Youth Planning Programs as Civic Infrastructure: Visibility, Agency, and Durability in the Built Environment

Youth Planning Programs as Civic Infrastructure: Visibility, Agency, and Durability in the Built Environment | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Youth Planning Programs as Civic Infrastructure: Visibility, Agency, and Durability in the Built Environment Sowmya Balachandran This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8564059/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Youth-facing programs that engage young people with planning and the built environment have proliferated across nonprofit, educational, professional, and municipal contexts. Yet little research has systematically examined how these programs are structured, how they frame youth participation, and how they are sustained over time. Drawing on a mixed-methods analysis of 23 youth-facing planning and planning-adjacent programs in the United States—including program documentation and semi-structured interviews with program administrators—this study maps program forms, institutional homes, civic framing, and durability challenges. Findings reveal substantial diversity in program design and delivery, alongside common patterns of institutional fragility, reliance on individual champions, and limited evaluation and longitudinal tracking. While many programs position youth as designers, problem-solvers, or community participants, planning is often implicitly framed, raising questions about the visibility of civic processes and power relations in youth learning environments. The analysis highlights tensions between youth agency and adult mediation, as well as between innovation and sustainability. By situating youth planning programs as forms of civic infrastructure, this study contributes to children and youth scholarship on participation, informal learning, and institutional contexts, and offers insights into the conditions under which youth engagement in the built environment can be meaningfully supported and sustained. Special Education Urban Studies Architecture, Design and Planning Youth civic learning Educational change Boundary-spanning governance Built environment education Equity-oriented program design Institutional durability Figures Figure 1 Introduction Over the past two decades, youth engagement initiatives focused on civic, environmental, and place-based learning have expanded substantially across the United States. Young people now participate in programs addressing climate change, environmental justice, urban design, public health, and community development through schools, nonprofit organizations, museums, universities, and professional associations (Hohenhaus et al., 2023 ; Jerald et al., 2017 ). This expansion reflects a growing recognition that youth are not only future stakeholders, but present-day civic actors whose lived experiences and perspectives can contribute to more equitable and responsive public institutions (Brady et al., 2020a ; Checkoway, 2011 ; Sala-Torrent & Planas-Lladó, 2024 ). Educational research has shown that experiential and place-based learning can support civic identity formation, political awareness, and a sense of agency among young people (Forestal & Finch, 2021 ). At the same time, participation alone does not guarantee durable impact. While many youth-facing initiatives succeed in creating meaningful civic learning experiences, far less is known about how these programs are structured to support continuity over time, to connect youth to longer-term educational pathways, or to become institutionalized within fragmented educational systems (Sutter & Watson, 2025 ). Professions associated with the built environment—such as urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and allied public-interest fields—provide a revealing context for examining these dynamics. These professions play a central role in shaping housing, transportation, environmental conditions, and neighborhood change, yet they remain largely invisible to most high school–aged youth as educational or career pathways (McKoy et al., 2015 ). Unlike STEM, health, or skilled trades fields, which benefit from well-defined curricular sequences, credentialing systems, and sustained institutional investment, planning-related learning opportunities are typically fragmented, episodic, and unevenly distributed across schools and communities (Levinson & Solomon, 2021 ; White et al., 2023 ). As a result, exposure to planning and built-environment professions is often contingent on discretionary programs rather than embedded educational infrastructures (Palazzo et al., 2021 ). This structural invisibility has important equity implications. Decisions made within built-environment professions disproportionately affect communities facing housing insecurity, environmental risk, and disinvestment—conditions that shape the everyday lives of youth in historically marginalized communities (Hendricks & Van Zandt, 2021 ). Yet youth from under-resourced schools and communities of color are least likely to encounter planning as a legible educational domain or to access sustained opportunities for engagement (London, 2007 ). Existing scholarship documents the benefits of youth participation in planning processes and community design efforts (Laursen, 2025 ; Melcher, 2020 ; Perri, 2007 ; Wikberg Nilsson, 2024 ), but youth are most often positioned as contributors to discrete projects rather than as individuals being supported along longer-term educational and professional trajectories. Consequently, there is limited empirical understanding of how youth-facing planning and built-environment programs are designed, organized, and sustained—and which program structures are most likely to support equitable access over time. This study addresses that gap by examining youth-facing programs operating in planning and allied built-environment fields through an educational change lens. Drawing on a comparative, multi-method analysis of program documentation and interviews with program administrators, the study investigates how these initiatives are structured across institutional contexts, how they frame civic learning and youth participation, and what organizational conditions shape program durability and continuity. Rather than evaluating individual youth outcomes, the analysis focuses on programmatic design features—such as institutional home, duration, partnership structure, funding model, and civic framing—that influence whether youth engagement remains episodic or functions as part of a more sustained pathway. The study is guided by three interrelated questions: (1) How are youth-facing planning and built-environment programs structured across institutional contexts? (2) How do these programs frame civic learning and youth participation in relation to planning and public decision-making? (3) What organizational conditions support or undermine program durability and continuity over time? Addressing these questions requires attention to both publicly articulated program designs and internal perspectives on implementation, partnership, and sustainability. Accordingly, the study integrates systematic document analysis of 23 programs with semi-structured interviews with twelve program administrators and educators. By centering programs as educational environments in their own right, this paper contributes to scholarship in three ways. First, it provides a systematic mapping of youth-facing planning and built-environment programs, a domain that has received limited attention in the educational change literature. Second, it identifies recurring patterns of institutional fragility—such as reliance on individual champions, limited evaluative capacity, and unstable funding—that constrain the durability of civic learning innovations operating across sectoral boundaries. Third, it advances an empirically grounded account of how youth participation, professional visibility, and institutional design intersect to shape the equity and sustainability of educational change efforts. In doing so, the paper reframes youth engagement in planning and the built environment not only as a pedagogical or civic aspiration, but as an institutional design challenge central to contemporary debates about educational change, equity, and democratic capacity-building. Civic Learning Through Boundary-Spanning Arrangements Over the past decade, civic learning has re-emerged as a central concern within educational change scholarship, driven by heightened attention to democratic erosion, youth political disengagement, and persistent inequalities in access to civic opportunity. Rather than treating civic education as a discrete curricular domain, recent work conceptualizes civic learning as a system-level reform project—one that seeks to reshape how educational institutions define participation, authority, and legitimacy (Clay & Rubin, 2020 ; Datnow, 2020 ; Rubin, 2024 ). From this perspective, civic learning initiatives reorient educational systems toward democratic capacity-building, requiring changes not only in pedagogy but also in organizational routines, professional roles, and institutional relationships. Educational change research emphasizes that the success of such reforms depends less on instructional quality than on organizational embedding. Initiatives that lack routinization, stable staffing, and institutional ownership rarely endure, even when they are locally valued or demonstrably effective (Datnow & Park, 2018 ; McMillan et al., 2025 ). Civic learning initiatives face heightened vulnerability under these conditions because their core outcomes—agency, identity formation, and democratic competence—resist standardization and often conflict with dominant accountability regimes. Across civic learning scholarship, youth participation is consistently shown to be co-produced by institutional conditions rather than generated by student engagement alone. Programs that position young people as co-designers, researchers, or civic actors reshape institutional cultures only when adult intermediaries, governance structures, and organizational norms are prepared to recognize youth participation as legitimate (Brady et al., 2020a ; McGinnis & Mitra, 2022 ). Where these conditions are absent, participation remains bounded, symbolic, or episodic, reinforcing existing power relations rather than transforming them. Under these constraints, civic learning reforms have increasingly migrated toward nonformal and cross-sector spaces, including extracurricular programs, nonprofit initiatives, university-led partnerships, and intermediary organizations (Henig et al., 2016 ). This migration reflects structural pressures on school systems, where curricular crowding and performance accountability restrict opportunities for sustained civic engagement. Civic learning innovation, therefore, concentrates on the margins of formal education systems, where experimentation is possible but institutional support remains uneven. Educational change scholarship characterizes these arrangements as boundary-spanning—organizational mechanisms through which reforms operate across institutional domains, mobilizing external expertise, resources, and legitimacy (Coburn et al., 2013 ; Farrell et al., 2019 ). Boundary-spanning is not merely contextual; it structures how initiatives are governed, where responsibility resides, and which forms of learning can be sustained. Research–practice partnerships, nonprofit intermediaries, and cross-sector coalitions exemplify this logic, enabling innovation while simultaneously diffusing organizational ownership and accountability. Empirical studies document a characteristic trade-off associated with boundary-spanning reforms. These arrangements facilitate responsiveness to local contexts and allow initiatives to bypass institutional constraints that might otherwise block innovation. At the same time, they generate organizational fragility. Programs operating across institutional boundaries often depend on short-term funding, informal labor, and personal relationships rather than on routinized roles or stable infrastructure. Continuity becomes contingent on leadership persistence and partnership maintenance rather than secured through institutional embedding (Denner et al., 2019 ; Wegemer & Renick, 2021 ). This fragility is especially consequential for equity-oriented civic learning initiatives. Although partnerships and intermediary models are frequently framed as vehicles for expanding access, participation within boundary-spanning reforms often depends on discretionary resources, unpaid labor, selective recruitment, or unevenly distributed institutional capacity (Posey-Maddox, 2017 ; Scherer, 2022 ). Equity goals may be rhetorically central yet operationally fragile, as responsibility for access and support is externalized across multiple actors without clear accountability (Skrla et al., 2001 ). Inequities thus emerge not as unintended side effects of civic learning reform, but as products of the organizational architectures through which these reforms are pursued. This literature establishes civic learning reform as an organizational and institutional project whose durability depends on how boundary-spanning mechanisms are structured and governed. Youth-facing programs that engage planning and the built environment offer a particularly revealing case. Operating at the intersection of education and public decision-making, these initiatives rely heavily on cross-sector collaboration and frequently serve youth most affected by spatial inequality. Examining how such programs are organized, framed, and sustained illuminates the conditions under which civic learning functions as durable educational infrastructure rather than as episodic and precarious intervention. Built-Environment Education and Civic Engagement Building on broader traditions of experiential, place-based, and civic learning, a growing body of scholarship examines how youth engage with the built environment through planning, architecture, urban design, environmental justice, and related fields (García-Antúnez et al., 2023 ; Solis et al., 2024 ; Sturrock & Zandvliet, 2023 ). This literature argues that the built environment constitutes a particularly powerful context for civic learning because it is simultaneously material, political, and embedded in young people’s everyday lives. Housing, transportation, public space, and environmental risk are not abstract policy domains for youth; they are lived conditions that shape mobility, safety, belonging, and opportunity (DaViera et al., 2020 ; Gu et al., 2023 ; Qiu & Zhu, 2021 ; Slesnick & Slesnick, 2024 ; Tewahade et al., 2019 ). As a result, built-environment education has increasingly been framed as a means of fostering civic awareness, spatial literacy, and engagement with public institutions. Much of the youth-in-planning literature emphasizes participatory models that invite young people to contribute to planning and design processes through youth councils, design charrettes, participatory mapping, neighborhood visioning, or youth master plans (Anderson, McCormick, et al., 2024 ; Anderson, Morgan, et al., 2024 ). Drawing on participatory planning traditions and adaptations of civic participation frameworks for youth contexts, this work argues that meaningful engagement requires moving beyond consultation toward opportunities for influence and shared decision-making (Botchwey et al., 2019 ; Coenraad et al., 2019 ; Derr & Kovács, 2017 ). Empirical studies document a range of civic benefits associated with such participation, including increased knowledge of planning processes, confidence in engaging with public actors, and a stronger sense of political efficacy (Balsano, 2005 ; Bennett & Hays, 2023 ; Driskell, 2003 ; Stoneman, 2002 ). Parallel scholarship in architecture and design education similarly highlights the civic potential of engaging youth in design thinking and spatial problem-solving (Gordon et al., 2016 ). Programs centered on architecture, urban design, and environmental design often position youth as co-creators of community visions, emphasizing creativity, systems thinking, and collaborative inquiry. Research suggests that engagement with the built environment can demystify professional practices, make governance processes more tangible, and surface how power, equity, and values are embedded in physical space (Kim, 2023 ; Sones et al., 2024 ). In this sense, built-environment education operates at the intersection of civic learning and professional socialization. This body of scholarship indicates that youth engagement in the built environment is shaped less by pedagogical intent than by organizational design, civic framing, and institutional governance across educational and public domains. Yet existing research has rarely examined how youth-facing planning initiatives are structured across institutional contexts or how these arrangements condition visibility, equity, and durability over time. Data and Methods The study began with the identification of an initial universe of 45 youth-facing programs through multiple sources, including prior scholarly literature (Palazzo et al., 2021 ), practitioner networks, professional associations, and targeted keyword searches related to youth engagement in planning, environmental education, civic participation, and place-based learning. Programs were included in the initial universe if they demonstrated an explicit focus on adolescents and incorporated one or more of the following elements: place-based pedagogy, engagement with the built environment, community-oriented problem solving, or civic participation linked to planning or allied fields. During screening, nine programs were identified as discontinued at the time of data collection. Discontinuation was determined through a systematic review of program websites, inactive or outdated materials, nonfunctional contact information, and, where possible, confirmation from host institutions. These programs were excluded from further analysis but were retained as analytically relevant indicators of field-level instability. For the remaining 36 active programs, program administrators or lead educators were contacted at least three times via email and, where available, phone or institutional contact forms. Outreach occurred over several months to account for seasonal programming cycles, staffing transitions, and capacity constraints common in youth-serving organizations. Response rates were uneven. Ultimately, twelve semi-structured interviews were completed with administrators or senior staff. In parallel, the research team conducted systematic document analysis for all active programs. While basic descriptive information was available for most initiatives, only 23 programs provided sufficient publicly accessible documentation—such as curricula, reports, grant descriptions, or detailed web content—to support in-depth case-level analysis. These 23 programs constitute the primary analytic sample for the cross-case assessment presented in this paper. Data analysis followed an iterative, inductive qualitative approach. Document-based case materials and interview transcripts were coded using a combination of sensitizing concepts drawn from the literature—such as civic learning, institutional positioning, boundary spanning, and pathways framing—and inductive codes that emerged through close reading of the data. Coding emphasized program-level characteristics, organizational arrangements, and theories of youth engagement rather than individual participant outcomes (Bingham, 2023 ; Lochmiller, 2021 ). Cross-case comparison was used to identify recurring