Listening to Children: Mara Mintzer on Designing Cities for Belonging

In this episode, I’m joined by Mara Mintzer of Growing Up Boulder for a deep dive into youth-led placemaking and what it reveals about how cities can look, feel, and function differently—often at a fraction of the expected cost. From five-minute neighborhoods and safe routes to school to water play, native habitat, and spaces that invite lingering, kids consistently point to choices that make places healthier, more social, and more sustainable for everyone.

Mara shares how small, hands-on experiments sparked a citywide culture shift: children standing on a giant map to show what works and what doesn’t; teen consultants designing engagement for their peers; and preschool “picnics in the park” that use observation—not surveys—to uncover what little ones truly need. We explore the power of loose parts and nature play, including a $14,000 log-and-stone installation that dramatically outperformed a conventional playground costing many times more.

We also get practical for planners, designers, and developers. Mara breaks down tools that build trust and reduce friction—Place It model-building, intergenerational walks, and clear “what we heard / what we did” updates—and explains how these approaches can actually accelerate approvals rather than slow projects down.

At a systems level, we examine how child-friendly planning reduces car dependence, improves air quality, lowers injury risk, and tackles loneliness by making social connection easy and free. We talk about teen-friendly parks that prioritize autonomy over programming, affordable food options that give kids independence, and emerging “naturehoods” that link schools, libraries, and parks with safe, shaded routes and micro-habitats.

If you’ve been told the only answers are ball fields and plastic slides, this conversation will challenge the brief—and expand what you think is possible.

Resources mentioned: UNICEF’s Child Friendly Cities, Safe Routes to School, Green Schoolyards, and Growing Up Boulder’s new course on building a child-friendly city map with your community.

Subscribe, share this episode with a planner or developer who needs fresh tools, and leave a review to help more people find conversations about making better places possible.

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This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life:

Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner.

Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments.

Transcript

Why Children’s Voices Matter

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Kids really want to be able to connect with other children. And so, how do we create spaces where, especially, I'm thinking even for teens, where they can hang out and they're welcomed versus being seen as creating problems. And there are lots of solutions for doing this. We just have to have our ears open and think creatively. Um, I'll just say the last thing is beauty. Universally, uh, beauty is a really important piece of the designs kids ask for, and they often critique the architecture and urban planning that they see as being gray and dull and not beautiful.

Show Intro And Guest Framing

The Problem With Kid-Lite Design

Reviews, Gratitude, And Setup

Mara’s Path To Youth Civic Engagement

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Welcome to the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, a show about human environments and how they can be used as a force for good. Conversations that educate and inspire people looking for a different way to do real estate. I'm Neil Collins, and on this episode, I'm joined by Mara Minster from Growing Up Boulder, an innovative firm that's reimagining how we engage communities by starting with a group that's almost always overlooked in urban planning and development. Children. As developers, we often talk about kids and families and how we can design amenities for them. Governments and municipalities do this too. They create rules and policies that are supposed to create safe and connected environments. But for all the lip service that kids get, their ideas and opinions never get solicited in the planning, design, or development process. When we do design with kids in mind, the bar is set pretty low. Think ball fields and playgrounds. But what Mara and her team have shown is that when you actually engage children, from four-year-olds to teenagers, you unlock a goldmine of differentiated insights that can shape healthier, safer, more inclusive places. And their input isn't just cute, it's visionary. And it often leads to more creative, more sustainable, and more beloved outcomes than when adults design an asilo. This kind of engagement isn't just about better design, it's also a powerful way to turn community members into stakeholders. Through my own personal work, I can see Mara's approach help to build broad-based support, accelerate entitlement timelines, and create a sense of shared ownership in the process of development. And frankly, I'd love to see more private developers embrace this approach not as a novelty, but as a standard that is integral with regenerative placemaking. Because if we're not including children in our planning, who else are we leaving out? Now, before we get into the episode, I want to share a recent review left by a developer in Florida named Michael Scanio, who brought a big smile to my face when he said, quote, your podcast opened up a whole new world that I never knew existed. I had always thought of this type of development as something I could do with a pile of FU money, since I believed it was more feel-good investing that would not yield the same type of returns investors might target in traditional commercial real estate. Listening to your podcast and reading much more to the subject, I now see this as a completely viable investment opportunity for even the most conservative investors. I now see a path forward for how I can continue to pursue commercial real estate development in a way that aligns my values and my dreams. Thank you, Michael, for sharing this. And for other listeners, if you have gotten something out of this show, I would be eternally grateful for your own rating and review. Now, without further ado, let's get into it with Mara Minzer of Growing Up Boulder.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Oh, that's such a good question. You know, I never had um like a set answer. And now I realize it's because I didn't know the name for the job that I have now. You know, what I'm doing, what I knew I wanted was more values-based. I knew I wanted to help people and give back to the world. And I didn't know what form that was going to take, but that was what I definitely knew about myself. And um, I'm doing my dream job right now. Sometimes I think to myself, um, well, say, say I quit today. What would I do? And I realize I would recreate exactly what I'm doing. So I think I'm in the right space.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

