Impact of Youth Education on Green Stormwater Infrastructure Recommendations to Increase Equity and Resilience in Marginalized Communities

Planning for climate change is a national priority (The White House 2021) and has emerged strongly among federal, state, and local governments, and nongovernmental and professional institutions. Communities need to develop adaptation and resilience strategies to reduce the risks and impacts of climate change including sea-level rise and extreme flooding events (Becsi et al. 2020). Community planning in particular has been covered by a variety of recent literature focusing on needs for community stakeholder engagement particularly across diverse stakeholders to increase community resilience. For example, prior work highlights the need for community engagement (Susskind et al. 2020); collaboration (Stults and Larsen 2020); equity and social and environmental justice (Frantzeskaki et al. 2019; Goh 2020); adaptation, mitigation, and resilience (Becsi et al. 2020); sustainability (Smith et al. 2016); and local knowledge and expertise (Galvin et al. 2020).

According to Susskind et al. (2020), community engagement is critical for effective community planning for climate change and extreme events to include stakeholder voices and needs in planning and decision-making processes. This encourages robust collaborative support between local governments, community groups, and private sector organizations geared toward effective and equitable climate planning (Stults and Larsen 2020). Frantzeskaki et al. (2019) argue that community planning should be cognizant of the needs of marginalized communities and seek ways to reduce social inequities. Planning researchers have advocated for increased engagement in community governance and citizen-driven adaptation and resilience planning initiatives, in addition to climate change mitigation strategies (Hoff and Gausset 2015). In stormwater management, community leaders can engage their community through public perception surveys on attitudes toward varying types of infrastructure (Spahr et al. 2021).

However, there remains the ongoing need to incorporate and harness local knowledge and expertise in community planning processes (Drennan 2018). Residents and organizations often have valuable insights into specific risks and vulnerabilities (social, economic, and environmental) and opportunities (Reed et al. 2020) that could support effective climate change planning and decision-making (Tien et al. 2023). There is little literature, however, on the role of youth in providing such insights. Planning and environmental education—particularly focusing on youth in marginalized neighborhoods—is the beginning of a new era of climate awareness and could strengthen communities affected by climate change–related disasters by arming them with research and collaborative action needed to protect their communities (Dubois and Krasny 2016).

To address the need to engage youth in community planning processes for climate change, members of the research team developed a novel curriculum called YARDs. The interdisciplinary curriculum was the result of a collaboration across researchers currently and previously at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Savannah State University. The goal of YARDs is to empower marginalized youth to advocate for their communities that are at risk due to climate change. Through 14 different sessions, students are introduced to the topics of resilience, environmental justice, map making, civics, and flood infrastructure solutions with an emphasis on green infrastructure. The curriculum was piloted with two sets of middle school students in summer and fall 2022. The pilot programs were conducted in a southern US coastal community prone to flooding, hurricanes, heat waves, and other disasters.

The weeklong summer 2022 pilot program included 12 rising sixth through eighth grade students. The fall 2022 pilot program included 12 students in a Title I (i.e., containing a higher number of low-income students) middle school who participated in a 2-day-a-week 14-session after-school program. In both pilots, the program was facilitated through researchers and local teachers. Facilitators placed students into groups where they selected a site for an infrastructure project and designed a solution for identified risks at their site, with all groups at a minimum addressing flood risk. The resulting product for all student groups was a presentation on the location and design features for their infrastructure solution. The fall pilot program included a final showcase where students presented their solutions to community leaders, planners, and decision makers. In addition to their final design presentations, students were also invited to participate in surveys before and after the program, as well as focus group discussions as part of the YARDs program.