patterns and points of divergence across programs (Yazan, 2015 ). Analytic attention focused on how programs named and framed planning and allied fields, the roles youth were expected to play (e.g., learners, co-researchers, advocates, designers), and the extent to which program structures supported episodic participation or sustained engagement over time. Interview data were used to contextualize and interpret patterns observed in the document analysis, offering insight into organizational decision-making processes and constraints that were not always visible in public-facing materials. Methodological Limitations Several limitations should be noted. First, the study relies on administrator and educator perspectives and publicly available documents; it does not include direct youth interviews or longitudinal outcome data. Second, uneven documentation and interview participation limited the depth of analysis for some programs. Third, the sample is not intended to be statistically representative of all youth-facing planning initiatives. Instead, the study aims to generate analytic insight into organizational forms and conditions that shape youth engagement in planning and built-environment education. Despite these limitations, the comparative, multi-method design provides a robust foundation for examining how youth-facing programs function as educational change initiatives across diverse institutional contexts. Findings Patterns of program absence, uneven documentation, and institutional instability are treated in this analysis not as methodological limitations but as analytically meaningful evidence, and the findings are organized to move progressively from program form to civic framing, equity-relevant access structures, and conditions of durability (Rubin, 2024 ; Yurkofsky et al., 2020 ). Mapping the Landscape: Program Forms as Institutional Arrangements Across the 23 youth-facing programs in this study, planning and planning-adjacent learning opportunities take highly varied organizational forms. Table 1 highlights substantial differences in institutional home, target audience, program format, and duration, underscoring the absence of a dominant or standardized model for introducing young people to planning and the built environment. Rather than comprising a coherent or sequential pathway, the landscape is better understood as a fragmented ecosystem in which “program form” functions as an institutional arrangement—structuring who can participate, what counts as legitimate learning, and how easily initiatives can be stabilized over time. Administrators consistently described these forms less as intentional design choices than as products of institutional constraints, funding availability, and historical partnerships. Table 1 about here Table 1 Organizational Configurations of Youth-Facing Planning and Built-Environment Programs Program Name Institutional Home Target Audience (ES / MS / HS) Program Form Duration AIA Houston – Kids + Architecture Program American Institute of Architects MS, HS Curriculum / Toolkit / Simulation Ongoing / Flexible Architects in Schools Austin American Institute of Architects ES After-School / Club-Based Program Multi-Week / Semester-Based Architects in Schools CA Youth in Arts ES In-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership Multi-Week / Semester-Based Architects in Schools Oregon AFO ES, MS In-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership Multi-Week / Semester-Based Architects in Schools (AIS) DC American Institute of Architects (AIA DC) ES, MS In-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership Multi-Week / Semester-Based Box City Center for Understanding the Built Environment (CUBE) ES, MS, HS Curriculum / Toolkit / Simulation Single / Short Exposure CityLab High School Dallas Independent School District HS School-Based Pathway Multi-Year Pathway Creative Reaction Lab – Seeds of Power Fellowship Creative Reaction Lab Other University / Organization-Based Pre-Collegiate Program Multi-Week / Semester-Based Design in Action (OU) University of Oklahoma HS University-Based Pre-Collegiate Program Single / Short Exposure Design Lab (Learn + Build) Design LAB ES, MS In-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership Multi-Week / Semester-Based East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy (ELARA) Esteban E. Torres High School HS School-Based Pathway Multi-Year Pathway Eastie Farm Youth Climate Corps Eastie Farm HS Hybrid / Coalition Model Ongoing / Flexible FLiP – Future Leaders in Planning Hillsborough County City–County Planning Commission HS University / Government-Based Pre-Collegiate Program Annual / Recurring Short-Term Harvard GSD Design Discovery Harvard University Other University-Based Pre-Collegiate Program Multi-Week / Semester-Based HiArch High School Summer Program University of Illinois Chicago HS University-Based Pre-Collegiate Program Single / Short Exposure K–12 Design in the Classroom Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum ES, MS, HS Curriculum / Toolkit / Simulation Ongoing / Flexible Learning By Design:NY Center for Architecture ES, MS, HS In-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership Multi-Week / Semester-Based UMass Boston PATHS University of Massachusetts Boston Other Hybrid / Coalition Model Ongoing / Flexible Urban Investigations Center for Urban Pedagogy HS After-School / Club-Based Program Ongoing / Flexible UrbanPlan for High Schools Urban Land Institute HS Curriculum / Toolkit / Simulation Single / Short Exposure Youth Engagement & Action for Health (YEAH!) Georgia Institute of Technology MS After-School / Club-Based Program Multi-Week / Semester-Based Youth Engagement Planning (YEP!) Youth Engagement Planning (YEP!) ES, MS, HS Hybrid / Coalition Model Ongoing / Flexible Y-PLAN (Youth–Plan, Learn, Act Now) Center for Cities + Schools, UC Berkeley ES, MS, HS, Other In-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership Multi-Week / Semester-Based Across the sample, most programs primarily served high school–aged youth, with elementary and middle school initiatives concentrated in architecture and design models, and limited vertical integration across age groups. Program duration ranges from single-session activities to multi-year pathways, but most programs cluster in multi-week or single-semester formats that conclude within one academic term. The programs fall into five broad categories with respect to their design. A first form consists of school-based pathways, where planning-related content is integrated into the formal curriculum over multiple years. CityLab High School in Dallas and the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy’s School of Urban Planning and Public Policy represent the most structurally embedded initiatives in the sample. Their design features—sequenced coursework, alignment with the academic calendar, recurring projects, and sustained student cohorts—approximate key conditions associated with institutionalization in educational change scholarship: routinization, role stability, and integration into core instructional structures. These initiatives are unusual precisely because they treat built-environment learning not as enrichment but as a durable educational pathway. A second, widely represented form comprises university- or government-affiliated pre-collegiate programs, typically delivered as short-term summer academies or intensives (e.g., Harvard GSD Design Discovery, Design in Action, HiArch, FLiP). These initiatives provide concentrated exposure to disciplinary content, professional tools, and campus-based learning environments, and they are often framed explicitly as recruitment or pipeline efforts. At the same time, their temporal structure is characteristically episodic—one to three weeks, offered annually—limiting opportunities for cumulative learning, sustained mentorship, or progression over time. In institutionalization terms, these programs often produce strong “events” without necessarily producing durable organizational routines that carry learning forward beyond the program period. A third and especially common form involves in-school residencies or curriculum partnerships delivered by nonprofits or professional associations (e.g., multiple Architects in Schools programs, Learning By Design:NY, Design LAB). These models typically operate over several weeks within the school day and often culminate in exhibitions or presentations. Their reach and accessibility are enabled by insertion into existing classroom time rather than by relying on out-of-school participation. However, these partnerships are frequently dependent on external personnel, volunteer or semi-volunteer labor, and recurring grant support. A fourth form includes curriculum-based simulations and toolkits designed for flexible adoption and replication (e.g., UrbanPlan, Box City, K–12 Design in the Classroom). These models prioritize scalability, modularity, and ease of implementation by educators or volunteer professionals. They can reach large numbers of students and provide accessible entry points into built-environment concepts. Yet their design also makes them structurally “light”: often short-duration, unevenly implemented across sites, and dependent on local uptake. In effect, they distribute responsibility for delivery outward to teachers and partners, which can expand reach while simultaneously weakening the organizational supports required for consistent, durable implementation. Finally, several initiatives operate as hybrid or coalition-based youth development models that combine built-environment learning with civic engagement, environmental justice, leadership development, or workforce preparation (e.g., Eastie Farm Youth Climate Corps, Urban Investigations, Creative Reaction Lab’s Seeds of Power Fellowship, UMass Boston PATHS, YEP!). These programs often explicitly center youth of color and place-based problem solving, with formats ranging from seasonal cohorts to ongoing programming. Their emphasis on empowerment and community engagement can create robust learning experiences, but continuity is frequently cohort-based and contingent on staffing capacity and grant cycles rather than secured through stable institutional embedding. In other words, these initiatives may be mission-strong yet structurally vulnerable—a tension that becomes consequential for durability. Planning Visibility and Civic Framing: How Programs Construct Planning—and Youth Civic Agency Across the 23 programs, planning-related learning was organized through distinct civic frames that shaped how young people encountered “planning,” how youth participation was positioned in relation to authority, and what kinds of civic process learning were possible. These differences were not merely pedagogical or rhetorical. They reflected underlying organizational logics—design education, civic education, workforce development, and youth development—that structured the visibility of planning as a public system and conditioned the forms of civic agency programs could plausibly support. Table 2 summarizes these relationships, showing how variation in planning visibility (explicit, implicit, or absent) aligns with distinct forms of civic positioning and modes of civic process learning. Rather than representing discrete program types, these frames function as organizational mechanisms: they shape how youth participation is coupled—or decoupled—from institutional decision-making, and they distribute responsibility for civic learning across educators, intermediaries, and public agencies. Table 2 about here Table 2 Planning Visibility, Civic Positioning, and Forms of Civic Process Learning Planning Visibility Frame How Planning Is Presented to Youth Typical Civic Positioning of Youth Primary Mode of Civic Learning Institutional Requirements Explicit Planning named as a civic field and institutional process; actors, timelines, and constraints made visible Co-producers; contributors to formal plans or decision processes Governance-facing civic process learning (e.g., engagement with plans, agencies, public officials) Receptive civic partners; adult intermediaries; alignment with institutional timelines Implicit Planning embedded within design, architecture, or environmental inquiry without explicit governance framing Analysts, designers, problem-solvers Experiential civic learning through spatial reasoning, critique, and trade-off analysis Skilled facilitators; curricular flexibility; design-based pedagogy Absent Planning not named; built environment framed through health, leadership, or workforce lenses Advocates, learners, or leaders addressing lived conditions Issue-based civic learning oriented toward awareness, advocacy, or personal development Community partnerships; youth development infrastructure Programs that explicitly identified planning as a civic field and institutional practice were most likely to position youth as contributors to formal decision-making processes. These initiatives—often housed in planning commissions, municipal agencies, or planning-adjacent civic organizations—treated planning not only as topical content but as a system of governance with identifiable actors, procedures, and timelines. In such settings, youth civic agency was constructed through co-production with institutions, requiring adult intermediaries and organizational willingness to treat youth input as legitimate. A Y-PLAN administrator described this orientation through sustained engagement with a city’s comprehensive plan: We’ve engaged young students in everything across that whole spectrum. That could be something as simple as redesigning a school and the landscape around it, but also something as sophisticated as the 2040 general plan… The students engaged with the general plan for two years, offered their input, and some of their recommendations actually got folded into the official document. The same administrator emphasized persistence as a core civic competency, encouraging students to “ send multiple emails if they don’t hear back from civic leaders ,” framing bureaucratic navigation as part of civic learning rather than an external obstacle. A larger share of programs operated through implicit planning frames, embedding planning-related concepts within architecture, design, or environmental education without foregrounding planning as a profession or governance system. In these initiatives—such as in-school residencies, design curricula, and simulation-based models—youth engaged land use, infrastructure, and neighborhood form as objects of inquiry and redesign, while the institutional processes governing those environments remained largely unarticulated. Civic agency in these programs was constructed primarily through inquiry, critique, and problem-solving rather than through direct engagement with public decision-making. For example, programs like Box City introduced concepts such as density, infrastructure, and collective trade-offs through hands-on construction and collaborative scenario-building, situating civic learning in experiential reasoning even in the absence of formal institutional access. Some programs rendered planning effectively absent as a named civic domain, even when youth were working in planned environments. Several university-based pipeline initiatives emphasized architecture or design careers, while youth development and workforce-oriented programs focused on leadership, employability, or community service without explicit engagement with planning institutions. In these cases, youth learning remained place-based and socially relevant, but the institutional architecture of planning—how decisions are made, by whom, and under what constraints—was largely invisible. Across these frames, a central tension emerged between accessibility and institutional legibility. Design- and environment-centered approaches functioned as effective entry points, particularly for younger youth and for students underserved by traditional academic pathways. An administrator from Youth in Arts emphasized this inclusive logic: Arts and design are an entry point for kids who might not be doing well in other areas of schooling because it is so hands on. We focus on creativity, confidence, and compassion… Similarly, Learning By Design:NY described design inquiry as a means of surfacing questions of authorship and power—asking youth “ who designed these things ” and “ who got the say in what was going to be built here ”—with civic learning occurring through observation, critique, and reflection. However, the accessibility of design-centered approaches often came at the expense of sustained civic process learning. Several administrators noted that facilitators frequently lacked formal training in planning or urban governance, requiring substantial scaffolding around basic concepts such as what constitutes the “built environment” and limiting opportunities to engage institutional timelines or decision contexts. By contrast, programs committed to governance-facing civic learning emphasized the importance—and difficulty—of cultivating authentic civic partnerships. Y-PLAN administrators stressed that without a civic “client,” projects lose legitimacy, yet establishing and maintaining such partnerships requires intensive relationship-building and institutional willingness to engage youth meaningfully. Justice-oriented initiatives navigated this tension by treating design itself as a political and civic act rather than as a neutral technical skill. A Creative Reaction Lab administrator articulated this framing directly: When we create curriculum, everything centers history and healing… Design is not neutral… Similarly, Youth Engagement and Action for Health (YEAH!) framed youth action through the built environment’s relationship to health and everyday opportunity rather than through professional recruitment. As an administrator explained: It was really mostly focused on engaging youth in advocacy work and teaching them problem-solving skills so they could take the skill of finding a solution and apply it to advancing physical activity… For us, it wasn’t about getting them into planning as a career, but about helping them understand how the built environment affects health and what they can do about it. In these contexts, the relevance of planning emerged from lived needs and immediate material deficits, underscoring that “planning visibility” can be high experientially even when institutional planning is not explicitly named. The analysis demonstrates that planning visibility structures youth civic agency by shaping how participation is positioned relative to institutional authority. These distinctions are not evaluative but structural. They clarify how different program designs produce distinct civic affordances and constraints—dynamics that become especially consequential when considered alongside questions of equity and program durability, examined in the following sections. Equity-Relevant Design Features: How Access Is Structured Through Program Architecture Across the programs examined, equity was shaped less by stated commitments than by concrete design features that structured who could realistically participate and under what conditions. Recruitment mechanisms, compensation practices, scheduling demands, and institutional anchoring operated as forms of institutional work that either lowered or heightened participation barriers. Equity, in this sense, was operationalized through program architecture rather than articulated through rhetoric alone. Recruitment strategies varied widely and carried distinct equity implications (Fig. 1 ). Teacher- and school-mediated recruitment—common among