That that's so enheartening to hear. I think a lot of people, they they think about this so linearly. And that's why I love to to dial back and just understand how how people have followed their curiosity. What are the stepping stones that that get them to a point where they would even answer that? Of like, I didn't, I didn't even know what that could have been. And I think that's um it's a part genesis story, part creative process of um someone's own journey. So let's pick it up of where you think it's it's really helpful. I mean, where where did you start to to get on this trajectory of the work that you're doing now?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yeah, so um some of it happened by accident. My first internship when I was in college was working for something called the Children's Trust Fund in Boston, Massachusetts. And it just so happened my parents both worked in the field of child welfare. And so that was just um where we knew someone and I was able to get uh an internship for the summer. I didn't particularly think about children at that age. But the more I spent doing that kind of work, the more I actually really loved it and believed in it. Um, I went back to graduate school in organizational psychology because I had worked for a nonprofit and I thought I was frustrated by how uh dysfunctional it felt. And I really wanted to coach nonprofits on how to be more functional. In the end, the job market wasn't creating uh necessarily paid jobs for consulting to nonprofits about their own organizational development. So instead, I went back into serving underserved children and families and kept creating my own jobs where I'm really listening to those families and the children themselves and working with the community, not for or on top of the community. It was really in collaboration. Um, and that's where I've just found so much joy in serving underserved children families in both New York City and California and now here in Boulder, Colorado.

Starting Growing Up Boulder

SPEAKER_01 7:14

That's incredible. And so from there, when did you start to go into this next step? What gets you to Colorado?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Yeah, we moved to Colorado in 2008 because my husband got a job as a professor at the university. And in academia, you go where the jobs are. And I came out here and did some networking and met some professors who were starting what was called a child-friendly city initiative. Now, this is based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is an international treaty. And there are cities around the world that take this treaty and operationalize it and they make it real. So this professor, Willem von Vliet, had started to do this in Denver, Colorado. And it was sort of um ending around the time that I met him. And I said, I would love to do that for Boulder, which is where I was living. And he said, Great, feel free to volunteer your time. Um, you're welcome to start that up in Boulder. Um, and so I did, along with a graduate student and some partners from the city of Boulder and the university and the school district. And that was the beginning of growing up Boulder. We were actually based out of what was then the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado. Um, and over time it morphed into this larger thing, which is growing up Boulder today. We have left the university and we're a nonprofit now. And what we do is we help kids thrive through youth civic engagement. And so um, it's really blossomed over the past 16, almost 17 years.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

We're definitely going to get into that, but I'm I'm still on this. How did you go about getting those stakeholders on board, getting a college on board, getting a municipality, getting funding for this? I mean, that is that's actually no small feat to pull off a new program like that. And so I'm really curious about that process.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

It's a great question. That's also really relevant to any other community that's thinking about how to do this. So we started very small, and that's always what I would advise. Um, the Villem and Louise Chala, who's another professor, um, asked for a small grant from the university to hold our youth action day. Um, it was a chance to bring young people from Boulder together to really think about what issues mattered most to them. And as we did that, people participated, they started to see the power of hearing from young people. It's one thing to read about it, it's another to be face to face or in an audience listening to young people speak. It's completely moving and really can shift your worldview. And so due to the success of that first youth celebration, we then started trying out specific projects. So even though this sounds a little heady, we worked with youth on the comprehensive plan for our city, which for who those who don't who don't know, it's um a visioning document or plan for anywhere from five to 20 years of how you want your community to develop and land use. Um, but we were able to use a giant map that you could actually even walk on top of to have young people point out what was working for them in the city and what wasn't working and where and why, and then share that back with adults who were also there for the comprehensive plan. The adults were so blown away by what the young people had to say and how moving it was that other city departments started saying, we'll put in a little bit of funding towards this. And so it really took time to, I often say this as an example of the proof being in the pudding. People had to experience what the young people were capable of. And then also we would kind of write up a summary report of here's what we heard. So we would translate kid talk into adult talk and then and then often back again to make it relevant for both the kids and the adults. And people saw the benefits of it over time to the point that now we have worked with 18 city, all the city departments in the city of Boulder. And there really has, I have seen a culture shift, but we started really small. And the other thing, and I should say this, I was volunteering my time basically through through the beginning. So, you know, I was willing and and fortunate enough to be able to volunteer my time for the beginning.