Although this study focuses on outcomes from implementations of the YARDs program, the objective is to explore the impact of youth education on community infrastructure planning processes, and the methods are readily transferable to other potential youth education programs in this area. The focus of YARDs is broadly on increasing community resilience to disasters. For the specific youth population engaged in the program, flood risk and infrastructure solutions to increase community resilience to flooding events are explored. These findings can be applied to other study areas impacted by flooding and populations experiencing increasing disaster events due to climate change, and where infrastructure solutions can provide improved water resources planning and management. In those cases, the specific mapping and data layers the students work with would differ based on community data availability, but the overall curricula on disasters, environmental justice, green infrastructure, and resilience would remain the same. In addition, other potential disaster events and types can be addressed, with employing the proposed mixed methods approach that combines both quantitative and qualitative data analysis providing an increased understanding of the impact of youth education curricula on creating implementable infrastructure designs, increasing youth advocacy, and supporting increased community resilience.

Marginalized communities, for whom the YARDs program is designed, are often found in low-lying communities and overall are more at risk to experience the effects of climate change (Sterzel et al. 2020). For marginalized communities, green infrastructure is often seen as a preferred flood protection option compared to gray infrastructure solutions because of its ability to address some of the other risks climate change presents in these communities, including high temperatures (Garcia-Cuerva et al. 2018). Green infrastructure can also benefit a community by increasing access to green space, providing educational opportunities, and improving air quality (Alves et al. 2018), benefits that are particularly impactful for historically marginalized communities (Garcia-Cuerva et al. 2018). Although green infrastructure can lead to potential green gentrification where bettering locations could lead to an influx of new, more affluent residents, driving up housing prices, engaging directly with diverse community perspectives in the green infrastructure designs, as the YARDs program seeks to do, helps limit potential green gentrifications (Jennings et al. 2019). Engaging the community in creating recommendations for green infrastructure solutions is a way to improve community health outcomes and resilience to disasters (Curran and Hamilton 2012).

For the YARDs curriculum, students were introduced to flooding and the role of green stormwater infrastructure to potentially reduce the negative impacts of flooding through engagement with a floodplain demonstration and accompanying curricula. The Ward’s Stormwater Floodplain Simulation System was used in combination with a customized curriculum where students could see how a parking lot, a marsh, and a retention pond at the top of a floodplain differently affected the amount of flooding at lower elevations. The parking lot with no on-site drainage resulted in the most flooding, the marsh the least, and the retention pond lessened flooding while resulting in a slower flow of water compared to the parking lot. With these results as a baseline, students had the opportunity to also learn about and experiment with gray infrastructure solutions, such as building levees out of putty or considering existing levees, which, when their capacity was exceeded, resulted in more devastating and faster flowing flooding than in the green infrastructure example. Reflections after the activity resulted in the conclusion that green infrastructure and nature-based solutions provide increased community resilience to flooding compared to gray infrastructure or traditional hard-scaped solutions. With these outcomes, this paper seeks to better understand the novel perspectives youth bring to water management and flood infrastructure planning processes.

The summer 2022 program participants were between 11 and 13 years old, with 60% indicating they were in sixth grade. Sixty percent of participants identified as girls. Fifty percent of the participants were African American, and the rest identified as multiracial, white, and Asian. The fall program participants were between 12 and 14 years old, with 67% indicating they were in eighth grade. Fifty percent of participants identified as girls, and 50% identified as boys. When asked to self-report their race/ethnicity, 50% of the students reported they identified as Black/African American, and other races and ethnicities identified included multiracial and Native American/American Indian.

As shown in Fig. 1, three different quantitative data sources were collected through implementation of the YARDs curriculum. The first data source was the survey administered to students before and after the YARDs program. Some items on the pre- and post-surveys were adapted from surveys developed by Millstein et al. (2016) to assess students’ perceptions of psychosocial factors and perceptions of knowledge and skills related to summer program topics. Additional items were developed to measure participants’ understanding of infrastructure to adapt the survey to the new curriculum. While the survey covered multiple topics including advocacy, participation, and optimism for change, the specific questions related to infrastructure and disaster resilience that are of particular relevance and analyzed in detail for this paper included the following:

The first question was a “select all that apply” type, where the authors analyzed the percentage of a selection chosen. The remaining survey questions were analyzed on a 5-point Likert-type scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. A Wilcoxon signed-rank test (matched groups) was used to determine statistical significance of changes pre- and post-curriculum for the summer pilot. The fall pilot survey had identical questions, but the sample size was small and did not allow for statistical significance analyses. For both pilots, the results are interpreted with awareness of their smaller sample sizes. Therefore, the results are augmented with further qualitative analyses in this paper. The survey response data helped answer the second research question, “How can the YARDs curriculum support youth in marginalized communities in understanding intersecting disasters and identifying infrastructure projects to address issues in their communities?” This question was analyzed by looking at the statistical significance of the responses to questions related to infrastructure and disaster resilience.