elementary and K–12 initiatives such as Architects in Schools, Learning By Design:NY, K–12 Design in the Classroom, and UrbanPlan for High Schools—reduced barriers related to transportation, scheduling, and family advocacy by embedding participation within the school day. At the same time, these approaches positioned schools and educators as gatekeepers, rendering access contingent on institutional capacity, administrative buy-in, and individual teacher initiative. Figure 1 about here Several programs combined school-based access with implicit equity targeting. Design Lab prioritized high free- and reduced-lunch schools, while East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy operated within a public high school serving a historically marginalized community. In these cases, equity was embedded through institutional placement rather than explicit recruitment language, shaping participation through geography and school demographics rather than through individual selection. Other initiatives relied on open enrollment or open-access models, including Box City, AIA Houston – Kids + Architecture, and Youth Engagement Planning (YEP!). These approaches expanded theoretical access and, in the case of curriculum toolkits, enabled broad dissemination. At the same time, they assumed that youth, families, or educators had the awareness, time, and institutional support needed to self-select into participation—assumptions that may reproduce existing inequalities. A smaller set of programs employed community-based recruitment, drawing on partnerships with local organizations, informal networks, and targeted outreach (e.g., Creative Reaction Lab’s Seeds of Power Fellowship, Urban Investigations, HiArch). These models sought to bypass school-based gatekeeping and build trust within specific communities, though access remained shaped by organizational reach and program capacity. Hybrid approaches—including Y-PLAN, UMass Boston PATHS, and Eastie Farm Youth Climate Corps—combined school partnerships with explicit equity goals, aligning recruitment mechanisms more closely with stated equity intentions. Equity was further structured through compensation practices and time demands. While nearly all programs were free to attend, relatively few offered stipends or wages. Programs that provided financial compensation—notably Eastie Farm Youth Climate Corps, UMass Boston PATHS, and Creative Reaction Lab’s Seeds of Power Fellowship—explicitly framed youth participation as labor, leadership, or fellowship work. By acknowledging opportunity costs, these initiatives reduced barriers for youth balancing paid employment, caregiving responsibilities, or household obligations. In contrast, the majority of programs relied on unpaid participation, implicitly assuming that youth could contribute time without financial trade-offs. This assumption was particularly consequential for longer-term or more intensive initiatives, where repeated sessions or multi-month commitments compounded participation costs. Time demands varied substantially: short-duration and classroom-embedded formats minimized scheduling burdens and facilitated broad participation, while multi-week, after-school, or summer-intensive programs offered deeper engagement but required greater temporal flexibility. Transportation support was rarely specified. For school-embedded programs, transportation was rendered irrelevant by design. For university- or community-based initiatives, however, the absence of explicit transportation provisions suggests that mobility was assumed rather than intentionally addressed, with clear equity implications. Programs’ institutional locations further structured accessibility. School-embedded models—including in-school residencies, curricular units, and pathway programs—were generally the most accessible, aligning participation with students’ daily routines, though availability varied widely across districts due to school-level decision-making. Some initiatives achieved deeper embedding through specialized pathways or magnet models, such as CityLab High School and East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy, offering sustained, multi-year engagement while relying on selective enrollment processes and district capacity. Hybrid models combined school-based delivery with external institutional support from universities, museums, or nonprofits. While these arrangements expanded reach, they shifted substantial implementation responsibility to schools and teachers, introducing variability in consistency and quality. University-based summer intensives and community nonprofit programs provided immersive experiences but required applications, travel, or participation outside the academic year, potentially limiting access for youth without strong institutional or familial support. Toolkit- and curriculum-based programs further externalized equity-relevant decisions to host institutions, supporting scalability while making equity outcomes contingent on local implementation. Across recruitment, compensation, scheduling, and institutional anchoring, a consistent pattern emerges: youth-facing planning and built-environment programs are differentiated less by intent than by design. Programs embedded within the school day and aligned with existing educational routines were the most broadly accessible, particularly for students facing transportation, scheduling, or financial constraints. Conversely, programs requiring applications, unpaid labor, or extended out-of-school commitments implicitly privileged youth with greater social capital, time flexibility, and institutional support. Explicit equity language did not consistently align with structurally accessible design. Some programs that foregrounded equity rhetorically relied on access mechanisms that constrained participation, while several highly accessible programs did not explicitly frame their work in equity terms. From an educational change perspective, these findings underscore that equity is enacted through institutional arrangements—through how participation is structured, compensated, and supported—rather than through mission statements alone. These equity-relevant design choices intersect directly with program durability. Designs that lower participation barriers often depend on institutional embedding that enhances reach but introduces new forms of gatekeeping. Conversely, compensated and intensive models may support deeper equity outcomes for participants while remaining structurally vulnerable due to funding dependence. These tensions motivate the following section’s examination of durability, fragility, and the institutional conditions under which youth-facing planning initiatives persist—or fail to stabilize—over time. Durability, Fragility, and the Limits of Institutionalization Across the programs examined, durability emerged as a persistent challenge rather than a settled condition. Although many initiatives had operated for multiple years and were widely regarded as successful by participants and partners, administrator accounts consistently described continuity as contingent, provisional, and dependent on informal labor rather than routinized organizational support. From an educational change perspective, these patterns reflect partial institutionalization: programs achieve visibility and legitimacy without being embedded in the structures required for long-term stabilization. Administrators described durability as shaped by short-term funding cycles, annual budget approvals, and shifting institutional priorities, particularly for nonprofit- and university-based programs. Even initiatives characterized as “longstanding” required continual re-justification rather than operating as permanent institutional commitments. Rather than being secured through stable staffing lines or core budgets, continuity was maintained through ongoing organizational work—renewing partnerships, reapplying for grants, and repeatedly aligning program goals with changing funder and institutional agendas. This pattern mirrors broader findings in educational change research, where innovations persist through adaptation without achieving structural consolidation. A defining source of fragility across the sample was reliance on individual champions. Faculty members, planners, nonprofit directors, and program coordinators frequently carried institutional memory, partnership relationships, and operational knowledge, enabling programs to launch and persist while remaining vulnerable to turnover or burnout. As one administrator explained: A lot of these programs exist because one person is willing to do the extra labor to make it happen. When that person leaves, or when they get stretched too thin, the program doesn’t necessarily continue in the same way—if at all. There isn’t always an institutional mechanism to absorb that work. This dependence on personal commitment rather than distributed responsibility signals weak coupling between programs and host organizations. Administrators noted that even when programs were valued, the absence of dedicated staffing lines or codified responsibilities limited organizations’ capacity to sustain initiatives independently of specific individuals. Limited evaluation infrastructure further constrained durability. While most programs documented participation counts, short-term feedback, or project outputs, few tracked youth trajectories or longer-term educational and civic impacts. Evaluation was often described as secondary to delivery, especially in small organizations with limited staff. As one administrator noted: We’re really good at documenting what happens during the program—how many students participated, what projects they completed—but following students afterward is incredibly hard. Once they leave the program, we don’t have the staff or systems to track where they go or how this experience shapes their future choices. The absence of longitudinal data limited programs’ ability to demonstrate impact in terms recognized as legitimate by institutions and funders, reinforcing reliance on short-term funding and episodic delivery—particularly for initiatives focused on civic identity, equity, and long-term engagement. Durability also varied systematically by institutional location. School-based pathway programs and magnet models benefited from alignment with academic calendars, staffing structures, and curricular requirements, enabling a higher degree of routinization, though often at the cost of flexibility and scalability. By contrast, programs operating outside formal school structures—within nonprofits, universities, or community organizations—enjoyed greater flexibility but faced heightened instability. Hybrid and toolkit-based models expanded reach by diffusing responsibility across partners, but this diffusion often diluted organizational ownership, undermining long-term stabilization. Equity-oriented programs faced distinct durability challenges. Several program administrators indicated that work with historically excluded youth required significantly greater relational labor—relationship building, trust, follow-up. However, those are the programs expected to be the most flexible and the least resourced. There’s an assumption that passion and commitment will make up for what the institution isn’t providing. In this sense, precarity was not incidental but patterned, reflecting institutional dynamics in which equity-oriented educational change is celebrated rhetorically while remaining structurally unsupported. Despite these constraints, administrators emphasized continued commitment to sustaining youth engagement in planning and the built environment. Programs adapted by narrowing scope, shifting formats, or rotating cohorts to remain viable. These adaptations enabled persistence but often came at the cost of continuity, cumulative learning, or reach. From an educational change perspective, this pattern reflects adaptation without institutionalization: programs survive as recurring projects rather than stabilizing as durable components of educational or civic systems. Discussion This study contributes to scholarship on educational change by examining youth-facing planning and built-environment programs as organizational and institutional arrangements rather than discrete pedagogical interventions. By analyzing program forms, civic framing, equity-oriented design features, and durability conditions across 23 initiatives, the findings illuminate how youth engagement in planning-related domains is shaped by institutional logics, governance structures, and resource configurations that extend well beyond curriculum or instructional design. In doing so, the study shifts attention from questions of participation alone to the organizational conditions under which youth engagement initiatives are stabilized, adapted, or rendered fragile over time. A central contribution of this study is the conceptualization of youth-facing planning and built-environment programs as civic infrastructure. These initiatives do more than introduce disciplinary content or career possibilities; they mediate young people’s access to civic institutions, decision-making processes, and professional fields associated with the built environment. Framing them as infrastructure shifts analytic attention from individual outcomes to the institutional conditions that determine whether youth engagement is legible, cumulative, and equitable—an approach consistent with research that emphasizes organizational embedding over innovation alone (Coburn et al., 2013 ; Farrell et al., 2019 ). Across the findings, program form emerged as a decisive factor in whether this civic infrastructure was stabilized or remained provisional. School-based pathways and magnet models most closely approximated institutionalized arrangements, embedding planning-related learning within curricular sequences, staffing roles, and academic calendars. In contrast, most programs operated as short-term or partnership-dependent initiatives—widely valued but weakly embedded. This distinction is consequential: institutionalization depends not on longevity alone, but on routinization, organizational ownership, and alignment with core educational structures (Datnow & Park, 2018 ; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2020 ). This framing also clarifies the persistence of fragmentation. In the absence of field-level pathways comparable to those found in STEM or career and technical education, youth engagement in planning remains contingent on discretionary initiatives rather than supported by stable educational systems. Such fragmentation mirrors patterns identified in boundary-spanning reforms that lack clear jurisdictional ownership (Henig et al., 2016 ). The analysis further shows that planning visibility operates as a key mechanism shaping youth civic agency. Programs that explicitly named planning as a civic field were more likely to position youth as contributors to formal decision-making processes, engaging with plans, agencies, and institutional timelines. Where planning was embedded implicitly within design or environmental learning, youth engagement emphasized inquiry, creativity, and problem-solving without consistently making governance structures visible. This distinction reflects a broader tension in civic education reform between accessibility and institutional legibility. Design- and environment-based pedagogies lowered barriers to participation and proved especially effective for younger youth and students marginalized within traditional academic settings, echoing findings from youth participation scholarship (McGinnis & Mitra, 2022 ). However, without institutional pathways that connect these experiences to visible civic processes, planning remained experientially present but institutionally opaque. Youth developed critical awareness of place, yet were less consistently supported to navigate the systems through which spatial decisions are made. Importantly, the findings suggest that implicit planning frames are not inherently limited. In many cases, they functioned as necessary entry points. What distinguished programs was not pedagogy alone, but whether institutions were prepared to receive youth participation—through adult intermediaries, receptive timelines, and governance arrangements capable of incorporating youth input. This aligns with educational change research emphasizing that participation is co-produced by institutional openness and organizational capacity, not by student engagement alone (Brady et al., 2020b ; Diamond & Spillane, 2016 ). One of the clearest findings is that equity is enacted through institutional design choices rather than stated commitments. Recruitment mechanisms, compensation practices, scheduling demands, and institutional anchoring systematically shaped who could participate and under what conditions. Programs embedded within the school day reduced barriers related to time, transportation, and family advocacy, while application-based, unpaid, or intensive out-of-school models implicitly privileged youth with greater social and institutional capital—patterns well documented in research on access and opportunity structures (Posey-Maddox, 2017 ; Scherer, 2022 ). Notably, explicit equity language did not reliably correspond to structurally accessible design. Some rhetorically equity-oriented programs operated under conditions of heightened precarity, relying on short-term funding and unpaid labor, while several highly accessible programs did not foreground equity discursively. This reframes equity not as an outcome to be assessed after implementation, but as a condition embedded in organizational arrangements, consistent with critiques of symbolic equity reforms in educational change(Comstock, 2025 ; Wong et al., 2025 ). Compensation emerged as a particularly consequential design feature. Programs that treated youth participation as labor—through stipends or wages—aligned more closely with the lived constraints of marginalized youth, echoing youth development research on opportunity costs and participation (Lee et al., 2025 ). Yet these same design choices increased resource demands and institutional complexity, contributing to fragility when stable support was lacking. Equity, therefore, was simultaneously advanced and constrained by the same structural conditions. Across the sample, durability remained the exception rather than the norm. Most programs persisted through what can be described as managed fragility—ongoing adaptation, re-justification, and reliance on individual champions rather than routinized institutional support. Boundary-spanning positions enabled innovation and responsiveness, allowing programs to operate across schools, universities, civic agencies, and nonprofit organizations. At the same time, these positions diffused ownership and accountability, limiting institutionalization—a dynamic well documented in educational change research on cross-sector reform (Farrell et al., 2019 ; Henig et al., 2016 ). Reliance on individual champions was both enabling and destabilizing. While committed leaders facilitated program launch and continuity, their centrality exposed initiatives to disruption through turnover or burnout. Programs often appeared stable externally while remaining internally precarious, lacking dedicated staffing lines, formalized roles, or evaluation infrastructure. Such arrangements mask fragility by substituting personal commitment for organizational learning and capacity. The absence of longitudinal evaluation further exacerbated this condition. Without infrastructures capable of documenting long-term and equity-relevant outcomes, programs struggled