The Roots Of Child‑Friendly Cities

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Where was there any precedent set before this? I mean, with with this treaty of child-friendly cities across the globe, were there was the professor instrumental and hey, this is best practices? And and or were you just making this up on the fly and saying, you know what, we should print out a visual representation of the comp plant and have kids figure this out? Like where how do you do that?

SPEAKER_00 12:11

I stand on the shoulders of many people before me. So this is definitely not my idea, but um our group has taken it to the next level in our own way. But um actually, so Professor Von Vliet, along with Professors Roger Hart and Dr. Pamela Ritt, who's also a professor, they had worked together to actually write a white paper in 2009, I believe, saying if we were to do child-friendly cities in the US, which we were not doing at the time, here's what we think it might look like. So they actually had conceptualized this. And going back even further, um, there was an urban planner named Kevin Lynch in the 1970s, who for the first time really asked young people about their experience of the cities. People hadn't done that before. And based on that, this was a model that was recreated. Uh, it ended up being called Growing Up in Cities. Louise Chawla, who was uh one of the founders of Growing Up Boulder and a professor at CU University of Colorado as well, she had actually done a Fulbright scholarship in the 1990s, testing out this Growing Up in Cities idea, reviving it in countries around the world. And so I was really taking the work and working with others in collaboration to say, okay, we have all these different techniques that have been used to hear from kids. We have this concept, even that it's beneficial to hear from kids. Let's start trying that out in our community. And then, of course, we had um the example of Denver, which they had were just finishing up. They had done from 2006 to 2009. Um, and so there was a lot of data and feedback from like what worked, what didn't work. So we were able to take all of that into account and then say, let's try it out here in Boulder.

What Kids Want In Cities

SPEAKER_01 14:05

That's so fascinating. I whenever you say car-friendly cities, I or not car-friendly cities, I maybe that that is a huge slip of or not a slip, but that's exactly how cities are getting designed. Not child-friendly cities, but car-friendly cities. Um which is a travesty. And and I think that if you just if you do a bird's eye view over our cities, that would be the legacy is like, wow, we actually designed this to get people around in these big metal machines and that then go into the streets and the garages with these huge vacant parking lots that are underutilized. Um what are the what are the the patterns and what are the themes that that consistently emerge out of that? If if you say, look, this is going to be a child-friendly city that they are putting input on, do they gravitate towards certain areas? I mean, I'm so sure they're not going towards fire access and parking ratios and sewer and um and all these things that are urban planning actually just gets mired in in these details that really takes the generative creative spirit out of placemaking, I find. Um but I've I've never been in your shoes. I'm I'm so curious about where kids' minds naturally go in this process.

Beyond Ball Fields And Playgrounds

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Absolutely. So one thing that is so fascinating and really heartening to me is that when children design their version of a city, which is inherently a child-friendly city, it ends up being a sustainable city. Um, it ends up being a more humane city. So let me give you examples of what that means. Because most young people can't get around by driving themselves around, they need places they can bike and walk to safely. So when we talk about 15-minute neighborhoods, for kids, it's often in today's day and age a five-minute or 10-minute neighborhood. Um, how do we create spaces that they can safely get to on their own without having to rely upon someone to drive them around? Something else they always ask for is nature. Uh, it's incredible, it's universal in really every age group I've worked with in different demographics based on race, gender, ethnicity. They always ask for connection to nature. So having plants around them, beautiful plants, having animals, um, seeing the native species, um, wanting a clean, safe environment and that they can play in. These are basically universal values that I've experienced. And I've seen it when I look at examples from around the globe, kids are also asking for that too. There's never been a kid who asks for a parking lot, I can tell you that. Um, but they will ask for trees that have fruit or climbing trees or pollinator gardens right where they spend their time and where they live. Some of the other things kids ask for is the ability to spend time with their friends and neighbors. Uh, kids really want to be able to connect with other children. And so, how do we create spaces where, especially I'm thinking even for teens, where they can hang out and they're welcomed versus being seen as creating problems. And there are lots of solutions for doing this. We just have to have our ears open and think creatively. Um, I'll just say the last thing is beauty. Universally, uh, beauty is a really important piece of the designs kids ask for. And they often critique the architecture and urban planning that they see as being gray and dull and not beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