The second quantitative data source was the students’ projects and a spatial analysis that focused on the locations of the student solutions from both the summer and fall pilots and how they relate to the current infrastructure in the surrounding areas. Each student infrastructure solution included a proposed site selection on either an open lot they were aware of, a high-risk street, or a FEMA flood lot. The latter sites were lots that the city and FEMA had purchased due to frequent flooding to prevent further residential or commercial development on the site. Resulting student solutions from the YARDs program included green infrastructure, parks, community centers, and community gardens. Given this set of infrastructure solutions, the average distance was computed between each of the student solutions and existing infrastructure of these types in the community. The average distance was calculated by finding the closest feature (e.g., existing green infrastructure) to the input data set (e.g., location of the student chosen lot), determining the distance, and averaging over all distances between the features to the chosen sites. The average distances were also computed between the summer and fall pilots to examine the difference between the pilots. These computed distances contribute to answering the third research question, “How can advocating for these infrastructure projects through maps or posters enable youth and their communities to become more resilient?” This question was addressed by analyzing students’ different perspectives on the selected locations of solutions compared to those from community decision makers.

The last quantitative data analysis was a comparison of student versus decision maker perceptions on the issues that need to be addressed in their communities. The issues that students prioritized were taken from the solutions they presented through a coding process to identify common themes. The issues decision makers prioritize were taken from a prior study that included surveys with community decision makers on priorities for green or gray stormwater infrastructure solutions (Reckner and Tien 2023). In that study, decision makers in a southern US coastal community were surveyed regarding their perception of the importance of various stormwater infrastructure benefits on a scale of 1 = least important to 10 = most important in deciding the location of new flood infrastructure in their community. The variables that were included in the analysis of that study were categorized into one of four groups (regulating, provisioning, supporting, and cultural services) based on the benefits they could provide as in Miller and Montalto (2019). In this paper, these categories are redefined for clarity as disaster risk variables, basic survival variables, ecosystem variables, and sociocultural variables. Disaster risk variables are defined as relating to the disasters themselves and the critical infrastructure they put at risk. Basic survival variables are defined as providing resources that support people’s basic survival: shelter, clean air, clean water, and healthy food. Ecosystem variables are defined as the preservation of plant and animal habitats. Sociocultural variables are defined as benefiting the social and cultural characteristics that affect the surrounding community.

Each of the student infrastructure solutions included descriptions of its design features and the issues the solution addresses, e.g., a resilience hub can address energy, shelter, and food needs in the event of a disaster. Each of these features and issues was coded as belonging to one of the four variable types. For coding, the authors were given the definitions of the four variable types based on prior work (Miller and Montalto 2019; Reckner and Tien 2023) with examples. The authors first coded individually, and then discussed and determined the resulting code assignment decisions as a group. If a design feature could fit into multiple variable types, the feature is represented as a proportion of all the variables related to that feature. This coding was conducted across the researcher team to ensure consistency and include varying engineering, planning, and sociology perspectives.

From the coding, the student participants’ priority for a variable type was calculated according to Eq. (1a), where $Y_c$ is the variable type ($c$) priority for youth participants ($Y$), $t$ is the number of design features that relate to the specific variable type, $g$ is the youth presentation group, $n$ is the total number of youth groups, and $f$ is the total number of design features. The adult decision makers’ priority for a variable type was calculated through Eq. (1b), where $D_c$ is the variable type ($c$) priority for decision makers ($D$), and $i$ is the average importance of all the benefits ranked from 1 to 10 within a variable type. For example, a student group recommended a retention pond and community center. In their presentation, the students highlighted the map layers they analyzed, risks associated with the site, benefits of added infrastructure, and more. To support and motivate their design, they mentioned disaster risk type variables six times, basic survival variables 0.5 times, and sociocultural variables 4.5 times, with the halves due to a supporting point relating to multiple categories. In this instance, in calculating the student group’s priority for disaster risk variables, $t=6$ and $f=11$. This ratio is calculated and added for each student group and divided by the total number of student groups, which in this program was four

