree of participation, youth experience, and their geographical and institutional bounding. We then propose new rungs located between “placation” and “partnership” that offer youth an opportunity to partner with adults to engage in a planning project. Each new rung offers youth opportunities to participate in the planning process, though adults retain decision-making power. These rungs are divided by their directionality of power and whether youth are granted power to participate or seek it themselves. Further research could refine these rungs, especially within larger contexts of planning theory and the history of shared decision-making processes. Methodological challenges to this study could be addressed in some of these future research efforts.
Takeaway for practice: Practicing planners are challenged with ways to authentically include youth voices in productive and nontokenistic decision-making frameworks. Planners can apply these lessons to engage youth in different contexts to support the elevation of their involvement, voice, and power in the planning process.
RESEARCH SUPPORT
Funding support was received from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Grant No. 73742).
Notes
Notes
1 This view echoes the arguments that youth were once seen as “victims of urban-industrial society” found in Checkoway et al. (Citation1995, p. 134).
2 Osborne (Citation2015) defines intersectionality, through critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw’s framework (Citation1991), as “a way to approach and understand intragroup difference and the existence of multiple axes of identity that may govern an individual’s relationship to power” (p. 132).
3 Arnstein (Citation1969) and Hart (Citation1992) can also be compared with Rocha’s “ladder of empowerment” (Rocha, Citation1997), which seeks to unify discourse about empowerment through a similar ladder typology. Rocha’s ladder mirrors Arnstein’s in the amount of power held by citizens, but does not characterize the participatory structure in which this power is exerted.
4 Though we review the popular conceptions of youth and how they have evolved over time in this study, we do not explore the evolution of the planning profession, especially how social and political contexts have shaped planning structures. Modern planning has transitioned from a primarily state-led enterprise to one based on partnerships between many institutional actors. The public–private partnership model has been criticized for limiting participation through tokenistic appointments to advisory boards, placative listening sessions with communities, and elaborate networks that create citizen confusion (Ghose, Citation2005).
5 The Chicago Architecture Center provides an invaluable resource for planners who work with youth. Full scans of Wacker’s Manual (Moody, Citation1911) can be found on their website, as well as information about No Small Plans, a graphic novel that teaches youth about planning.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Nisha D. Botchwey
NISHA D. BOTCHWEY ([email protected]) is an associate professor of city and regional planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology and director of the Healthy Places Lab.
Nick Johnson
NICK JOHNSON ([email protected]) is a city and regional planning master’s candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology and member of the Healthy Places Lab.
L. Katie O’Connell
L. KATIE O’CONNELL ([email protected]) is a city and regional planning doctoral student at the Georgia Institute of Technology and member of the Healthy Places Lab.
Anna J. Kim
ANNA J. KIM ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of city planning in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University, and co-principal investigator on the Youth Engagement and Action for Health! (YEAH!) project.