So I watched your TED talk, which was fantastic. It is just so fun to have that be the springboard into this conversation. And because my work, and I I told you this before we hit record, I'm I'm doing a lot more planning and and we talk with different developers and municipalities. And I'm like, what if how do we design for children and with children? And I kid you not, and and I'm curious if you've gotten this too, but a hundred percent of the time, it always goes back to, well, we'll we'll figure out a place to put some recreational ball fields or basketball courts or something, something along those lines. And and I just can't accept that the organized sports that happens for maybe a couple hours a week in season is the third place that we're or the accommodating environment that kids are really seeking out to say that this is what I really want. Um, do you ever do you get that as well? Or is that just the people that I've been hanging out with in the last two months since I've I've had this uh bee really stuck in my bonnet around child-friendly cities?

Teen‑Friendly Parks: Process And Ideas

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Well, I think that's a really common misperception that that the general public has is that a child-friendly city would mean like segregating children to playgrounds and sports fields. When in fact, traditionally, throughout all of human history up until relatively recently, children were part of all different settings. There wasn't this separation of children's spaces and adult spaces. And I would say that it actually really hinders child development when we create this sort of dichotomy. So, what I mean is that we are not allowing kids for some of the risk taking and independence that they need to grow into functioning adults. Um, there's a really important book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. And he Is talking about how because we are not allowing our children to take enough risks, they are at much higher risk of anxiety and we're seeing much higher rates of anxiety. And also children who are failing to launch, because again, they haven't had this chance to go around the city on their own, explore, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, see what they're competent at, right? Because we're so afraid of a kid falling and scraping a knee or breaking an arm, even, that we're not allowing them to do what they need to do. And that actually hinders them when they get to be adults. There are two books that I want to point out that I think can be really helpful to dismantling some of these misconceptions. The first, if I can tout it, is our own book, which is called Placemaking with Children and Youth: Participatory Practices for Planning Sustainable Communities. And that actually gives lay people and planners the different tools they need to be able to actually work with kids, listen to kids, and then get those ideas turned into reality. But it also makes the case for why this even matters. That's number one. The other is called Urban Playground, How Child-Friendly Planning and Design Can Save Cities. And that first book, by the way, I should say, is by Dr. or Professors Tori Durr and Louise Challa and myself. And the second book is by Tim Gill. And again, I think Tim's book in particular, right? How child-friendly planning can save cities. That says something because it actually, I agree with him. It is a much more sustainable city if we do child-friendly practices. So this is not just about one little location, it's about the entire city or community.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

So good. I I've already got half a page of reading material that I want to put on my my nine side table. And it it just dawned on me as well, outside of recreational fields, the only other thing that I've ever really gotten back of substance. Um whenever I was I was talking to a group of parents that they've got the tweens and teens, and it's like, what where do they want to go? Where do they want to hang out? And I kid you not, the only answer was old, maybe there's like a boba tea shop that they could go to. And I, you know, it's I guess it's helpful whenever we're thinking through our like mixed use, what is our our food um category, and whenever we're creating the types of communities that we're doing. But that if that's the best that we can do is like, okay, we're gonna put up a soccer field and a boba tea shop and we're gonna call it good, or we've got that playground for like the toddlers and the very young kids. It just seems like we're missing out on such a wide range of voices. And that's where I'm so fascinated of how do you actually work with these different age groups starting. I mean, I've heard you talk about working with four-year-olds, which I'm sure is so vastly different from those 14 to 18-year-olds that um are looking for a little bit different stimulation. So I guess this is more around the process of working with kids.