to demonstrate legitimacy in institutional terms recognized by funders and administrators (Coburn & Penuel, 2016 ). Equity-oriented initiatives were particularly susceptible, as expectations of flexibility and mission-driven labor often substituted for stable investment—reinforcing critiques that equity reforms are disproportionately expected to operate under conditions of scarcity. These findings suggest that durability, equity, and civic depth hinge on how institutions absorb and govern youth-facing initiatives, not simply on program quality. Program design choices—regarding embedding, labor recognition, ownership, and evaluation—function as governance decisions that determine whether youth civic learning becomes institutionalized or remains contingent. For schools, this implies moving beyond pilot-oriented approaches toward routinization through curricula, staffing roles, and credit-bearing pathways. For universities, it suggests reconceptualizing youth-facing programs as part of public mission and organizational learning rather than as discretionary pipeline efforts. For civic agencies, it underscores the need for internal protocols and accountability structures that make youth participation actionable rather than symbolic. For funders, it highlights the importance of multi-year investments in institutional capacity, evaluation infrastructure, and labor recognition rather than short-term innovation alone. From a scholarly perspective, these implications reinforce the importance of studying educational change not only as pedagogical reform, but as institutional realignment across sectors. Youth-facing planning programs illuminate how reforms that span education and governance can generate meaningful learning while remaining structurally vulnerable. Addressing this vulnerability requires shifting attention from innovation itself to the organizational conditions that allow innovation to endure. Conclusions This study examined youth-facing planning and built-environment programs as educational change initiatives embedded within complex institutional arrangements. By shifting attention from individual program quality to organizational design, governance, and durability, the analysis demonstrates that meaningful youth civic learning frequently coexists with structural fragility. Innovation, in this domain, has outpaced institutionalization. A central contribution of the study is to reconceptualize equity as an organizational condition rather than a programmatic aspiration. Across the sample, access, participation, and continuity were shaped by routinized decisions about compensation, scheduling, institutional anchoring, and labor recognition. Programs most responsive to the lived constraints of historically marginalized youth were often those operating under the greatest precarity, revealing a patterned misalignment between equity-oriented reform and stable institutional support. The findings also extend educational change scholarship by showing how planning visibility functions as a governance mechanism. Whether youth participation translated into civic agency depended not only on pedagogy, but on institutional readiness to receive youth input through adult intermediaries, timelines, and decision-making structures. Participation, in this sense, was co-produced by organizational capacity rather than generated solely through engagement opportunities. The study underscores that durability remains the exception rather than the norm. Boundary-spanning arrangements enabled experimentation but diffused ownership, while reliance on individual champions substituted commitment for capacity. These dynamics mirror broader patterns in cross-sector educational reform and point to the limits of change efforts that lack routinization and evaluative infrastructure. For educational institutions and civic partners, the implications are clear. Durable youth civic learning requires shifts in governance rather than proliferation of pilots: embedding programs within curricula and staffing structures, recognizing youth participation as labor, developing accountability mechanisms that make participation consequential, and supporting multi-year investments in organizational capacity. Without these conditions, youth-facing initiatives are likely to remain episodic regardless of their pedagogical strength. Future research should examine how institutional configurations shape youth trajectories over time and compare policy environments that differentially support the stabilization of civic learning. Youth-facing planning programs reveal both the promise and the limits of contemporary educational change. Young people demonstrate consistent capacity to engage complex civic issues; the unresolved question is whether institutions are prepared to sustain the infrastructures that make such engagement equitable and enduring. Declarations Acknowledgements: The author thanks the graduate students who assisted with data collection, document review, and interview coordination for this study. Their careful and dedicated work contributed substantially to the empirical foundation of the research. References Anderson, K. M., McCormick, M. L., Morgan, K. 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07:57:24","extension":"html","order_by":5,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":174354,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"earlyproof.html","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8564059/v1/4a13d10c03de40324765d02b.html"},{"id":100133501,"identity":"a851860f-d729-4e70-a195-d7b75d53ffb5","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-01-13 10:27:41","extension":"png","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":44824,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eRecruitment mechanisms and equity targeting across youth-facing planning and built-environment programs\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8564059/v1/92a02d25fcc7bc35fa548b9a.png"},{"id":100406102,"identity":"b8c056bd-6d3a-4f89-8680-0f14cf91ab64","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-01-16 12:40:19","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":894998,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8564059/v1/c8207502-d8dd-4174-8dc5-5843c9666370.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"The authors declare no competing interests.","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003eYouth Planning Programs as Civic Infrastructure: Visibility, Agency, and Durability in the Built Environment\u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eOver the past two decades, youth engagement initiatives focused on civic, environmental, and place-based learning have expanded substantially across the United States. Young people now participate in programs addressing climate change, environmental justice, urban design, public health, and community development through schools, nonprofit organizations, museums, universities, and professional associations (Hohenhaus et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Jerald et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR31\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). This expansion reflects a growing recognition that youth are not only future stakeholders, but present-day civic actors whose lived experiences and perspectives can contribute to more equitable and responsive public institutions (Brady et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020a\u003c/span\u003e; Checkoway, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; Sala-Torrent \u0026amp; Planas-Llad\u0026oacute;, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR47\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). Educational research has shown that experiential and place-based learning can support civic identity formation, political awareness, and a sense of agency among young people (Forestal \u0026amp; Finch, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAt the same time, participation alone does not guarantee durable impact. While many youth-facing initiatives succeed in creating meaningful civic learning experiences, far less is known about how these programs are structured to support continuity over time, to connect youth to longer-term educational pathways, or to become institutionalized within fragmented educational systems (Sutter \u0026amp; Watson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). Professions associated with the built environment\u0026mdash;such as urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and allied public-interest fields\u0026mdash;provide a revealing context for examining these dynamics. These professions play a central role in shaping housing, transportation, environmental conditions, and neighborhood change, yet they remain largely invisible to most high school\u0026ndash;aged youth as educational or career pathways (McKoy et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR39\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). Unlike STEM, health, or skilled trades fields, which benefit from well-defined curricular sequences, credentialing systems, and sustained institutional investment, planning-related learning opportunities are typically fragmented, episodic, and unevenly distributed across schools and communities (Levinson \u0026amp; Solomon, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR35\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; White et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR58\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). As a result, exposure to planning and built-environment professions is often contingent on discretionary programs rather than embedded educational infrastructures (Palazzo et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis structural invisibility has important equity implications. Decisions made within built-environment professions disproportionately affect communities facing housing insecurity, environmental risk, and disinvestment\u0026mdash;conditions that shape the everyday lives of youth in historically marginalized communities (Hendricks \u0026amp; Van Zandt, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR28\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). Yet youth from under-resourced schools and communities of color are least likely to encounter planning as a legible educational domain or to access sustained opportunities for engagement (London, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e). Existing scholarship documents the benefits of youth participation in planning processes and community design efforts (Laursen, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e; Melcher, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Perri, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e; Wikberg Nilsson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR59\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e), but youth are most often positioned as contributors to discrete projects rather than as individuals being supported along longer-term educational and professional trajectories. Consequently, there is limited empirical understanding of how youth-facing planning and built-environment programs are designed, organized, and sustained\u0026mdash;and which program structures are most likely to support equitable access over time.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis study addresses that gap by examining youth-facing programs operating in planning and allied built-environment fields through an educational change lens. Drawing on a comparative, multi-method analysis of program documentation and interviews with program administrators, the study investigates how these initiatives are structured across institutional contexts, how they frame civic learning and youth participation, and what organizational conditions shape program durability and continuity. Rather than evaluating individual youth outcomes, the analysis focuses on programmatic design features\u0026mdash;such as institutional home, duration, partnership structure, funding model, and civic framing\u0026mdash;that influence whether youth engagement remains episodic or functions as part of a more sustained pathway. The study is guided by three interrelated questions:\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e(1) How are youth-facing planning and built-environment programs structured across institutional contexts?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e(2) How do these programs frame civic learning and youth participation in relation to planning and public decision-making?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e(3) What organizational conditions support or undermine program durability and continuity over time?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAddressing these questions requires attention to both publicly articulated program designs and internal perspectives on implementation, partnership, and sustainability. Accordingly, the study integrates systematic document analysis of 23 programs with semi-structured interviews with twelve program administrators and educators. By centering programs as educational environments in their own right, this paper contributes to scholarship in three ways. First, it provides a systematic mapping of youth-facing planning and built-environment programs, a domain that has received limited attention in the educational change literature. Second, it identifies recurring patterns of institutional fragility\u0026mdash;such as reliance on individual champions, limited evaluative capacity, and unstable funding\u0026mdash;that constrain the durability of civic learning innovations operating across sectoral boundaries. Third, it advances an empirically grounded account of how youth participation, professional visibility, and institutional design intersect to shape the equity and sustainability of educational change efforts. In doing so, the paper reframes youth engagement in planning and the built environment not only as a pedagogical or civic aspiration, but as an institutional design challenge central to contemporary debates about educational change, equity, and democratic capacity-building.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eCivic Learning Through Boundary-Spanning Arrangements\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOver the past decade, civic learning has re-emerged as a central concern within educational change scholarship, driven by heightened attention to democratic erosion, youth political disengagement, and persistent inequalities in access to civic opportunity. Rather than treating civic education as a discrete curricular domain, recent work conceptualizes civic learning as a system-level reform project\u0026mdash;one that seeks to reshape how educational institutions define participation, authority, and legitimacy (Clay \u0026amp; Rubin, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Datnow, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Rubin, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). From this perspective, civic learning initiatives reorient educational systems toward democratic capacity-building, requiring changes not only in pedagogy but also in organizational routines, professional roles, and institutional relationships.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEducational change research emphasizes that the success of such reforms depends less on instructional quality than on organizational embedding. Initiatives that lack routinization, stable staffing, and institutional ownership rarely endure, even when they are locally valued or demonstrably effective (Datnow \u0026amp; Park, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; McMillan et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). Civic learning initiatives face heightened vulnerability under these conditions because their core outcomes\u0026mdash;agency, identity formation, and democratic competence\u0026mdash;resist standardization and often conflict with dominant accountability regimes.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcross civic learning scholarship, youth participation is consistently shown to be co-produced by institutional conditions rather than generated by student engagement alone. Programs that position young people as co-designers, researchers, or civic actors reshape institutional cultures only when adult intermediaries, governance structures, and organizational norms are prepared to recognize youth participation as legitimate (Brady et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020a\u003c/span\u003e; McGinnis \u0026amp; Mitra, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). Where these conditions are absent, participation remains bounded, symbolic, or episodic, reinforcing existing power relations rather than transforming them.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eUnder these constraints, civic learning reforms have increasingly migrated toward nonformal and cross-sector spaces, including extracurricular programs, nonprofit initiatives, university-led partnerships, and intermediary organizations (Henig et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). This migration reflects structural pressures on school systems, where curricular crowding and performance accountability restrict opportunities for sustained civic engagement. Civic learning innovation, therefore, concentrates on the margins of formal education systems, where experimentation is possible but institutional support remains uneven.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEducational change scholarship characterizes these arrangements as boundary-spanning\u0026mdash;organizational mechanisms through which reforms operate across institutional domains, mobilizing external expertise, resources, and legitimacy (Coburn et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e; Farrell et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Boundary-spanning is not merely contextual; it structures how initiatives are governed, where responsibility resides, and which forms of learning can be sustained. Research\u0026ndash;practice partnerships, nonprofit intermediaries, and cross-sector coalitions exemplify this logic, enabling innovation while simultaneously diffusing organizational ownership and accountability.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEmpirical studies document a characteristic trade-off associated with boundary-spanning reforms. These arrangements facilitate responsiveness to local contexts and allow initiatives to bypass institutional constraints that might otherwise block innovation. At the same time, they generate organizational fragility. Programs operating across institutional boundaries often depend on short-term funding, informal labor, and personal relationships rather than on routinized roles or stable infrastructure. Continuity becomes contingent on leadership persistence and partnership maintenance rather than secured through institutional embedding (Denner et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Wegemer \u0026amp; Renick, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR57\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis fragility is especially consequential for equity-oriented civic learning initiatives. Although partnerships and intermediary models are frequently framed as vehicles for expanding access, participation within boundary-spanning reforms often depends on discretionary resources, unpaid labor, selective recruitment, or unevenly distributed institutional capacity (Posey-Maddox, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Scherer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR48\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). Equity goals may be rhetorically central yet operationally fragile, as responsibility for access and support is externalized across multiple actors without clear accountability (Skrla et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2001\u003c/span\u003e). Inequities thus emerge not as unintended side effects of civic learning reform, but as products of the organizational architectures through which these reforms are pursued.