Y-PLAN Featured in APA: “Active Design Needs Active Communities, Part I: Sacramento”
'“Active design is an approach to the design of communities that promotes physical activity,” explains Kirin Kumar, project manager at WALKSacramento. The non-profit community organization spearheads Design 4 Active Sacramento (D4AS), a Plan4Health grantee which brings together engineers, planners, and public health professionals to create safer, more active communities. The program recently won an excellence award from the Center for Active Design for successfully incorporating active design-oriented language into the county’s zoning code and design guidelines.
As they were working through the Plan4Health grant, WALKSacramento was contacted by the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley, which works to involve local school leaders and students in the city planning process. One of CC+S’s programs, Y-PLAN (Youth-Plan, Learn, Act, Now!), engages high school students in the planning process by providing teachers with planning-themed curricula and then allowing students to identify problems and solutions where they live. It culminates with students working with local leaders to fix these problems through consulting projects.'
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