Preschool Engagement And Observation

Low‑Cost Nature Play, High ROI

Loose Parts And Schoolyard Resilience

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Absolutely. Yeah, it's a great question. And I first want to answer there was a sub-question in this question around teen-friendly, other teen-friendly activities. And I'll just say we've done a lot of work around what does a teen-friendly park look like? Um, because one of the this all started in 2016 when we were working on another project, and some of the teens we worked with said they get yelled at by parents when they're using the swings or other playground equipment because you know they're these giant kids who look like adults, but they're still kids. Um, and the parents feel like they shouldn't be there. They're taking up the space from the younger children. And so we started thinking about and listening to the teens saying, well, what does a teen-friendly playground look like? And we started with middle school students, listened to high school students, and just recently we are completing a project where we had, and this actually gets to your other question about how do we do this work? So here's a great model that we just used for a teen-friendly North Boulder Park. Uh, we actually hired two teen consultants who are um 16 or 17, and let them take the lead on asking the questions to their peers and designing outreach to their peers. So, first, what we did was a small focus group where they invited a group of maybe 10 young people to answer some of the questions that the city was looking to answer. Like, what are the amenities you need? What programs do you need at this park? And of course, one of the answers that came out was we don't want programs. But you know what we do want? We would love a little kiosk where we can rent a volleyball or a basketball so we can play a pickup game that we organize ourselves, but we don't always have the equipment, right? So it was completely different from what the parks planners had thought because they were thinking, okay, well, what programs do we need to offer in this space? And the teens are saying, we got it. We don't need you offering programs, but we do need help. And this is what it looks like. So the engagement model is really, again, having teens hear from teens. And they planned also like a big um day celebration where they were getting larger groups of teens input. They got about 40 young people to come to the park, have some pizza, have some ice cream, play around. And they played with um natural materials and kind of glued together their own vision of what they wanted for the park. And they also voted on what we call a visual preference survey. So having posters of some different ideas, and then they each got sticky dots and a limited number of sticky dots and had to choose what their top priorities were. Um, so that's one piece for the teenagers. If we look all the way at the other end of the age spectrum, uh, we have been working very closely with some preschools to host what we call picnics in the park. And this is some parkland that is undeveloped right now, but owned by the city. And over time, these preschoolers and their families and also their teachers have become more and more comfortable in the space that they hadn't used before. So, what we are doing is we're observing how they play. Like if we put out different provocations like um a shovel to dig with, or um, you know, maybe it's already things that are there, like pine cones. What are they gravitating towards? How do they want to use this space? What do the caregivers need to be able to take the children to the space to make it comfortable for them? And so with those little ones, it's about us observing and sometimes asking the kids to draw, and sometimes actually just verbally asking the kids about certain choices. So uh we can hear from kids really as young as babies all the way through 18 and beyond.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Yeah, that's incredible. It it makes me think there's a a joke that someone said, they said, Do you know what the the most popular toy of all time is? Do you know the answer to this?

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Was it a stick or something?

SPEAKER_01 27:30

It's a stick. And there's a there's a place down in Austin, Texas called the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Wildflower Center that they have this interactive display that they just have a bunch of like bamboo sticks, and that's what the kids they can spend hours there. It's incredible. And and I think sometimes we overthink these things. I don't know if anybody's looked at at the budget for a playground. Uh they can they can quickly add up into the seven-figure digits.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Well, we just we have a pro we have proof of that. So um we heard from 300 young people from preschool through high school on this um area of our city called the civic area, and there's a park there. And we were talking about nature play. Like what would that look like? Well, our city parks and recreation staff designed and built nature play using trees that had fallen down that they had to cut down because they were diseased, um, using all existing materials that the city would have just gotten rid of anyway. And in collaboration with Adam Bienstock. Um and together they put together this new nature play area, cost about$14,000. If we had designed that same thing, and I know this because we we did just work on a project like that for another uh part of our city, that would have been seven or eight hundred thousand dollars for like a poured-in-place traditional nature playground, even though that other one was nature play. So$14,000 versus$700,000. And the usage is like beyond belief. Uh, there are even adults you using the space because part of the space has uh picnic tables now made out of the logs, and there are adults who are holding meetings or lunch there as well.

