Edutopia - October/November 2008 - (Page 53)

“Y-PLAN changed my perspective,” says Julio Arauz, a student at Richmond’s John F. Kennedy High School. “It’s not just the negative aspect you have to look at. You have to look at the potential; the bright side of things.” Through the knowledge that they, too, can affect their communities, Y-PLAN students came to some of the same conclusions as the program’s founders: Young people have valuable ideas to bring to the city planning table, and educational revitalization can be a catalyst for community revitalization—and vice versa. Project: Transformation Now entering its tenth year, Y-PLAN is “the heart and heartbeat of the Center for Cities & Schools,” says Deborah McKoy, creator of Y-PLAN and the center’s founder and executive director. Winner of numerous awards from such groups as the Architectural Foundation of San Francisco and the California Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, Y-PLAN is held every spring for twelve weeks, usually in conjunction with ninth-, tenth-, or eleventhgrade social studies or history classes in hardpressed East Bay communities. Graduate and undergraduate students in urban planning at UC Berkeley lead a rigorous project-learning curriculum; through initial brainstorming sessions to design sessions to formal presentations for city of⇒cials, high school students become stakeholders in the city planning process. “After they critically analyze the places they are in,” says Center for Cities & Schools program manager Ariel Bierbaum, “they learn the process by which those places get transformed— and their role in that change process.” Past Y-PLAN projects include the redesign of the historic West Oakland train station and a neglected Oakland minipark. This spring, students at Emeryville’s Emery Secondary School and in the Architecture, Construction, and Engineering Technology (ACET) Academy at John F. Kennedy High School developed recommendations for two projects: a wellness center located in an unused part of the Emeryville school building (designed to serve as a youth and family destination for health and recreational services) and the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center and Park, a cornerstone of an ongoing revitalization of Richmond’s Nystrom neighborhood. For city planners and administrators who’d been given the task of developing youth programming for the centers, Y-PLAN offered an opportunity to hear from the kind of young people who would be served by centers like these. Many of the projects that Y-PLAN students work on are so large in scale that any effect of the students’ input may not be immediately obvious—no train station or community center can be redesigned in a matter of months. Although student feedback has sometimes in⇓uenced city planning decisions, it doesn’t necessarily sway them. Still, the overall impact the program has on both the student and professional perspective appears to be signi⇒cant. “Y-PLAN makes folks who deal with cities and urban centers aware of the incredible importance and value of public schools,” says Deborah McKoy. “Urban public schools are often seen as ‘the problem,’ when in fact what I think we learn from Y-PLAN is how much a part of the solution they are.” ONLINEVIDEO BUILDING BLOCKS See students ﬁght urban blight through UrbanPlan, a program sponsored by UC Berkeley and the Urban Land Institute. edutopia.org/urbanplan-video The Finals At the two schools’ ⇒nal presentations for city administrators, council members, engineers, and architects, students showcased scale drawings and three-dimensional models of each building, backed up by explanatory posters and Microsoft PowerPoint slides with detailed proposals for how the buildings might best be used. Richmond students emphasized the necessity for a tight security staff, a public gun drop-off, and social services such as driver’s education, job training, a walking path, and a childcare center. They also proposed replacing a dilapidated playground with a garden or even a café to draw in more “customers.” Emery students presented their wellness center as a place to do homework, make art, use computers, and see counselors. To transform what they described as “a very empty and very dark” space, they incorporated in their design plants, murals, and large windows. They also had a variety of propositions for unused public spaces nearby that could be converted into parks. Some site aspects students referred to, such as a lack of trash cans or a prevalence of broken gates, “frankly had me squirming,” says Richmond city manager Bill Lindsay. “Why aren’t we doing this? These ideas are simple and practical and can happen right away.” Because EDUTOPIA.ORG EDUTOPIA 53 http://www.edutopia.org/urbanplan-video http://www.EDUTOPIA.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - October/November 2008

Edutopia - October/November 2008 Contents UpFront Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design: Lessons from the Mall The Bucks Start Here Go Global: Virgil Rocks Big Ideas: Powerful Learning Mapping Their Futures Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Suze Orman

Edutopia - October/November 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.