Planning with Youth Workshop in Copenhagen

In the beginning of March 2023 we met in Copenhagen for a 3-day WP4 workshop focused on the ongoing development of our PwY decision support tool (DST) that is a deliverable of the Working Package 4. During these days, members of the Swedish team from Södertörn University met with colleagues from Copenhagen University for hands-on activities meant to advance our project on selected aspects of the decision support tool.

Image: collective activity for identifying relevant stakeholder and methods.

During these three days, we revised findings from WP2 and WP3. Work package 2 focuses on the study of current challenges and opportunities planners and other professional face in Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark in relation to the involvement of youth in spatial planning. Work package 3 focuses on testing, exploring and piloting with different participatory methods and it seeks to understand if and how these allow youth to participate in meaningful ways. In this sense, WP4 and its deliverable, the decision support tool, brings all that research insight together in an integrated way.

Image: Sofia Lundmark facilitating an activity for the workshop.

The workshop was facilitated by our team collaborator Sofia Lundmark, Senior Lecturer at Media Technology Department at Södertörn University. Sofia use methods from design studies to facilitate the sessions and led us over key questions.

Our project team is a combination of collaborators with different scientific backgrounds and experiences who are connected by an interest in interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability and urban planning. This diversity allows us to borrow tools and perspectives from each other’s discipline, stay fresh and be creative. This is particularly important when developing and designing a tool meant for use in different national contexts and by different stakeholders.

But what is the Planning with Youth decision support tool and whom is it meant to support?

Decision support tools are a compilation of information and data organized in a systemic way meant to assist professionals with their day-to-day work. A DST does not give a final answer as such but gives access to needed information and data for the professional to consider and use in decision-making processes on a given matter.

Planning and urban governance is a field with many decisions support tools and systems. But very few are developed in the context of youth and children participatory processes. Our objective is to contribute with a new tool for planners and practitioners to use when needing to prepare and delivery participatory processes that are meaningful for children and young people.

The DST will provide planners and practitioners with key information about methods for involving children and young people in participatory planning. We envision for the PwY tool to become a useful instrument. For the Swedish context, this is particularly relevant considering that from 2021 and following the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, planners are obliged by law to include children and youth in participatory spatial planning processes. You can read more about the Swedish context and its challenges in this article produced by members of our team.

Furthermore, even in countries that have not enforced the inclusion of youth in urban planning, this remains an ongoing and necessary challenge that aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ultimately, we hope that by using the DST urban planners will get the support they need to create (with youth) cities that are more democratic, sustainable and accessible and reflect the needs and uses of the entire population.

Image: Members of our team from Sweden and Denmark during our Copenhagen workshop.

Stay tuned for more on our upcoming decision support tool!