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis literature establishes civic learning reform as an organizational and institutional project whose durability depends on how boundary-spanning mechanisms are structured and governed. Youth-facing programs that engage planning and the built environment offer a particularly revealing case. Operating at the intersection of education and public decision-making, these initiatives rely heavily on cross-sector collaboration and frequently serve youth most affected by spatial inequality. Examining how such programs are organized, framed, and sustained illuminates the conditions under which civic learning functions as durable educational infrastructure rather than as episodic and precarious intervention.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec3\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eBuilt-Environment Education and Civic Engagement\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eBuilding on broader traditions of experiential, place-based, and civic learning, a growing body of scholarship examines how youth engage with the built environment through planning, architecture, urban design, environmental justice, and related fields (Garc\u0026iacute;a-Ant\u0026uacute;nez et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Solis et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR51\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Sturrock \u0026amp; Zandvliet, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR54\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). This literature argues that the built environment constitutes a particularly powerful context for civic learning because it is simultaneously material, political, and embedded in young people\u0026rsquo;s everyday lives. Housing, transportation, public space, and environmental risk are not abstract policy domains for youth; they are lived conditions that shape mobility, safety, belonging, and opportunity (DaViera et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Gu et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Qiu \u0026amp; Zhu, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR45\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Slesnick \u0026amp; Slesnick, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR50\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Tewahade et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR56\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). As a result, built-environment education has increasingly been framed as a means of fostering civic awareness, spatial literacy, and engagement with public institutions.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMuch of the youth-in-planning literature emphasizes participatory models that invite young people to contribute to planning and design processes through youth councils, design charrettes, participatory mapping, neighborhood visioning, or youth master plans (Anderson, McCormick, et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Anderson, Morgan, et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). Drawing on participatory planning traditions and adaptations of civic participation frameworks for youth contexts, this work argues that meaningful engagement requires moving beyond consultation toward opportunities for influence and shared decision-making (Botchwey et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Coenraad et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Derr \u0026amp; Kov\u0026aacute;cs, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Empirical studies document a range of civic benefits associated with such participation, including increased knowledge of planning processes, confidence in engaging with public actors, and a stronger sense of political efficacy (Balsano, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e; Bennett \u0026amp; Hays, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Driskell, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e; Stoneman, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR53\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2002\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eParallel scholarship in architecture and design education similarly highlights the civic potential of engaging youth in design thinking and spatial problem-solving (Gordon et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). Programs centered on architecture, urban design, and environmental design often position youth as co-creators of community visions, emphasizing creativity, systems thinking, and collaborative inquiry. Research suggests that engagement with the built environment can demystify professional practices, make governance processes more tangible, and surface how power, equity, and values are embedded in physical space (Kim, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Sones et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR52\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). In this sense, built-environment education operates at the intersection of civic learning and professional socialization. This body of scholarship indicates that youth engagement in the built environment is shaped less by pedagogical intent than by organizational design, civic framing, and institutional governance across educational and public domains. Yet existing research has rarely examined how youth-facing planning initiatives are structured across institutional contexts or how these arrangements condition visibility, equity, and durability over time.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Data and Methods","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe study began with the identification of an initial universe of 45 youth-facing programs through multiple sources, including prior scholarly literature (Palazzo et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e), practitioner networks, professional associations, and targeted keyword searches related to youth engagement in planning, environmental education, civic participation, and place-based learning. Programs were included in the initial universe if they demonstrated an explicit focus on adolescents and incorporated one or more of the following elements: place-based pedagogy, engagement with the built environment, community-oriented problem solving, or civic participation linked to planning or allied fields.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDuring screening, nine programs were identified as discontinued at the time of data collection. Discontinuation was determined through a systematic review of program websites, inactive or outdated materials, nonfunctional contact information, and, where possible, confirmation from host institutions. These programs were excluded from further analysis but were retained as analytically relevant indicators of field-level instability. For the remaining 36 active programs, program administrators or lead educators were contacted at least three times via email and, where available, phone or institutional contact forms. Outreach occurred over several months to account for seasonal programming cycles, staffing transitions, and capacity constraints common in youth-serving organizations. Response rates were uneven. Ultimately, twelve semi-structured interviews were completed with administrators or senior staff.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn parallel, the research team conducted systematic document analysis for all active programs. While basic descriptive information was available for most initiatives, only 23 programs provided sufficient publicly accessible documentation\u0026mdash;such as curricula, reports, grant descriptions, or detailed web content\u0026mdash;to support in-depth case-level analysis. These 23 programs constitute the primary analytic sample for the cross-case assessment presented in this paper.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eData analysis followed an iterative, inductive qualitative approach. Document-based case materials and interview transcripts were coded using a combination of sensitizing concepts drawn from the literature\u0026mdash;such as civic learning, institutional positioning, boundary spanning, and pathways framing\u0026mdash;and inductive codes that emerged through close reading of the data. Coding emphasized program-level characteristics, organizational arrangements, and theories of youth engagement rather than individual participant outcomes (Bingham, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Lochmiller, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eCross-case comparison was used to identify recurring patterns and points of divergence across programs (Yazan, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR61\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). Analytic attention focused on how programs named and framed planning and allied fields, the roles youth were expected to play (e.g., learners, co-researchers, advocates, designers), and the extent to which program structures supported episodic participation or sustained engagement over time. Interview data were used to contextualize and interpret patterns observed in the document analysis, offering insight into organizational decision-making processes and constraints that were not always visible in public-facing materials.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eMethodological Limitations\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeveral limitations should be noted. First, the study relies on administrator and educator perspectives and publicly available documents; it does not include direct youth interviews or longitudinal outcome data. Second, uneven documentation and interview participation limited the depth of analysis for some programs. Third, the sample is not intended to be statistically representative of all youth-facing planning initiatives. Instead, the study aims to generate analytic insight into organizational forms and conditions that shape youth engagement in planning and built-environment education.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDespite these limitations, the comparative, multi-method design provides a robust foundation for examining how youth-facing programs function as educational change initiatives across diverse institutional contexts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eFindings\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePatterns of program absence, uneven documentation, and institutional instability are treated in this analysis not as methodological limitations but as analytically meaningful evidence, and the findings are organized to move progressively from program form to civic framing, equity-relevant access structures, and conditions of durability (Rubin, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Yurkofsky et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR62\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eMapping the Landscape: Program Forms as Institutional Arrangements\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAcross the 23 youth-facing programs in this study, planning and planning-adjacent learning opportunities take highly varied organizational forms. Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e highlights substantial differences in institutional home, target audience, program format, and duration, underscoring the absence of a dominant or standardized model for introducing young people to planning and the built environment. Rather than comprising a coherent or sequential pathway, the landscape is better understood as a fragmented ecosystem in which \u0026ldquo;program form\u0026rdquo; functions as an institutional arrangement\u0026mdash;structuring who can participate, what counts as legitimate learning, and how easily initiatives can be stabilized over time. Administrators consistently described these forms less as intentional design choices than as products of institutional constraints, funding availability, and historical partnerships.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e about here\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab1\" border=\"1\"\u003e \u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 1\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eOrganizational Configurations of Youth-Facing Planning and Built-Environment Programs\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003c/caption\u003e \u003ccolgroup cols=\"5\"\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cthead\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eProgram Name\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eInstitutional Home\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eTarget Audience (ES / MS / HS)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eProgram Form\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eDuration\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/thead\u003e \u003ctbody\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAIA Houston \u0026ndash; Kids\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;Architecture Program\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAmerican Institute of Architects\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMS, HS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCurriculum / Toolkit / Simulation\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eOngoing / Flexible\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eArchitects in Schools Austin\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAmerican Institute of Architects\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eES\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAfter-School / Club-Based Program\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Week / Semester-Based\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eArchitects in Schools CA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eYouth in Arts\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eES\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Week / Semester-Based\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eArchitects in Schools Oregon\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAFO\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eES, MS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Week / Semester-Based\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eArchitects in Schools (AIS) DC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAmerican Institute of Architects (AIA DC)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eES, MS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Week / Semester-Based\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eBox City\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCenter for Understanding the Built Environment (CUBE)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eES, MS, HS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCurriculum / Toolkit / Simulation\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSingle / Short Exposure\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCityLab High School\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eDallas Independent School District\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSchool-Based Pathway\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Year Pathway\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCreative Reaction Lab \u0026ndash; Seeds of Power Fellowship\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCreative Reaction Lab\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eOther\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUniversity / Organization-Based Pre-Collegiate Program\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Week / Semester-Based\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eDesign in Action (OU)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUniversity of Oklahoma\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUniversity-Based Pre-Collegiate Program\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSingle / Short Exposure\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eDesign Lab (Learn\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;Build)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eDesign LAB\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eES, MS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Week / Semester-Based\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eEast Los Angeles Renaissance Academy (ELARA)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eEsteban E. Torres High School\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSchool-Based Pathway\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Year Pathway\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eEastie Farm Youth Climate Corps\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eEastie Farm\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHybrid / Coalition Model\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eOngoing / Flexible\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eFLiP \u0026ndash; Future Leaders in Planning\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHillsborough County City\u0026ndash;County Planning Commission\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUniversity / Government-Based Pre-Collegiate Program\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAnnual / Recurring Short-Term\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHarvard GSD Design Discovery\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHarvard University\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eOther\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUniversity-Based Pre-Collegiate Program\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Week / Semester-Based\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHiArch High School Summer Program\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUniversity of Illinois Chicago\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUniversity-Based Pre-Collegiate Program\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSingle / Short Exposure\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eK\u0026ndash;12 Design in the Classroom\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eES, MS, HS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCurriculum / Toolkit / Simulation\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eOngoing / Flexible\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eLearning By Design:NY\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCenter for Architecture\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eES, MS, HS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Week / Semester-Based\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUMass Boston PATHS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUniversity of Massachusetts Boston\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eOther\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHybrid / Coalition Model\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eOngoing / Flexible\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUrban Investigations\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCenter for Urban Pedagogy\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAfter-School / Club-Based Program\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eOngoing / Flexible\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUrbanPlan for High Schools\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUrban Land Institute\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCurriculum / Toolkit / Simulation\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSingle / Short Exposure\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eYouth Engagement \u0026amp; Action for Health (YEAH!)