In response to rapidly changing environmental and political climates around the world, governing agencies are grappling with the notion of resilience. How can communities continue to thrive with chronic and acute threats such as sea level rise, drought, fire, growing inequality, and unaffordable housing? Community engagement is often sought by governing agencies in determining answers to this question, but an underappreciated component of this engagement is the contribution and investment for and from youth. As youth are profoundly impacted by chronic threats such as poverty and housing insecurity, and are at the same time critical to the innovation and human capital of cities’ futures, it is detrimental to bypass youth in the discussion of urban resilience.
The Center for Cities and Schools (CC+S) is an organization that aims to elevate youth voice and work within civic space through research and its Y-PLAN (Youth, Plan, Learn, Act, Now!) program. Specifically, the Y-PLAN program brings civic agencies and school classrooms together, so that students and civic leaders may co-create innovative solutions to authentic community challenges. Through Y-PLAN, students act as consultants to a civic agency and use the Y-PLAN curriculum to support their research and presentation process. The Y-PLAN program has a “double bottom line”– two goals that it seeks to promote: (1) college, career, and community readiness through five student outcomes (5 C’s–Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creation and Innovation, Communication, and Community Contribution), and (2) the planning of healthy, equitable, joyful cities through four community outcomes (Participants, Process, Policy, and Place).