Celebrate With Youth and Students
National Community Planning Month offers innumerable opportunities to educate young people about the role planning has played in shaping their neighborhood, town or city, and surrounding region — and also to engage them in thinking of ways planning can make these places even better.
Top 5 Ways to Celebrate in 2012
- Visit a local school for Career Day. Explain planning and your role as a planner to the next generation. Use the PlanIt Flyer as a resource.
- Have your agency or office sponsor an essay contest for students. Ask them to talk about what they like best about their community.
- Hold a youth poster contest. Ask students to draw their favorite place or reimagine a neighborhood. Use this City Gallery activity for inspiration.
- Host a Box City event
- Host a scavenger hunt in your town to get kids and adults out and exploring.
Online Favorites
APA's blog about all things youth and planning, including videos and podcasts.
This site is especially for kids themselves. It's a place where they can learn what planners do, post their own work, and learn about wonderful children's books that feature different communities.
APA Resources
Along with students' words and artwork, this e-newsletter gives Chicagoans and Chicago natives the opportunity to explain "what makes Chicago a great place to live."
The Urban Naturalist Guide, based on the book Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of The Death & Life of Great American Cities, leads you through a study of any neighborhood of your choice, camera and drawing pencils in hand.
This curriculum was developed by a third grade teacher — and planner — in the Bay Area. Metropolis was designed as a standards-based, interdisciplinary unit of study forgrades 3-6. It is intended for use by elementary classroom teachers and other adults who seek to expose children to a variety of urban forms from around the world.
Introducing Planning
Articles
Prepare yourself by reading Ramona Mullahey's article, "Youth Engagement in Planning" published in The Commissioner. You may copy and share this article with others.
Children's Book Club on Planning
Create a book club discussion for children in your community. Planners Book Club has featured two children's books. A Street Through Time shows young people how a city develops.
Discussion questions
Order book
Career Information for School Visits
Two handy flyers are available for download and copying. Plan It provides a concise definition of planning and profiles one planner. Resources for Teachers and Planners is a useful handout for teachers and provides planners with ideas for developing youth activities.
Plan It (pdf)
Resources for Teachers and Planners (pdf)
Try this lesson plan from APA and teach your students the history of how their community was planned. Learn how it has evolved. Your students can also learn about the profession of urban and regional planning with the Plan It handout.
Take Planning to the Classroom
Click on the image to see all pictures.
Teach high school students various aspects of planning by having them create a new neighborhood within their community. The City of Austin Neighborhood Planning and Zoning Department worked with a freshman geography class to teach elements of sound land-use and green community principles. The students were provided with various neighborhood maps that had a center portion excised out so they could create their own neighborhood. Students were encouraged to be creative while still considering the existing surrounding neighborhoods and incorporating sustainable elements.
StudentsXpress City Issue — Fall 2012
Urban Naturalist Guide
Metropolis: A Green City of Your Own