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAfter-School / Club-Based Program\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Week / Semester-Based\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eYouth Engagement Planning (YEP!)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eYouth Engagement Planning (YEP!)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eES, MS, HS\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHybrid / Coalition Model\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eOngoing / Flexible\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eY-PLAN (Youth\u0026ndash;Plan, Learn, Act Now)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCenter for Cities\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;Schools, UC Berkeley\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eES, MS, HS, Other\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn-School Residency / Curriculum Partnership\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMulti-Week / Semester-Based\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e \u003c/colgroup\u003e \u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcross the sample, most programs primarily served high school\u0026ndash;aged youth, with elementary and middle school initiatives concentrated in architecture and design models, and limited vertical integration across age groups. Program duration ranges from single-session activities to multi-year pathways, but most programs cluster in multi-week or single-semester formats that conclude within one academic term.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe programs fall into five broad categories with respect to their design. A first form consists of school-based pathways, where planning-related content is integrated into the formal curriculum over multiple years. CityLab High School in Dallas and the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy\u0026rsquo;s School of Urban Planning and Public Policy represent the most structurally embedded initiatives in the sample. Their design features\u0026mdash;sequenced coursework, alignment with the academic calendar, recurring projects, and sustained student cohorts\u0026mdash;approximate key conditions associated with institutionalization in educational change scholarship: routinization, role stability, and integration into core instructional structures. These initiatives are unusual precisely because they treat built-environment learning not as enrichment but as a durable educational pathway.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA second, widely represented form comprises university- or government-affiliated pre-collegiate programs, typically delivered as short-term summer academies or intensives (e.g., Harvard GSD Design Discovery, Design in Action, HiArch, FLiP). These initiatives provide concentrated exposure to disciplinary content, professional tools, and campus-based learning environments, and they are often framed explicitly as recruitment or pipeline efforts. At the same time, their temporal structure is characteristically episodic\u0026mdash;one to three weeks, offered annually\u0026mdash;limiting opportunities for cumulative learning, sustained mentorship, or progression over time. In institutionalization terms, these programs often produce strong \u0026ldquo;events\u0026rdquo; without necessarily producing durable organizational routines that carry learning forward beyond the program period.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA third and especially common form involves in-school residencies or curriculum partnerships delivered by nonprofits or professional associations (e.g., multiple Architects in Schools programs, Learning By Design:NY, Design LAB). These models typically operate over several weeks within the school day and often culminate in exhibitions or presentations. Their reach and accessibility are enabled by insertion into existing classroom time rather than by relying on out-of-school participation. However, these partnerships are frequently dependent on external personnel, volunteer or semi-volunteer labor, and recurring grant support.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA fourth form includes curriculum-based simulations and toolkits designed for flexible adoption and replication (e.g., UrbanPlan, Box City, K\u0026ndash;12 Design in the Classroom). These models prioritize scalability, modularity, and ease of implementation by educators or volunteer professionals. They can reach large numbers of students and provide accessible entry points into built-environment concepts. Yet their design also makes them structurally \u0026ldquo;light\u0026rdquo;: often short-duration, unevenly implemented across sites, and dependent on local uptake. In effect, they distribute responsibility for delivery outward to teachers and partners, which can expand reach while simultaneously weakening the organizational supports required for consistent, durable implementation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFinally, several initiatives operate as hybrid or coalition-based youth development models that combine built-environment learning with civic engagement, environmental justice, leadership development, or workforce preparation (e.g., Eastie Farm Youth Climate Corps, Urban Investigations, Creative Reaction Lab\u0026rsquo;s Seeds of Power Fellowship, UMass Boston PATHS, YEP!). These programs often explicitly center youth of color and place-based problem solving, with formats ranging from seasonal cohorts to ongoing programming. Their emphasis on empowerment and community engagement can create robust learning experiences, but continuity is frequently cohort-based and contingent on staffing capacity and grant cycles rather than secured through stable institutional embedding. In other words, these initiatives may be mission-strong yet structurally vulnerable\u0026mdash;a tension that becomes consequential for durability.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec8\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003ePlanning Visibility and Civic Framing: How Programs Construct Planning\u0026mdash;and Youth Civic Agency\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcross the 23 programs, planning-related learning was organized through distinct civic frames that shaped how young people encountered \u0026ldquo;planning,\u0026rdquo; how youth participation was positioned in relation to authority, and what kinds of civic process learning were possible. These differences were not merely pedagogical or rhetorical. They reflected underlying organizational logics\u0026mdash;design education, civic education, workforce development, and youth development\u0026mdash;that structured the visibility of planning as a public system and conditioned the forms of civic agency programs could plausibly support.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e summarizes these relationships, showing how variation in planning visibility (explicit, implicit, or absent) aligns with distinct forms of civic positioning and modes of civic process learning. Rather than representing discrete program types, these frames function as organizational mechanisms: they shape how youth participation is coupled\u0026mdash;or decoupled\u0026mdash;from institutional decision-making, and they distribute responsibility for civic learning across educators, intermediaries, and public agencies.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e about here\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab2\" border=\"1\"\u003e \u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 2\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e \u003cp\u003ePlanning Visibility, Civic Positioning, and Forms of Civic Process Learning\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003c/caption\u003e \u003ccolgroup cols=\"5\"\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cthead\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003ePlanning Visibility Frame\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHow Planning Is Presented to Youth\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eTypical Civic Positioning of Youth\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003ePrimary Mode of Civic Learning\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eInstitutional Requirements\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/thead\u003e \u003ctbody\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eExplicit\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003ePlanning named as a civic field and institutional process; actors, timelines, and constraints made visible\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCo-producers; contributors to formal plans or decision processes\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGovernance-facing civic process learning (e.g., engagement with plans, agencies, public officials)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eReceptive civic partners; adult intermediaries; alignment with institutional timelines\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eImplicit\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003ePlanning embedded within design, architecture, or environmental inquiry without explicit governance framing\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAnalysts, designers, problem-solvers\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eExperiential civic learning through spatial reasoning, critique, and trade-off analysis\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSkilled facilitators; curricular flexibility; design-based pedagogy\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAbsent\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003ePlanning not named; built environment framed through health, leadership, or workforce lenses\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAdvocates, learners, or leaders addressing lived conditions\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eIssue-based civic learning oriented toward awareness, advocacy, or personal development\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCommunity partnerships; youth development infrastructure\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e \u003c/colgroup\u003e \u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ePrograms that explicitly identified planning as a civic field and institutional practice were most likely to position youth as contributors to formal decision-making processes. These initiatives\u0026mdash;often housed in planning commissions, municipal agencies, or planning-adjacent civic organizations\u0026mdash;treated planning not only as topical content but as a system of governance with identifiable actors, procedures, and timelines. In such settings, youth civic agency was constructed through co-production with institutions, requiring adult intermediaries and organizational willingness to treat youth input as legitimate. A Y-PLAN administrator described this orientation through sustained engagement with a city\u0026rsquo;s comprehensive plan:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve engaged young students in everything across that whole spectrum. That could be something as simple as redesigning a school and the landscape around it, but also something as sophisticated as the 2040 general plan\u0026hellip; The students engaged with the general plan for two years, offered their input, and some of their recommendations actually got folded into the official document.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe same administrator emphasized persistence as a core civic competency, encouraging students to \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003esend multiple emails if they don\u0026rsquo;t hear back from civic leaders\u003c/em\u003e,\u0026rdquo; framing bureaucratic navigation as part of civic learning rather than an external obstacle.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA larger share of programs operated through implicit planning frames, embedding planning-related concepts within architecture, design, or environmental education without foregrounding planning as a profession or governance system. In these initiatives\u0026mdash;such as in-school residencies, design curricula, and simulation-based models\u0026mdash;youth engaged land use, infrastructure, and neighborhood form as objects of inquiry and redesign, while the institutional processes governing those environments remained largely unarticulated. Civic agency in these programs was constructed primarily through inquiry, critique, and problem-solving rather than through direct engagement with public decision-making. For example, programs like Box City introduced concepts such as density, infrastructure, and collective trade-offs through hands-on construction and collaborative scenario-building, situating civic learning in experiential reasoning even in the absence of formal institutional access.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSome programs rendered planning effectively absent as a named civic domain, even when youth were working in planned environments. Several university-based pipeline initiatives emphasized architecture or design careers, while youth development and workforce-oriented programs focused on leadership, employability, or community service without explicit engagement with planning institutions. In these cases, youth learning remained place-based and socially relevant, but the institutional architecture of planning\u0026mdash;how decisions are made, by whom, and under what constraints\u0026mdash;was largely invisible.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcross these frames, a central tension emerged between accessibility and institutional legibility. Design- and environment-centered approaches functioned as effective entry points, particularly for younger youth and for students underserved by traditional academic pathways. An administrator from Youth in Arts emphasized this inclusive logic:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eArts and design are an entry point for kids who might not be doing well in other areas of schooling because it is so hands on. We focus on creativity, confidence, and compassion\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSimilarly, Learning By Design:NY described design inquiry as a means of surfacing questions of authorship and power\u0026mdash;asking youth \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ewho designed these things\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ewho got the say in what was going to be built here\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;\u0026mdash;with civic learning occurring through observation, critique, and reflection.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHowever, the accessibility of design-centered approaches often came at the expense of sustained civic process learning. Several administrators noted that facilitators frequently lacked formal training in planning or urban governance, requiring substantial scaffolding around basic concepts such as what constitutes the \u0026ldquo;built environment\u0026rdquo; and limiting opportunities to engage institutional timelines or decision contexts. By contrast, programs committed to governance-facing civic learning emphasized the importance\u0026mdash;and difficulty\u0026mdash;of cultivating authentic civic partnerships. Y-PLAN administrators stressed that without a civic \u0026ldquo;client,\u0026rdquo; projects lose legitimacy, yet establishing and maintaining such partnerships requires intensive relationship-building and institutional willingness to engage youth meaningfully.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eJustice-oriented initiatives navigated this tension by treating design itself as a political and civic act rather than as a neutral technical skill. A Creative Reaction Lab administrator articulated this framing directly:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen we create curriculum, everything centers history and healing\u0026hellip; Design is not neutral\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSimilarly, Youth Engagement and Action for Health (YEAH!) framed youth action through the built environment\u0026rsquo;s relationship to health and everyday opportunity rather than through professional recruitment. As an administrator explained:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was really mostly focused on engaging youth in advocacy work and teaching them problem-solving skills so they could take the skill of finding a solution and apply it to advancing physical activity\u0026hellip; For us, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t about getting them into planning as a career, but about helping them understand how the built environment affects health and what they can do about it.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn these contexts, the relevance of planning emerged from lived needs and immediate material deficits, underscoring that \u0026ldquo;planning visibility\u0026rdquo; can be high experientially even when institutional planning is not explicitly named.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe analysis demonstrates that planning visibility structures youth civic agency by shaping how participation is positioned relative to institutional authority. These distinctions are not evaluative but structural. They clarify how different program designs produce distinct civic affordances and constraints\u0026mdash;dynamics that become especially consequential when considered alongside questions of equity and program durability, examined in the following sections.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eEquity-Relevant Design Features: How Access Is Structured Through Program Architecture\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAcross the programs examined, equity was shaped less by stated commitments than by concrete design features that structured who could realistically participate and under what conditions. Recruitment mechanisms, compensation practices, scheduling demands, and institutional anchoring operated as forms of institutional work that either lowered or heightened participation barriers. Equity, in this sense, was operationalized through program architecture rather than articulated through rhetoric alone.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRecruitment strategies varied widely and carried distinct equity implications (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e). Teacher- and school-mediated recruitment\u0026mdash;common among elementary and K\u0026ndash;12 initiatives such as Architects in Schools, Learning By Design:NY, K\u0026ndash;12 Design in the Classroom, and UrbanPlan for High Schools\u0026mdash;reduced barriers related to transportation, scheduling, and family advocacy by embedding participation within the school day. At the same time, these approaches positioned schools and educators as gatekeepers, rendering access contingent on institutional capacity, administrative buy-in, and individual teacher initiative.