All of New York City’s kids deserve spaces and opportunities to flourish.
Our team calls for centering children and youth at the scale that matters most: the neighborhood. Neighborhoods hold the spaces where our kids learn, play and interact: everywhere from schools to libraries, to parks, to streets and transit stations, to stores and businesses. As a child plays outside their school building after school, a pre-teen runs an errand at the neighborhood grocery store, or as teenagers hang out at their local bodega, neighborhood spaces shape how young people understand themselves in the wider world.
Drawing from reflections and visioning with NYC children and youth, community-based organizations and city agencies, we offer a two-pronged approach to enable and advance the design, access and quality of spaces in NYC neighborhoods that shape kids’ everyday lives. The first is a guide for youth-centered physical design interventions that re-orient the entire system of neighborhood spaces.
This system starts at the school, recognizing it as a central hub for children, youth, and community life and extends out into streets and other neighborhood spaces.
The second line of action engages city agencies and community partners’ roles in shaping these spaces through policy, advocacy, and investment. Envisioning a truly youth-centered neighborhood requires a comprehensive approach to planning, design and policy of neighborhood spaces and infrastructure. We challenge policy priorities and offer new pathways for collaborative neighborhood planning, through which our city can work across agency sectors and amplify resources to create and maintain better kid-friendly spaces consistently across neighborhoods.
Our aim is to provide a blueprint for city leaders, agencies, designers, planners, community organizers, and anyone else who shapes the built environment to actively center children and youth – and celebrate their voice! – in the future of our neighborhoods.
Growing Up: Reshaping Neighborhoods for NYC Youth is an ongoing project that we collectively hope to expand on and one that presents an opportunity for you as our audience to share ideas that we have not included in this work. Please let us know what partnerships, interventions or stakeholders we are missing and or any insights you would like to share. You can reach us here.
Additional Resources
→ Print and play “Where is Waldo” – Growing up! edition
→ Print, color and redesign your neighborhood activity page
→ We want to hear from you! Email us: growingupforefront@gmail.com
Meet the Project Team
Eduarda Aun
Program Manager, Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI)
Eduarda is an urban designer from Brazil, currently working at the Global Designing Cities Initiative. Her work is centered on supporting cities globally to implement better streets for kids. Prior to GDCI, Eduarda worked at the NYC DOT and co-founded a non-profit advocating for public spaces in her hometown, Brasilia.
James Francisco
Masterplanning and Urban Design Leader, Arup
James is an urban designer passionate about transformative public spaces that encourage social connectivity, foster inclusivity, and meaningful interaction. He has had the honor of shaping NYC’s urban environment; most notably creating a pedestrian-priority ‘Vision for Broadway’ in Manhattan and ‘Reimagining the Brooklyn Bridge’.
Stephany Lin
Vice President, U3 Advisors
Stephany is an urban planner focused on the roles of anchor institutions in communities. At U3 Advisors, Stephany works with universities, foundations, and nonprofits to advance mission-aligned real estate and community investments. With a background in education, she has helped form neighborhood- and school-based partnerships serving young people in our cities.
Niyanta Muku
Associate Architect, Capital Improvement Projects, NYCSCA
Niyanta graduated as an urban designer from School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi in 2014. Presently she is working with NYCSCA as an Associate Architect on Capital Improvement Projects. She has worked on international urban development projects while in India where she was overseeing the design development and project management.
Rujuta Naringrekar
Landscape Designer, Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects
Rujuta is a landscape designer at Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects. With a background in architecture and concern about the changing future, Rujuta believes that landscape architecture has the power to regenerate and transform the environment, bringing about positive change. Through her research and work, she aims to enhance the urban experience by building unique connections between communities and their context.
Nasra Nimaga AIA NOMA
Senior Associate / Architect, Perkins Eastman
Born in Hong Kong, raised in Nairobi, Nasra is a K-12 design architect interested in the intersections of architecture, advocacy, and policy. These interests are shaped by her experiences as a third-culture transplant and the unswerving belief that architecture can and should improve the lives of people and all work should be approached with an openness to being self-critical and an awareness of its potential impacts.