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Youth Participation for Urban Vitality with Christel House Mexico Alumni in Mexico City (Part I) Outcomes and Applicability Of

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Youth Participation for Urban Vitality with Christel House Mexico Alumni in Mexico City (Part I) Outcomes and Applicability Of Fall 08 Youth Participation for Urban Vitality with Christel House Mexico Alumni in Mexico City (Part I) Outcomes and applicability of the Growing Up in Cities model for older youth, aged 16-20, in Mexico City’s Tacubaya neighbourhood Study conducted by Georgia Johnson, Master’s Candidate with the supervision of Professor Juan Torres, in the context of a travail dirigé for the completion of a Master’s in Urban Planning from the Université de Montreal Georgia Johnson - August 2017 Youth Participation for Urban Vitality with Christel House Mexico alumni in Mexico City List of abbreviations and figures Introduction 1. Context 2. Literature review 2.1 Youth 2.2 Youth and the city 2.3 Participation in urban planning 2.3.1 Public participation in theory and practice 2.3.2 Public participation in the global south 2.3.3 Youth participation 3. Problem statement and methodology 3.1 Research problem and objectives 3.2 Methodology 3.2.1 Participant recruiting 3.2.2 Data collection tools 4. Conclusion References Appendices Georgia Johnson August 2017 1 Youth Participation for Urban Vitality with Christel House Mexico alumni in Mexico City List of abbreviations GUiC – Growing Up in Cities CHMX – Christel House Mexico UN – United Nations UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNICEF – United Nations Children’s Fund CRC – Convention on the Rights of the Child SEDUVI – The Mexican Secretary for Urban and Housing Development BRT – Bus rapid transit CIAM – International Congress of Modern Architecture List of figures Figure 1: Population structure in percentage by quinquennial groups, according to sex, 2015 census (Mexico) (INEGI, 2016) Figure 2: Map of the Tacubaya neighbourhood (IEDF, 2011) Figure 3: Aerial photo of Tacubaya with reference points (Bing, 2017) Figure 4: The Ladder of Citizen Participation (Arnstein, 1969) Figure 5: A Ladder of Children’s Participation (Hart, 1992) Figure 6: Formal and informal pedestrian paths around CHMX (Georgia Johnson, 2017; Bing, 2017) Figure 7: A panel is removed from the barrier on Avenida Jalisco to permit pedestrian crossing (Herminio Alatorre, 2016) Georgia Johnson August 2017 2 Youth Participation for Urban Vitality with Christel House Mexico alumni in Mexico City Introduction From July-August 2016, I conducted a participatory action-research based on the Growing up in Cities (GUiC) model with six youth aged 16-20 in the central Mexico City district, Tacubaya, in partnership with the foundation Christel House Mexico. GUiC is an action-research methodology that works with children to help us see the city through their eyes. The methodology was originally conceived by MIT urban planning professor Kevin Lynch, and implemented by himself and a team of researchers in the 1970s under the aegis of UNESCO, in six different sites in Argentina, Australia, Mexico, and Poland. The main idea behind GUiC was to involve children aged 11-14, especially those from the poorest and most vulnerable contexts, in the city planning process. The analysis of the data collected from these first projects is documented in the book Growing Up in Cities: Studies of the Spatial Environment of Adolescence in Cracow, Melbourne, Mexico City, Salta, Toluca, and Warszawa (Lynch, 1977). The project would not be replicated again until the 1990s after two important events brought children back into prominence in the human rights and urban agendas: 1) the 1989 ratification the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is now signed by all but two countries in the world1, and 2) the Habitat Agenda from the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, held in 1996, which emphasized the need to for children’s participation in the shaping of their environments (Chawla, 2001). With this legal and policy framework in place, UNESCO supported a series of (GUiC) projects around the globe led by researchers David Driskell and Louise Chawla (Chawla, 2002) throughout the 1990s. One of the fruits of the project was an easy-to-read manual to facilitate the implementation of GUiCs at the community scale for researchers, community organizers, teachers, and other local leaders, Creating Better Cities with Children and Youth: A Manual for Participation (Driskell, 2002). Our project in Mexico was developed based on the methodology from Driskell’s (2002) manual. 1 The two countries who have not ratified the agreement are South Sudan and the United States (UN News Centre, 2015). 2 The recent General Law on the Rights of Children and Adolescents, which entered into effect in December 2014, protects the rights of those under 18 years of age (Presidencia de la República, 2014). 