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFigure \u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e about here\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSeveral programs combined school-based access with implicit equity targeting. Design Lab prioritized high free- and reduced-lunch schools, while East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy operated within a public high school serving a historically marginalized community. In these cases, equity was embedded through institutional placement rather than explicit recruitment language, shaping participation through geography and school demographics rather than through individual selection.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOther initiatives relied on open enrollment or open-access models, including Box City, AIA Houston \u0026ndash; Kids\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;Architecture, and Youth Engagement Planning (YEP!). These approaches expanded theoretical access and, in the case of curriculum toolkits, enabled broad dissemination. At the same time, they assumed that youth, families, or educators had the awareness, time, and institutional support needed to self-select into participation\u0026mdash;assumptions that may reproduce existing inequalities.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA smaller set of programs employed community-based recruitment, drawing on partnerships with local organizations, informal networks, and targeted outreach (e.g., Creative Reaction Lab\u0026rsquo;s Seeds of Power Fellowship, Urban Investigations, HiArch). These models sought to bypass school-based gatekeeping and build trust within specific communities, though access remained shaped by organizational reach and program capacity. Hybrid approaches\u0026mdash;including Y-PLAN, UMass Boston PATHS, and Eastie Farm Youth Climate Corps\u0026mdash;combined school partnerships with explicit equity goals, aligning recruitment mechanisms more closely with stated equity intentions.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEquity was further structured through compensation practices and time demands. While nearly all programs were free to attend, relatively few offered stipends or wages. Programs that provided financial compensation\u0026mdash;notably Eastie Farm Youth Climate Corps, UMass Boston PATHS, and Creative Reaction Lab\u0026rsquo;s Seeds of Power Fellowship\u0026mdash;explicitly framed youth participation as labor, leadership, or fellowship work. By acknowledging opportunity costs, these initiatives reduced barriers for youth balancing paid employment, caregiving responsibilities, or household obligations.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn contrast, the majority of programs relied on unpaid participation, implicitly assuming that youth could contribute time without financial trade-offs. This assumption was particularly consequential for longer-term or more intensive initiatives, where repeated sessions or multi-month commitments compounded participation costs. Time demands varied substantially: short-duration and classroom-embedded formats minimized scheduling burdens and facilitated broad participation, while multi-week, after-school, or summer-intensive programs offered deeper engagement but required greater temporal flexibility.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTransportation support was rarely specified. For school-embedded programs, transportation was rendered irrelevant by design. For university- or community-based initiatives, however, the absence of explicit transportation provisions suggests that mobility was assumed rather than intentionally addressed, with clear equity implications.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ePrograms\u0026rsquo; institutional locations further structured accessibility. School-embedded models\u0026mdash;including in-school residencies, curricular units, and pathway programs\u0026mdash;were generally the most accessible, aligning participation with students\u0026rsquo; daily routines, though availability varied widely across districts due to school-level decision-making. Some initiatives achieved deeper embedding through specialized pathways or magnet models, such as CityLab High School and East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy, offering sustained, multi-year engagement while relying on selective enrollment processes and district capacity.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHybrid models combined school-based delivery with external institutional support from universities, museums, or nonprofits. While these arrangements expanded reach, they shifted substantial implementation responsibility to schools and teachers, introducing variability in consistency and quality. University-based summer intensives and community nonprofit programs provided immersive experiences but required applications, travel, or participation outside the academic year, potentially limiting access for youth without strong institutional or familial support. Toolkit- and curriculum-based programs further externalized equity-relevant decisions to host institutions, supporting scalability while making equity outcomes contingent on local implementation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcross recruitment, compensation, scheduling, and institutional anchoring, a consistent pattern emerges: youth-facing planning and built-environment programs are differentiated less by intent than by design. Programs embedded within the school day and aligned with existing educational routines were the most broadly accessible, particularly for students facing transportation, scheduling, or financial constraints. Conversely, programs requiring applications, unpaid labor, or extended out-of-school commitments implicitly privileged youth with greater social capital, time flexibility, and institutional support.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eExplicit equity language did not consistently align with structurally accessible design. Some programs that foregrounded equity rhetorically relied on access mechanisms that constrained participation, while several highly accessible programs did not explicitly frame their work in equity terms. From an educational change perspective, these findings underscore that equity is enacted through institutional arrangements\u0026mdash;through how participation is structured, compensated, and supported\u0026mdash;rather than through mission statements alone.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThese equity-relevant design choices intersect directly with program durability. Designs that lower participation barriers often depend on institutional embedding that enhances reach but introduces new forms of gatekeeping. Conversely, compensated and intensive models may support deeper equity outcomes for participants while remaining structurally vulnerable due to funding dependence. These tensions motivate the following section\u0026rsquo;s examination of durability, fragility, and the institutional conditions under which youth-facing planning initiatives persist\u0026mdash;or fail to stabilize\u0026mdash;over time.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eDurability, Fragility, and the Limits of Institutionalization\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAcross the programs examined, durability emerged as a persistent challenge rather than a settled condition. Although many initiatives had operated for multiple years and were widely regarded as successful by participants and partners, administrator accounts consistently described continuity as contingent, provisional, and dependent on informal labor rather than routinized organizational support. From an educational change perspective, these patterns reflect partial institutionalization: programs achieve visibility and legitimacy without being embedded in the structures required for long-term stabilization.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAdministrators described durability as shaped by short-term funding cycles, annual budget approvals, and shifting institutional priorities, particularly for nonprofit- and university-based programs. Even initiatives characterized as \u0026ldquo;longstanding\u0026rdquo; required continual re-justification rather than operating as permanent institutional commitments. Rather than being secured through stable staffing lines or core budgets, continuity was maintained through ongoing organizational work\u0026mdash;renewing partnerships, reapplying for grants, and repeatedly aligning program goals with changing funder and institutional agendas. This pattern mirrors broader findings in educational change research, where innovations persist through adaptation without achieving structural consolidation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA defining source of fragility across the sample was reliance on individual champions. Faculty members, planners, nonprofit directors, and program coordinators frequently carried institutional memory, partnership relationships, and operational knowledge, enabling programs to launch and persist while remaining vulnerable to turnover or burnout. As one administrator explained:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eA lot of these programs exist because one person is willing to do the extra labor to make it happen. When that person leaves, or when they get stretched too thin, the program doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily continue in the same way\u0026mdash;if at all. There isn\u0026rsquo;t always an institutional mechanism to absorb that work.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis dependence on personal commitment rather than distributed responsibility signals weak coupling between programs and host organizations. Administrators noted that even when programs were valued, the absence of dedicated staffing lines or codified responsibilities limited organizations\u0026rsquo; capacity to sustain initiatives independently of specific individuals.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eLimited evaluation infrastructure further constrained durability. While most programs documented participation counts, short-term feedback, or project outputs, few tracked youth trajectories or longer-term educational and civic impacts. Evaluation was often described as secondary to delivery, especially in small organizations with limited staff. As one administrator noted:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re really good at documenting what happens during the program\u0026mdash;how many students participated, what projects they completed\u0026mdash;but following students afterward is incredibly hard. Once they leave the program, we don\u0026rsquo;t have the staff or systems to track where they go or how this experience shapes their future choices.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe absence of longitudinal data limited programs\u0026rsquo; ability to demonstrate impact in terms recognized as legitimate by institutions and funders, reinforcing reliance on short-term funding and episodic delivery\u0026mdash;particularly for initiatives focused on civic identity, equity, and long-term engagement.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDurability also varied systematically by institutional location. School-based pathway programs and magnet models benefited from alignment with academic calendars, staffing structures, and curricular requirements, enabling a higher degree of routinization, though often at the cost of flexibility and scalability. By contrast, programs operating outside formal school structures\u0026mdash;within nonprofits, universities, or community organizations\u0026mdash;enjoyed greater flexibility but faced heightened instability. Hybrid and toolkit-based models expanded reach by diffusing responsibility across partners, but this diffusion often diluted organizational ownership, undermining long-term stabilization.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEquity-oriented programs faced distinct durability challenges. Several program administrators indicated that work with historically excluded youth required significantly greater relational labor\u0026mdash;relationship building, trust, follow-up. However, those are the programs expected to be the most flexible and the least resourced. There\u0026rsquo;s an assumption that passion and commitment will make up for what the institution isn\u0026rsquo;t providing. In this sense, precarity was not incidental but patterned, reflecting institutional dynamics in which equity-oriented educational change is celebrated rhetorically while remaining structurally unsupported.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDespite these constraints, administrators emphasized continued commitment to sustaining youth engagement in planning and the built environment. Programs adapted by narrowing scope, shifting formats, or rotating cohorts to remain viable. These adaptations enabled persistence but often came at the cost of continuity, cumulative learning, or reach. From an educational change perspective, this pattern reflects adaptation without institutionalization: programs survive as recurring projects rather than stabilizing as durable components of educational or civic systems.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis study contributes to scholarship on educational change by examining youth-facing planning and built-environment programs as organizational and institutional arrangements rather than discrete pedagogical interventions. By analyzing program forms, civic framing, equity-oriented design features, and durability conditions across 23 initiatives, the findings illuminate how youth engagement in planning-related domains is shaped by institutional logics, governance structures, and resource configurations that extend well beyond curriculum or instructional design. In doing so, the study shifts attention from questions of participation alone to the organizational conditions under which youth engagement initiatives are stabilized, adapted, or rendered fragile over time.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA central contribution of this study is the conceptualization of youth-facing planning and built-environment programs as civic infrastructure. These initiatives do more than introduce disciplinary content or career possibilities; they mediate young people\u0026rsquo;s access to civic institutions, decision-making processes, and professional fields associated with the built environment. Framing them as infrastructure shifts analytic attention from individual outcomes to the institutional conditions that determine whether youth engagement is legible, cumulative, and equitable\u0026mdash;an approach consistent with research that emphasizes organizational embedding over innovation alone (Coburn et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e; Farrell et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcross the findings, program form emerged as a decisive factor in whether this civic infrastructure was stabilized or remained provisional. School-based pathways and magnet models most closely approximated institutionalized arrangements, embedding planning-related learning within curricular sequences, staffing roles, and academic calendars. In contrast, most programs operated as short-term or partnership-dependent initiatives\u0026mdash;widely valued but weakly embedded. This distinction is consequential: institutionalization depends not on longevity alone, but on routinization, organizational ownership, and alignment with core educational structures (Datnow \u0026amp; Park, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; Hargreaves \u0026amp; Fullan, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis framing also clarifies the persistence of fragmentation. In the absence of field-level pathways comparable to those found in STEM or career and technical education, youth engagement in planning remains contingent on discretionary initiatives rather than supported by stable educational systems. Such fragmentation mirrors patterns identified in boundary-spanning reforms that lack clear jurisdictional ownership (Henig et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe analysis further shows that planning visibility operates as a key mechanism shaping youth civic agency. Programs that explicitly named planning as a civic field were more likely to position youth as contributors to formal decision-making processes, engaging with plans, agencies, and institutional timelines. Where planning was embedded implicitly within design or environmental learning, youth engagement emphasized inquiry, creativity, and problem-solving without consistently making governance structures visible.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis distinction reflects a broader tension in civic education reform between accessibility and institutional legibility. Design- and environment-based pedagogies lowered barriers to participation and proved especially effective for younger youth and students marginalized within traditional academic settings, echoing findings from youth participation scholarship (McGinnis \u0026amp; Mitra, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). However, without institutional pathways that connect these experiences to visible civic processes, planning remained experientially present but institutionally opaque. Youth developed critical awareness of place, yet were less consistently supported to navigate the systems through which spatial decisions are made.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eImportantly, the findings suggest that implicit planning frames are not inherently limited. In many cases, they functioned as necessary entry points. What distinguished programs was not pedagogy alone, but whether institutions were prepared to receive youth participation\u0026mdash;through adult intermediaries, receptive timelines, and governance arrangements capable of incorporating youth input. This aligns with educational change research emphasizing that participation is co-produced by institutional openness and organizational capacity, not by student engagement alone (Brady et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020b\u003c/span\u003e; Diamond \u0026amp; Spillane, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOne of the clearest findings is that equity is enacted through institutional design choices rather than stated commitments. Recruitment mechanisms, compensation practices, scheduling demands, and institutional anchoring systematically shaped who could participate and under what conditions. Programs embedded within the school day reduced barriers related to time, transportation, and family advocacy, while application-based, unpaid, or intensive out-of-school models implicitly privileged youth with greater social and institutional capital\u0026mdash;patterns well documented in research on access and opportunity structures (Posey-Maddox, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Scherer, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR48\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNotably, explicit equity language did not reliably correspond to structurally accessible design. Some rhetorically equity-oriented programs operated under conditions of heightened precarity, relying on short-term funding and unpaid labor, while several highly accessible programs did not foreground equity discursively. This reframes equity not as an outcome to be assessed after implementation, but as a condition embedded in organizational arrangements, consistent with critiques of symbolic equity reforms in educational change(Comstock, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e; Wong et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR60\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eCompensation emerged as a particularly consequential design feature. Programs that treated youth participation as labor\u0026mdash;through stipends or wages\u0026mdash;aligned more closely with the lived constraints of marginalized youth, echoing youth development research on opportunity costs and participation (Lee et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR34\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). Yet these same design choices increased resource demands and institutional complexity, contributing to fragility when stable support was lacking. Equity, therefore, was simultaneously advanced and constrained by the same structural conditions.