The student versus decision maker priorities helped answer the first research question, “What are the types of infrastructure solutions that youth develop or generate through the YARDs program?” This question was analyzed by looking at the relative importance of the four variable and benefit categories prioritized by students compared to decision makers.

As shown in Fig. 1, this study includes analysis from three main qualitative data sources. The first qualitative data source is the student focus group discussions. Four sets of student focus group data were analyzed, with the students randomly split into two groups in both pilots. Within each focus group, participants’ discussions were guided through a semistructured protocol that included a set of questions regarding the YARDs program that were developed by the researchers. All relevant quotes from participants related to infrastructure are presented in the following results section.

The second qualitative data source is the adult leaders focus group discussion. These data are from the fall pilot program collected after the student presentations of their solutions to the adult leaders at the end of the YARDs curriculum. In that focus group, the authors discussed with local and statewide leaders in attendance at the final student presentations their thoughts on the delivery of the program and the feasibility of the student designs. Analysis and quotes from these focus groups helped answer the third research question.

The last qualitative data source used in this study is session field notes through observations that the researchers and authors took throughout the delivery of the YARDs program. The authors took notes on topics such as how the students reacted and interacted with the curriculum material, recommendations for the next iteration of the YARDs program, and if any parts of the sessions deviated from the initial curriculum. These field notes helped fill in gaps in supporting all the research questions.

The first research question asked, “What are the types of infrastructure solutions that youth develop or generate through the YARDs program?” This answer was addressed through a quantitative comparison of student versus decision maker priorities.

Youth participant and adult decision maker priorities were calculated through Eqs. (1a) and (1b), respectively. The pie charts in Fig. 2 show the relative weighting of each of the four variable types for the adult decision makers compared to YARDs youth. From Fig. 2(a), the local decision makers tended to weigh each type of variable equally, with a slight increased priority on sociocultural variables and with disaster risk being the smallest. On the other hand, the youth had disaster risk as the highest priority (38% for the youth compared to 24% for the adult decision makers), while ecosystem variables were only mentioned briefly by one team. In the YARDs curriculum, a mapping software was made available to the students to explore different map data layers in the community to support their solutions. Although this mapping software contained a variable on bird habitat, and the facilitators mentioned a few times throughout the program how green infrastructure can help clean water runoff, which helps local habitats, the students did not appear to identify with the ecosystem variables. Rather, the students tended to emphasize issues that directly affected them or alarmed them. For example, in both summer and fall programs, when going through the spatial data layers, when students heard about air quality issues and cancer rates, they were directly able to see how some neighborhoods were worse off than others. These data helped inform most groups on where they wanted to locate their solutions. Basic survival and sociocultural variables were more intuitive, with the students coming in with a baseline understanding of these issues. For the disaster risk variables, all the students witnessed a floodplain simulator where they were able to see how different types of infrastructure can lead to different flooding levels and impacts. In the focus groups, many students identified the floodplain simulator as their favorite activity due to its interactive components. In the YARDs program, groups also saw different sea-level rise scenarios through the mapping activities. Both the floodplain simulator and visualizing sea-level rise led to many groups choosing to incorporate features addressing disaster risk in their solutions. The results show the importance youth place on reducing disaster risk, while providing sociocultural benefits, in designing new infrastructure solutions for their communities.