3 Delegaciones, comparable to municipalities, is the name given to the political administrative zones that make up Mexico City, of which there are 16. Georgia Johnson August 2017 3 Youth Participation for Urban Vitality with Christel House Mexico alumni in Mexico City For two months over a series of meetings and activities, my six research participants and I explored and assessed the Tacubaya neighbourhood using tools described in the manual. All six participants were former students of Christel House Mexico – which is located in Tacubaya – the Mexican chapter of an international foundation that provides quality private school education to children who live in extreme poverty. My research goals were two-fold: 1) to achieve the GUiC goal of having children participate in the city, producing rich qualitative data while involving children in their city and challenging existing power structures, and 2) to assess the model’s applicability to a different target group than that originally intended (youth aged 16-20 instead of children aged 11-14). The present document is the academic component of a two-part report on our project. This document provides the justification for using the GUiC model to work with underprivileged youth, aged 16-20, as a means for urban improvement. The first chapter explains the background of the study. This is followed by a literature review, which explains the theoretical underpinnings of the project. Finally, the third chapter outlines the research objectives and the methodology in detail. The complimentary document to this one, Youth Participation for Urban Vitality with Christel House Mexico Alumni in Mexico City (Part II): Analysis and Recommendations, is a short report made specifically for Christel House and my research participants. It provides the answers to the first query articulated above, in the form of results and recommendations. The conclusion of the present document, chapter 4, synthesizes the results and recommendations detailed in Part II in light of the theoretical justifications of the project, and reflects on the second query articulated above, that of the GUiC model’s suitability to an older age-bracket. Georgia Johnson August 2017 4 Youth Participation for Urban Vitality with Christel House Mexico alumni in Mexico City 1. Context In this chapter, I explain the reasons for working with urban youth from a global and Mexican demographic and policy rationale (1.1), followed by a brief explanation of the GUiC project (1.2), the Christel House foundation (1.3), and the Tacubaya neighbourhood, our research site (1.4). 1.1 Youth in cities: Globally, in Latin America, and in Mexico Globally, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities (UN-Habitat, 2016). The UN- Habitat’s (2016) most recent World Cities Report stresses the urban concern for the global South: the urban population is expected to double between 2016 and 2030, and though the proportion of people living in slums in the developing world is decreasing (46.2% in 1990 to 29.7% in 2014), the number is increasing (689 million in 1990 to 880 million in 2014) (UN- Habitat, 2016, p. 14). Half of the global population, that is 3 billion people, is under the age of 25, which is more than ever before. 1.3 billion of them are between the ages of 12 and 24, and the majority of these live in urban areas (UN-Habitat, 2013). Although youth make up 25% of the world’s population in working age, they account for 43.7% of unemployment. In Latin America and the Caribbean there are 106 million youth between the ages of 15 and 24. They face high indices of marginalization such as unemployment and poverty (UN Youth, 2013). The 2008 economic crisis has increased these indices while reducing government spending in training, education, and other social programs designed to counteract marginalization (UN, 2016). Georgia Johnson August 2017 5 Youth Participation for Urban Vitality with Christel House Mexico alumni in Mexico City The UN defines youth as those aged 15-24. Looking at the previous statistics, it is clear that this group accounts for a large percentage of the urban population and work force and faces large indices of marginalization, and therefore should be an important focus for urban agendas. The marginalization of youth in general and youth in urban space are discussed Figure 1: Population structure in percentage by quinquennial groups, more in detail in chapter 2 of according to sex, 2015 census (Mexico) (Source: INEGI, 2016a) this report. However one of the most important global frameworks seeking to advance the rights and wellbeing of children and adolescents, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), defines children and adolescents as those under the age of 18. Looking specifically at Mexico, we see a similar disconnect between demographic indicators portrait and the national policy framework. In total, out of the country’s 122.3 million people (INEGI, 2016), 21.5 million are between the ages of 15 and 24 (INEGI, 2014), which represents 18% of the population. The Mexican population pyramid (figure 1) shows that the brackets between the ages of 15 and 24 are the second most populated after those aged 5 to 14.
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