Why Child‑Friendly Means Sustainable

SPEAKER_01 29:20

That's so cool. I mean, it's such a great example. Going back to like the ball fields and recreational things, like we just we were looking at a facility uh on the west coast here that that is a beautiful community center, don't get me wrong, but it was$75 million to bring together. And and whenever we are kind of copying out what what a swimming pool would be for the public uh municipality, that it's still a$20 million investment into a hole in the ground with a bunch of water in it. And I like kids love to play and we're like going down this path, but it this just is so illuminating that like if if you actually think about planning and approach it from a different direction, uh, that's kind of more I don't know, multimodal and varied from just how how do people see the world? It's so amazing to think that there's real return on investment. And so I I do want to just underscore that for the developers that are listening, and even the municipal leaders here, that like it's it's not always the case of we've got to come in with these insanely expensive solutions, or just we're gonna create a really sterile kind of plastic looking slide and some swings and we're gonna call it good and and we've checked the the category for kids. Uh there's no question in there, but I'm curious if that you get a response to that.

From City Scale To Naturehoods

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Oh, I do. Well, the it made me think of several things. One piece is so part of what you and I are talking about also is loose materials, loose parts materials. And what that means is um, for instance, if you have logs and sticks and rocks and things that can be moved and that they don't have just one purpose versus a poured-in-place traditional playground with like a swing and a slide. Um, and I'm not saying that those other playgrounds are bad. I think, you know, swings and slides are are time-tested. Kids love those. But they can get more boring more quickly versus these natural materials that are loose parts, kids can play with for hours because they can use them in different creative ways. It's not just one way. Whereas a slide or swing set, you get kind of bored of. The other piece, when you were talking about water and pools and all of that. So we have been working on a really cool project called Climate Resilient School Yards, which we are doing with the City of Boulder's Climate Initiatives Department. And this is the first of its kind that the city and the school district and growing up Boulder have partnered on. And what we're looking at is how can some of the problems in the existing schoolyard and in the existing pavement be fixed through nature-based solutions. So, one of the examples is there's a teacher and parent parking lot that has lots of puddles in it and standing water, which is bad for all sorts of reasons. But if we were to remove some of that asphalt, and then if we had better drainage and channeled it down a little hill, one of the things you can do is create a dry uh river or dry creek bed, which essentially, when it's no rain, it just is is rocks. But when it's rained or when it's wet, it creates kind of a little creek that kids actually can play in. And one of the other things I forgot to say about the number one request of kids is water play. Um, children adore water play, and that includes the high school kids as well. And so, you know, that would cost very little money. It actually can be used, that water, to then water a pollinator garden or some orchard trees or um other types of trees and restore the habitat. There's so many benefits that all come together.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Oh, that's interesting. Uh so you I'm gonna go a slightly askew of the direction that we're headed in. Um, but you keep talking about that they actually sets up a more sustainable city. And I wanna actually want to double-click on that. Um, there's a couple of things that come to mind, but I I want to hear really from your perspective and and even like a municipal perspective, how does a child-friendly city really port over to a sustainable city?

How Developers Can Engage Creatively

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Yeah. Well, let's take a look at transportation and when it comes to sustainable cities. Um I was just listening to some webinars by the um Global Designing Cities Initiative. Um, and actually growing up Boulder's work is in their book about um street design for kids. But one of the things they talked about is when you work with children and listen to them at their schools, for example, often what you'll hear is that it doesn't feel safe for them to walk and bike to school. And it's unpleasant too. And there's all sorts of research, too, about the public health implications, too, of children being in areas with high levels of car usage because children are closer to the ground and they also breathe more times per minute. Um, and so all of that leads to them having more toxicity from all of that pollution. When you listen to young people and you make interventions to make it easier for them to bike and walk to school, a number of things happen. One, um, car usage goes down. And I will say, every one of the planners said, yes, there are always complaints from the community about this. But um, often that community, if if you look at sort of the number of young people and and some of their families who are giving input, which is saying we need this to be safer and cleaner, versus a few really loud voices from elsewhere in the community, it ends up being that there are many people who are actually supporting these interventions. So it makes it safer for the kids. They also start being more active. Um, and if especially if you also put in play elements and gathering spaces in some of these areas and taking some of that away from where cars have had as much room. So something as simple as going from two lanes down to one lane and having a raised crossing between two streets can really transform things. And when they do the measurements before and after, overwhelmingly people are very happy with these interventions. They're healthier, people are happier, they're creating more social connection, which we know is key, especially with our loneliness epidemic. You know, it's more sustainable and but it's also better for all the creatures involved in this.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Yeah, I can certainly see that for biking as well, and just getting getting on two wheels instead of getting in these cars, um, and and even creating more networks of trails and things like that. And I think this works really well at the municipal level. But I'm curious how how do we think about this in terms of of different contexts? So how do we go down in scale from municipal city level into maybe a neighborhood scale down to, you know, are do you work at those different levels?