The second research question asked, “How can the YARDs curriculum support youth in marginalized communities in understanding intersecting disasters and identifying infrastructure projects to address issues in their communities?” This question was analyzed quantitatively through the student pre- and post-curriculum survey responses. There was a difference in numbers of students taking both the pre- and post-surveys in the two pilots, resulting in a varying ability to statistically assess the outcomes. The summer pilot had 11 students take the pre- and post-survey responses. For the fall pilot, 13 students took the pre-survey and eight students took the post-survey. However, only six students took both the pre- and post-survey. This difference was due to different consistency in attendance between the two pilots. The summer pilot was a summer camp where students needed to commit to only a week of time. The fall pilot was an after-school program that spanned 6 weeks where many students had other commitments going on simultaneously, leading to different students coming and going in the program. The researchers will continue to run the program in the future as a summer program to ensure more consistent student exposure to the curriculum.

In both pilots, identical questions in the survey were asked pre- and post-curriculum to be able to assess the impact of the YARDs program on student outcomes. The following shows results of the student survey responses pre- and post-curriculum for both the summer and fall pilots. First, Fig. 3 shows the results from asking the students to identify the most important disasters facing their community. Respondents could select among a list of possible disasters (choose all that apply), as well as given options to indicate that they did not know and to write in other disasters not provided. Across both pilots, hurricanes and flooding were identified as one of the most significant disaster risks to their community. Comparing differences before and after the curriculum, flooding was mentioned more in the post-survey for both pilots, with the summer having the largest increased difference. Comparing the results between summer and fall, the summer pilot students indicated heat waves as an area of high concern. Although heat waves have larger impacts on the demographics of the fall pilot, they placed it as a lower concern. This is likely due to the summer pilot students experiencing high temperatures at the time of taking the survey.

In the program survey, students were also asked about their self-efficacy for disaster resilience/environmental justice and advocacy behavior, overall advocacy outcome efficacy, and overall assertiveness. Results from these questions relating to the infrastructure focus of this study are presented in Fig. 4. Responses are given on a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The error bars represent one standard deviation from the average for the responses to each question. The questions with outlined bars had a significant change in the results from pre- to post-responses indicated by a $p\text{-}\text{value}<0.05$ from the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The questions that resulted in a significant positive change in average values for the summer surveys were “This project can make a difference in finding infrastructure solutions for natural disasters” in the outcome efficacy category and “I can talk about infrastructure problems in my community” in the assertiveness category. These results show evidence of the students’ attitude changes from the program for what they learned about infrastructure, indicating it can make a difference in their community, and that they know more about it after the program. Among the self-efficacy questions, the student responses for all questions were higher after the program. For outcome efficacy for the summer pilot students, the responses went from neither agreeing nor disagreeing to agreeing on the post-survey. On average, on the summer post-survey, students agreed with all but one statement relating to outcome efficacy, indicating a positive result from the YARDs program. For assertiveness, students went on average from slightly disagreeing to slightly agreeing after the curriculum. These findings indicate that participants had higher perceptions of their skills relevant to assertiveness after experiencing the program. Overall, students increased their understanding of infrastructure positively throughout the YARDs program.

Supplementing the survey results with data from the focus groups, among the student focus groups, it was found that the students comprehended and connected with the material related to infrastructure. In both the summer and fall pilots, after the program, students could actively define the difference between green and gray flood infrastructure. The connection between infrastructure and flood impacts was clearer for students in the summer pilot program. For example, when asked how infrastructure might improve disaster resilience, a student said, “As long as the infrastructure is built correctly and there isn’t, like, a hole in it, then it can actually prevent or protect against natural disasters. Like a dam, for example, that could help keep water away from people’s houses and keep people’s lives safe. Also there’s a hole and there’s a gap. So the pressure will build and make it a ton of a lot worse than what it would be before.” This comment speaks to the student understanding differences in how green or gray infrastructure fails and the corresponding impacts on the community. Then when asked why a community might look into solutions such as water retention, they clarified, “Because it helps soak up the water rather than just keep it away.” For the fall student focus groups, participants had a tougher time focusing (likely due to the extended time period of the program and the turnover in student participants) and provided limited responses related to points beyond basic understanding of infrastructure. The authors used these answers to infer that the curriculum can be further improved to explore why the students were looking into green infrastructure solutions, and future implementations of the curriculum will emphasize the connection between different flood infrastructure solutions and overall community resilience. The authors inferred from session notes that the emphasis on green infrastructure was effective for the participants present in the room, and some students were able to understand through the YARDs program the role of green infrastructure in reducing flooding impacts in the community.