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcross the sample, durability remained the exception rather than the norm. Most programs persisted through what can be described as managed fragility\u0026mdash;ongoing adaptation, re-justification, and reliance on individual champions rather than routinized institutional support. Boundary-spanning positions enabled innovation and responsiveness, allowing programs to operate across schools, universities, civic agencies, and nonprofit organizations. At the same time, these positions diffused ownership and accountability, limiting institutionalization\u0026mdash;a dynamic well documented in educational change research on cross-sector reform (Farrell et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Henig et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eReliance on individual champions was both enabling and destabilizing. While committed leaders facilitated program launch and continuity, their centrality exposed initiatives to disruption through turnover or burnout. Programs often appeared stable externally while remaining internally precarious, lacking dedicated staffing lines, formalized roles, or evaluation infrastructure. Such arrangements mask fragility by substituting personal commitment for organizational learning and capacity. The absence of longitudinal evaluation further exacerbated this condition. Without infrastructures capable of documenting long-term and equity-relevant outcomes, programs struggled to demonstrate legitimacy in institutional terms recognized by funders and administrators (Coburn \u0026amp; Penuel, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). Equity-oriented initiatives were particularly susceptible, as expectations of flexibility and mission-driven labor often substituted for stable investment\u0026mdash;reinforcing critiques that equity reforms are disproportionately expected to operate under conditions of scarcity.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThese findings suggest that durability, equity, and civic depth hinge on how institutions absorb and govern youth-facing initiatives, not simply on program quality. Program design choices\u0026mdash;regarding embedding, labor recognition, ownership, and evaluation\u0026mdash;function as governance decisions that determine whether youth civic learning becomes institutionalized or remains contingent.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFor schools, this implies moving beyond pilot-oriented approaches toward routinization through curricula, staffing roles, and credit-bearing pathways. For universities, it suggests reconceptualizing youth-facing programs as part of public mission and organizational learning rather than as discretionary pipeline efforts. For civic agencies, it underscores the need for internal protocols and accountability structures that make youth participation actionable rather than symbolic. For funders, it highlights the importance of multi-year investments in institutional capacity, evaluation infrastructure, and labor recognition rather than short-term innovation alone.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFrom a scholarly perspective, these implications reinforce the importance of studying educational change not only as pedagogical reform, but as institutional realignment across sectors. Youth-facing planning programs illuminate how reforms that span education and governance can generate meaningful learning while remaining structurally vulnerable. Addressing this vulnerability requires shifting attention from innovation itself to the organizational conditions that allow innovation to endure.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusions","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis study examined youth-facing planning and built-environment programs as educational change initiatives embedded within complex institutional arrangements. By shifting attention from individual program quality to organizational design, governance, and durability, the analysis demonstrates that meaningful youth civic learning frequently coexists with structural fragility. Innovation, in this domain, has outpaced institutionalization.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA central contribution of the study is to reconceptualize equity as an organizational condition rather than a programmatic aspiration. Across the sample, access, participation, and continuity were shaped by routinized decisions about compensation, scheduling, institutional anchoring, and labor recognition. Programs most responsive to the lived constraints of historically marginalized youth were often those operating under the greatest precarity, revealing a patterned misalignment between equity-oriented reform and stable institutional support.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe findings also extend educational change scholarship by showing how planning visibility functions as a governance mechanism. Whether youth participation translated into civic agency depended not only on pedagogy, but on institutional readiness to receive youth input through adult intermediaries, timelines, and decision-making structures. Participation, in this sense, was co-produced by organizational capacity rather than generated solely through engagement opportunities.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe study underscores that durability remains the exception rather than the norm. Boundary-spanning arrangements enabled experimentation but diffused ownership, while reliance on individual champions substituted commitment for capacity. These dynamics mirror broader patterns in cross-sector educational reform and point to the limits of change efforts that lack routinization and evaluative infrastructure.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFor educational institutions and civic partners, the implications are clear. Durable youth civic learning requires shifts in governance rather than proliferation of pilots: embedding programs within curricula and staffing structures, recognizing youth participation as labor, developing accountability mechanisms that make participation consequential, and supporting multi-year investments in organizational capacity. Without these conditions, youth-facing initiatives are likely to remain episodic regardless of their pedagogical strength.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFuture research should examine how institutional configurations shape youth trajectories over time and compare policy environments that differentially support the stabilization of civic learning. Youth-facing planning programs reveal both the promise and the limits of contemporary educational change. Young people demonstrate consistent capacity to engage complex civic issues; the unresolved question is whether institutions are prepared to sustain the infrastructures that make such engagement equitable and enduring.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003ch2\u003eAcknowledgements:\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe author thanks the graduate students who assisted with data collection, document review, and interview coordination for this study. Their careful and dedicated work contributed substantially to the empirical foundation of the research.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eAnderson, K. M., McCormick, M. L., Morgan, K. Y., Gibson, M., Harper, A., Clark, M., \u0026amp; Christens, B. D. (2024). Youth Participatory Action Research for Equitable Urban Design. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Participatory Research Methods\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e5\u003c/em\u003e(2). https://doi.org/10.35844/001c.120406\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eAnderson, K. M., Morgan, K. Y., McCormick, M. L., Robbins, N. N., Curry-Johnson, S. E., \u0026amp; Christens, B. D. (2024). Participatory Mapping of Holistic Youth Well-Being: A Mixed Methods Study. \u003cem\u003eSustainability\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e16\u003c/em\u003e(4), 1559. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16041559\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eBalsano, A. B. (2005). Youth Civic Engagement in the United States: Understanding and Addressing the Impact of Social Impediments on Positive Youth and Community Development. \u003cem\u003eApplied Developmental Science\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e9\u003c/em\u003e(4), 188\u0026ndash;201. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532480xads0904_2\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eBennett, K. M., \u0026amp; Hays, S. P. (2023). Engaging youth for positive change: A quantitative analysis of participant outcomes. \u003cem\u003eEducation, Citizenship and Social Justice\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e18\u003c/em\u003e(3), 297\u0026ndash;313. https://doi.org/10.1177/17461979221103779\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eBingham, A. J. (2023). From Data Management to Actionable Findings: A Five-Phase Process of Qualitative Data Analysis. \u003cem\u003eInternational Journal of Qualitative Methods\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e22\u003c/em\u003e, 16094069231183620. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069231183620\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eBotchwey, N. D., Johnson, N., O\u0026rsquo;Connell, L. K., \u0026amp; Kim, A. J. (2019). Including Youth in the Ladder of Citizen Participation. \u003cem\u003eJournal of the American Planning Association\u003c/em\u003e. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01944363.2019.1616319\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eBrady, B., Chaskin, R. J., \u0026amp; McGregor, C. (2020a). Promoting civic and political engagement among marginalized urban youth in three cities: Strategies and challenges. \u003cem\u003eChildren and Youth Services Review\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e116\u003c/em\u003e, 105184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105184\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eBrady, B., Chaskin, R. J., \u0026amp; McGregor, C. (2020b). Promoting civic and political engagement among marginalized urban youth in three cities: Strategies and challenges. \u003cem\u003eChildren and Youth Services Review\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e116\u003c/em\u003e, 105184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105184\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eCheckoway, B. (2011). What is youth participation? \u003cem\u003eChildren and Youth Services Review\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e33\u003c/em\u003e(2), 340\u0026ndash;345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.09.017\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eClay, K. L., \u0026amp; Rubin, B. C. (2020). \u0026ldquo;I look deep into this stuff because it\u0026rsquo;s a part of me\u0026rdquo;: Toward a critically relevant civics education. \u003cem\u003eTheory \u0026amp; Research in Social Education\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e48\u003c/em\u003e(2), 161\u0026ndash;181. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2019.1680466\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eCoburn, C. 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Enacting Identities: Participatory Design as a Context for Youth to Reflect, Project, and Apply their Emerging Identities. \u003cem\u003eProceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children\u003c/em\u003e, 185\u0026ndash;196. https://doi.org/10.1145/3311927.3323148\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eComstock, M. (2025). Negotiating Equity: A Critical Policy Analysis of Equity Sensemaking in District Partnership Initiatives. \u003cem\u003eEducational Evaluation and Policy Analysis\u003c/em\u003e, 01623737251336728. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737251336728\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eDatnow, A. (2020). The role of teachers in educational reform: A 20-year perspective. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Educational Change\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e21\u003c/em\u003e(3), 431\u0026ndash;441. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-020-09372-5\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eDatnow, A., \u0026amp; Park, V. (2018). Leading Professional Collaboration. In \u003cem\u003eProfessional Collaboration with Purpose\u003c/em\u003e. Routledge.\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eDaViera, A. L., Roy, A. L., Uriostegui, M., \u0026amp; Fiesta, D. (2020). Safe Spaces Embedded in Dangerous Contexts: How Chicago Youth Navigate Daily Life and Demonstrate Resilience in High-Crime Neighborhoods. \u003cem\u003eAmerican Journal of Community Psychology\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e66\u003c/em\u003e(1\u0026ndash;2), 65\u0026ndash;80. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12434\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eDenner, J., Bean, S., Campe, S., Martinez, J., \u0026amp; Torres, D. (2019). Negotiating Trust, Power, and Culture in a Research\u0026ndash;Practice Partnership. \u003cem\u003eAERA Open\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e5\u003c/em\u003e(2), 2332858419858635. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419858635\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eDerr, V., \u0026amp; Kov\u0026aacute;cs, I. G. (2017). 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Civic Education in a Time of Democratic Crisis. \u003cem\u003eThe ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e705\u003c/em\u003e(1), 7\u0026ndash;15. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027162231190539\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eWikberg Nilsson, \u0026Aring;. (2024). Young 2.0: Advancing an inclusive framework for co-creating futures with youth. \u003cem\u003eCoDesign\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e20\u003c/em\u003e(2), 313\u0026ndash;331. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2024.2358967\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eWong, L.-S., Bohannon, A. X., \u0026amp; Kurochkina, T. (2025). Searching for Equity in the System Reforms Literature. \u003cem\u003eReview of Educational Research\u003c/em\u003e, 00346543251333774. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543251333774\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eYazan, B. (2015). Three Approaches to Case Study Methods in Education: Yin, Merriam, and Stake. \u003cem\u003eThe Qualitative Report\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e20\u003c/em\u003e(2), 134\u0026ndash;152. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2015.2102\u003c/li\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eYurkofsky, M. M., Peterson, A. J., Mehta, J. D., Horwitz-Willis, R., \u0026amp; Frumin, K. M. (2020). Research on Continuous Improvement: Exploring the Complexities of Managing Educational Change. \u003cem\u003eReview of Research in Education\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e44\u003c/em\u003e(1), 403\u0026ndash;433. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X20907363\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"University of Massachusetts Boston","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":true,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"Youth civic learning, Educational change, Boundary-spanning governance, Built environment education, Equity-oriented program design, Institutional durability","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8564059/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8564059/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eYouth-facing programs that engage young people with planning and the built environment have proliferated across nonprofit, educational, professional, and municipal contexts. Yet little research has systematically examined how these programs are structured, how they frame youth participation, and how they are sustained over time. Drawing on a mixed-methods analysis of 23 youth-facing planning and planning-adjacent programs in the United States\u0026mdash;including program documentation and semi-structured interviews with program administrators\u0026mdash;this study maps program forms, institutional homes, civic framing, and durability challenges. Findings reveal substantial diversity in program design and delivery, alongside common patterns of institutional fragility, reliance on individual champions, and limited evaluation and longitudinal tracking. While many programs position youth as designers, problem-solvers, or community participants, planning is often implicitly framed, raising questions about the visibility of civic processes and power relations in youth learning environments. The analysis highlights tensions between youth agency and adult mediation, as well as between innovation and sustainability. By situating youth planning programs as forms of civic infrastructure, this study contributes to children and youth scholarship on participation, informal learning, and institutional contexts, and offers insights into the conditions under which youth engagement in the built environment can be meaningfully supported and sustained.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Youth Planning Programs as Civic Infrastructure: Visibility, Agency, and Durability in the Built Environment","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-01-13 10:27:36","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8564059/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"bbe2b267-3653-48d2-b271-7fad111ccd01","owner":[],"postedDate":"January 13th, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[{"id":60902555,"name":"Special Education"},{"id":60902556,"name":"Urban Studies"},{"id":60902557,"name":"Architecture, Design and Planning"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-01-13T10:27:36+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-01-13 10:27:36","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-8564059","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-8564059","identity":"rs-8564059","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}