Transparency: What We Heard, What We Did

SPEAKER_00 36:28

We absolutely do. Um, for example, um the park that I described earlier, where we have been doing some of the picnics in the park, it's called Primos Park, and it is located next to two manufactured home communities. So it's the largest um population of low-income families in our community, in our city. Um, but we're really working at the neighborhood scale there. And actually, my colleagues um have developed something that I'm a part of called naturehoods. And we start saying, how do you create your naturehood? What does that look like for and it's going to be different in different locations? But in this particular neighborhood, what it means is that, okay, we have this park, but right next to it, we also have a have a library that has um some nature play outside of it. Right down the street, we have an elementary school that you can get to in a variety of ways. So it's both how do you connect all these locations so they're accessible? How do we make sure there are elements that children and families can use and play with, not just during the school day, but after hours? And how do we make these responsive to the those actual neighbors there? So it might look different in one location than another, and that's the beauty of this.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

That's just that's so cool. Um how can a more developers take this approach? Because I I keep having these thoughts run through my mind. I'm like, we have to do this on our projects, we have to to create different ways to do that. But it is so sometimes I I get held up where if you're not the civil engineer, the architect, the town planner, um, you know, and and kind of your traditional tried and true, you've got to get the stamp from these folks to move this permit or entitlement forward. What are the ways in which you see maybe the most creative developers and placemakers starting to infuse this planning approach into projects?

Food, Autonomy, And Teen Hangouts

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of the tools we use to hear from children and youth can also be used for adults, and they are much more creative than traditional planning tools. So I'll give you an example of one. Um, we have a colleague, um, two colleagues who are urban planners out in LA. Um, sorry, they're not in LA anymore. They're in the Bay Area, but James Rojas and John Camp. And they have something called place it. And what place it is, is um they've assembled these large bags of kind of found objects that are very colorful and different shapes. So, you know, purple Mardi Gras beads and then those plastic Easter eggs and um loteria cards and just other non-traditional objects, curlers, hair curlers that are pink. And what they will do is they will pose a question. So um maybe they are in front of a bodega that has many different ages that come by and they'll say, look, we are looking to um get your input on how to make this neighborhood better. Take these materials. How would you build this neighborhood? What would it look like? Well, the beauty of those found objects is um, unlike Legos, which are all at right angles, for these, there's no convenient way to stick them together. You have to be creative. And so from the beginning, you start with this outside of the box. Thinking. And this works well from people of all language, uh, languages, different literacy abilities, different ages. Um, you can have individuals sort of do this activity, but then you can also, if you're in a setting, pair them up in groups and have to negotiate with each other and come up with some consensus. And so it's a really beautiful way to start with the concept plan, which is, you know, before you get into the details of the site plan. Um, and then I think the other key thing is to circle back around to the community multiple times. So instead of having just one engagement and saying we're done with that, you circle back around and say, did we hear you right? Because sometimes we don't. And so that's a chance to course correct. I think if we did more of that, we would end up with cities and communities that are just much more interesting and creative and also human-centered and responsive to what those community members are looking for.

Design For Children, Benefit For All

SPEAKER_01 40:57

A hundred percent. And if people aren't familiar, you know, there is this kind of inhumane public process of developers having a closed-door policies, kind of creating what they think is going to be best for this place that pencils out. You submit an application and to go into permits. There's a forum in which you have a couple of weeks for the public to engage. And that's where you get a lot of very interesting opinions, but it's not a generative process at all. Uh, and it I think it actually leads to a lot more conflict, uh, a very expensive conflict, particularly in communities that uh change is is a hard pill to swallow, even though they know you know they're saying, hey, we need more affordable housing or we need this and that. Um this approach, I just am so intrigued by actually instead of starting with um, you know, what what's the number of units that we need and or going out to these stakeholder groups that that they represent the community, why why wouldn't we want to start with uh hey, we actually went to school age kids and we started with this question, and then we brought that to those stakeholder groups. And then from the stakeholder groups, we brought it to larger community groups. And I just I'm kind of working out a different process in my mind that I think not only would be a lot more fun for me, but I think it it actually can enroll people into a process of placemaking that traditional development approaches and even the municipal approaches do not necessarily allow for good planning to take place.

