The Urban Futures program was established last year in order to help facilitate participation of young people in planning and urban design. This is done by working with local teachers to create lessons and assignments related to planning issues in Louisville; exploring these issues allows for us to both inform students about relevant topics while also being informed by students as to how planning and urban design affects them. This is especially important, as the voices of young people are often underrepresented in the planning process. This year, as part of this program, tenth through twelfth grade students at Liberty High School worked towards creating their version of a healthy city.
This has been the most deeply-involved lesson plan with students so far, with different assignments across two different classes. The first was Mrs. Schoens social studies class, where students learned about the urban history of Louisville and the forces that created our existing built environment. This covered topics such as redlining, urban renewal, and land-use patterns. The students also read from, and worked on a lesson related to, The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. This ended with an assignment where students worked to explain how federal, state, and local housing laws implemented prior to the civil rights movement contributed to segregation of Louisville and other cities.
After learning about how our city’s urban form came to be, students learned about urban design in Mr. You’s science class. This lesson covered less depressing topics such as mobility, walkability, green space access, how design and health interact and so on. It required walking a fine line between informing students about urban design while not saying so much as to dictate how they interpret what healthy design is. While I was giving a presentation on these subjects, students had quite a bit of personal experience with issues of urban design, especially mobility, with students struggling to move about Louisville without use of a personal vehicle.
Following a presentation about urban design and health, students grouped together and selected one of five vacant/underutilized sites across Louisville to turn into an area they interpreted as following healthy design principles. This started with creating a 2D drawing on a top-down map followed by a 3D model of the space. Students primarily focused on creating healthy greenspaces in these areas.
Mr. You plans to have this be a project for his students next year. Making it the second school in JCPS to have some kind of recurring lesson related to healthy urban design, with the first being DuPont Manual High School. If you are a teacher and interested in creating your own healthy design lesson for your class, whether it be a science, english, history, or any kind of class, feel free to email me at sgwill08@louisville.edu.
A special thanks to Mr. You and Mrs. Schoen for working with us this year!
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