The third research question asked, “How can advocating for these infrastructure projects through maps or posters enable youth and their communities to become more resilient?” This question was addressed through a quantitative spatial analysis of the student solutions. Specifically, to identify if new student-designed solutions address current unmet community needs, a spatial analysis of the student-selected infrastructure locations was conducted. Results include calculated distances from existing infrastructure and analysis of the characteristics of specific locations to assess the additional benefits new infrastructure solutions would provide to support increased community resilience.

Fig. 5 shows the spatial spread of the student-selected infrastructure locations of the two pilots. The chosen lot locations for the student solutions are shown, along with the locations of where the YARDs curriculum for the two pilots was delivered, which are shown as circles on the map. The boxed areas indicate areas that are examined in further detail in Figs. 6 and 7. The summer pilot was conducted in a location where few students lived nearby. Through mapping activities as part of the curriculum, students were shown locations of FEMA flood lots, and could pick from these locations to place their solutions. From the resulting solutions, all groups chose to locate their infrastructure solutions on the southeast side of the study city, which is next to marshes. This concentration of chosen lots corresponds with most of the FEMA flood lots being located there due to high flood risks in those areas. In addition, mapping layers that students explored during the program showed demographic information including distributions of youth populations across the community. Most of the lots chosen in the summer pilot were located in high youth concentration areas. Even though the summer students did not live in these high-concentration areas, many groups still desired to help as many youths as possible that live in areas of high flood risk and higher air pollution risk. The lots chosen in the fall pilot had similar air pollution risks and demographics, but the risk of coastal flooding is greater near the summer-chosen lots.

In the fall pilot, all the students picked lots close to where they live. The pilot took place south of the city, away from the participants’ school due to ongoing construction at the school. Regardless of this change in venue, the students used their knowledge of their own neighborhoods and their access to detailed community maps through the YARDs mapping activities to choose their lots. Students could choose existing FEMA flood lots or any other at-risk areas of which they were aware. This choice resulted in half of the groups picking FEMA flood lots and half picking open lots they were aware of in their neighborhood. There were no FEMA flood lots central to their neighborhood despite flood risk present. This may be due to either the community not being made aware of FEMA’s lot purchasing program or the community members not having the desire to leave.

To examine the chosen lot locations in more detail, including relationships with existing infrastructure, Figs. 6 and 7 show zoomed-in maps of the highlighted locations from Fig. 5. Starting with the summer pilot, Fig. 6 shows a more detailed map indicating where the chosen lots were located and surrounding existing infrastructure. Because the student infrastructure solutions included community gardens, community centers, parks, and green infrastructure, existing infrastructure in the area of these types are shown. The only green infrastructure nearby is located by the southernmost chosen lot. The primary purpose of the existing green infrastructure is to improve water quality rather than provide any significant water retention. All the student designs include increasing flood protection to the surrounding area, so the student-selected location and infrastructure features address a need not currently met or emphasized by local decision makers. Although there are a number of parks nearby, many are small, and although they provide some public green space, there is little to no infrastructure that would make them more youth friendly. The northern lots are close to existing community resources including community centers and community gardens. However, considering the concentration of youth in the area, these resources are currently insufficient to meet population needs. Considering that the locations of the lots needed to be chosen at the beginning of the third day of the summer program (with only 2.5 camp days’ worth of instruction), the youth were able to select lots with clearly identified needs and chose locations to address community concerns not currently met by existing infrastructure.

