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

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.