The project aims to increase participation of young people in planning processes in municipalities (in cities and in villages) in specific area of spatial and territorial planning, architectural and urban design. The main target groups of project are youth workers, experts in the field of architecture and urbanism, developers, representatives of local governments (politicians and officials) as well as active young people. Within the project we will create a new innovative methodological handbook that will summarise the framework of involving young people to the spatial planning, territorial and urban design, it will introduce methods used in this specific thematic field as well as conditions for their successful and high quality application in practice. Moreover, it will bring examples of good practices from Slovakia, Czech republic and from abroad. In the framework of multiplication activities, we will organise regional workshops (8 in the Slovak Republic and 7 in the Czech Republic) which will introduce an innovative methodology and will network stakeholders listed above (altogether 180 participants), lead them to networking and cooperation in this specific thematic field. The final activity of the project will be an international conference that will create space for further acquiring knowledge and skills in the topic, networking in an international context and planning for subsequent events within the sustainability of the project. By implementing the project, we will support greater involvement and participation of young people in spatial and territorial planning in municipalities in which they live (both in the city and in the village). Like this we will ensure that their needs and requirements are reflected in strategic documents of municipalities such as Local Government Development Plan or Local Land Use Plan, and subsequent actions and activities. This will also lead to greater integration of young people into society, to exercising their citizens' rights and the improvement of the quality of life in the immediate environment in which they live and grow up.
We have set four main objectives for the implementation of the project. We wanted to develop a methodology that would address the topic of participation of children and young people in spatial and territorial planning. Through regional workshops, we wanted to disseminate this methodology to community actors who have the potential to implement activities and involve children and young people in spatial and territorial planning - whether they are youth workers and NGO workers, municipal government workers, educators, or professionals from the ranks of urban planners and architects. Our third goal was to connect the different actors so that they could exchange experiences and perspectives on the topic - whether at a regional level or at a joint international conference. And of course, we did not want to limit the impact of the activities only to their direct participants, so we prepared the methodological output to be usable also for the wider interested public.
The organisations involved in the project have long been working on the topic of participation of children and young people, whether in terms of involving young people in decision-making processes at the level of municipalities or communities, or by conducting practical workshops where participants have the opportunity to give their opinion on the design of public spaces and architectural solutions. Within the framework of our outputs - both the new methodology and the educational and networking activities, we wanted to link these approaches and focus on the topic of spatial and territorial planning. We believe that children and young people can also be an equal partner to municipalities and professionals in this field. Being able to influence how their neighborhood and where they live will look like (or for example architecture design their school, school club, etc.) has a major impact on their relationship and connections with the local community and their willingness to get involved in community activities.