For the fall pilot, Fig. 7 shows the relationship between chosen lots and existing infrastructure, as well as where the students would typically go to school. The groups who picked lots in the southeast of the map were closer to existing infrastructure while being on existing FEMA flood lots, compared to the northwest lots that were not FEMA flood lots. For example, one of the southeastern chosen lots is already an existing FEMA flood lot transformed into a park, but the students argued for a park that better served youth. One of the groups that did not pick a FEMA lot also picked an existing park. However, they suggested it include a water retention pond and a resilience hub to better reduce community disaster risk. The groups who picked the northwest lots selected areas of higher infrastructure need. In future iterations of the YARDs program, in identifying locations for new infrastructure, for students who are more familiar with their neighborhood, selecting among FEMA flood lots may be too restrictive, and expanding possible infrastructure sites to include parks or other areas may allow more flexibility in locations and designs for infrastructure solutions.

To quantify the relationship between the student-chosen lots and existing infrastructure and examine the students’ effectiveness in choosing sites of infrastructure need, Fig. 8 shows the distance between the student solution locations and existing infrastructure. Average distances are shown along with error bars showing one standard deviation from the mean. The summer and fall lots had a similar distance to green infrastructure, with both pilots’ lots averaging around 800 m from existing green infrastructure. Because green infrastructure’s benefits are very localized, 800 m is a sufficient distance for new green infrastructure solutions to act independently of existing ones and provide additional community benefits. Both pilots chose locations close to parks or existing park locations with suggested redesigns for increased flood resilience. This may be due to student familiarity with and use of these spaces. The distance to community centers shows the greatest difference across the pilots, with the summer lots indicating a larger distance to the existing infrastructure. This is due to there being fewer community centers within the neighborhoods of the summer-chosen lots. Both pilots had lots far from existing community gardens, with the distances for the fall pilot showing large variations due to large differences between the groups who picked FEMA flood lots or general areas of need. Overall, the students selected locations that are located far from existing infrastructure to address current unmet community needs.

Supplementing these results, to examine feasibility of the student solutions and benefits of the curriculum and resulting student infrastructure designs, feedback from adult community leaders and decision makers on the student solutions was analyzed. An adult leader focus group was conducted for the fall pilot after the students presented their designs and the adults were able to learn more about the YARDs program. Overall, the adults identified that the student designs were practical. When the decision makers were asked if the student designs could be implemented, one responded with “Short answer is yes. They certainly would need to be designed and built out further … seeing the passion these kids have … that will go a long way.” While the designs were not ready to be built, they were enough to inspire change in the community. Considering financial resources for new infrastructure, when asked whether a smaller, i.e., less expensive, design was more ideal for implementation, the decision maker said, “It depends … It is like cobbling together like how can we think about different resources and different budgets.” Overall, the decision makers did not recommend specifically limiting the students by size or budget. Rather, the financial limiting would naturally happen on the government side. Regarding implementation, another decision maker added, “It is a necessary last step for this program that something gets built … we have to think that this is these kids like first experience interacting with government … if they actually make it happen that is a huge lifelong learning tool … you can actually create a change.” They emphasized that for a program like this that encourages participants to be lifelong advocates, it is important they have a positive experience by seeing something built to remain optimistic about government and municipal planning processes.

One leader identified a desire to have more detailed designs, saying, “There are some that the locations are more viable … just from what I know about the space … where I know we could probably have space to do something else … right now I would say it would be there are tangible ideas. I would not want to just say here is a laundry list that we come up with. I would like the kids to actually say, no outside the laundry list like here is where we [d]rill down and then here are our some of our specific suggestions.” Students in the fall pilot presented a general description of their design. In the summer pilot, students drew more details of their solutions, such as where certain aspects of their designs would go into their chosen lot. The consensus was reached that asking students to provide as much detail as possible would be preferred to better understand student priorities and ideas, while emphasizing to the students that their exact design may not be implemented.

Overall, in future iterations of the program, having participants choose among feasible lots and present specific features they would like to see developed for or added to the lot provides the most relevant and useful information to community leaders and decision makers. Comparing these results with those found in the comparison between participant and adult priorities, the authors find that not only is it important for community planning and development for the participants’ designs to be implemented in some form, but that students and youth are able to provide unique perspectives for water management and flood risk mitigation. Future decision makers benefit from the youth perspective by exploring new ideas on locations and prioritized features for new flood infrastructure solutions, and encouraging future community members to stay engaged with municipal planning processes.