Pathways To Start In Your City

SPEAKER_00 42:41

Absolutely. And, you know, Neil, they um, you know, one of the things I heard on this webinar about safe routes to school was they, like you were saying, they started with the children. Like that is where they started and they got really robust engagement from those children. Um, and then they went out to the rest of the community. The other thing they did was they said the cities really had their back. Um, so um, when controversy did arise, as it sounds like it really does in all settings, um, the city said, no, we really believe in this process. We're sticking by it, even if it is feeling controversial. In the end, people really liked it once it was built, um, as as often is the case. Um, and the other thing too that I like that we've done before, and I I think is a really good practice is sometimes putting up um on a web page or sharing out with people who have participated, you know, something that says what we heard on what side and then what we did on the other side. Um, and explaining, you know, why some of those big decisions were or weren't made certain ways. Um, I'll give you an example of one I just heard of that I thought, boy, this would really change the dialogue if we made this transparent, which is Boulder is incredibly sunny because we're at a very high elevation. And then parents are always requesting shade structures at playgrounds, which I requested when my daughter was little too. What I didn't understand about why it's not getting built is that because we have such high winds and snow loads here, to put the pylons in and the poles for the shade structure, each to drill down for each pole, it's$80,000 because it has to go into the bedrock. And so if you were put in a shade structure, that's$200,000 right off the bat just to put that in. Well, I wish someone had told me that because then also could we start thinking more creatively too. Are there other solutions maybe that we haven't thought of or um, but if we don't know what the issue is, it's really hard to solve it.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that just underscores the point. And um, I I love the what we heard and what we did, and having that interface with with the public to say, look, we're this isn't a static brand image of what we're trying to build here. There's something alive there. And and I'm I'm not kidding. I am like really working out, well, we need to adopt this as fast as we possibly can on projects that we're involved in. Just I think it's it's such a better approach. Um I before I go into um kind of jumping into some other areas that I've heard you talk about, I am really curious around food and nature and agriculture. Is that something that that ever comes up? Or am I just seeking something that I want the answer to or hoping that there's an answer to?

SPEAKER_00 45:38

No, it comes up all the time. Um, really, in so many of our projects, when kids have had the opportunity to design their own neighborhoods, we hear from so many kids about wanting fruit bushes, trees that have different fruits growing on them, things they can smell, uh like herbs and other things, wanting to observe the squirrels and the bunnies and the deer. This comes up amongst really all of our children. And when they draw their pictures, right, often what I like to do is hear from the kids before we've influenced them in any way. And their pictures always have that full ecosystem in it. And so really our job is to say, okay, how can we embed that in every place that our young people live? And I think we incorrectly sometimes think that that means everyone should have their own backyard. That doesn't need to be the way it is. Often you can have communal spaces where young people can play together and preserve more natural spaces around them, um, but but live fairly densely. Um, that's how I live in my own neighborhood. Um, and I've also lived abroad and had that experience. And it's actually much less isolating to have those public spaces because that's how you meet people and feel less alone in parenting.

Funding Shifts And New Programs

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Yeah, absolutely. Um one of the things, and and while we're on the subject of food, and this is is very different than edible landscaping, but I what I loved, and I want to bring it up for the podcast, is that you're talking about on maybe another podcast that I was listening to for homework, uh, kids want to have a place that they can actually go. And and it's not the fancy restaurant to actually buy something because that's that's not the place uh that they're uh seeking out, but they're looking for some more accessible options. And I can even think of my nine-year-old wanting independence to be able to like go buy a snack and feel feel that sense of autonomy and independence.

Closing, Resources, And Course Offer

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Yeah, that's been so important for generations before, and we've lost some of that. Um, there was a series of parenting books written in the 1970s that um I checked out some of the books when my daughter was little, and it was like your four-year-old, your five-year-old. And they said, you know, your five-year-old um is hitting her milestones when she can walk four blocks by herself to the corner store and purchase something and come back on her own. And I thought, boy, think of how different what we consider normal independence is today. But we do hear requests from kids for affordable food options, affordable hangout spots. Uh, one of the problems in our community is it it's very expensive. But one of the proposals the teens had, which I love, is having like a food cart, um, food and drink and amenities cart down in a park that the teens could run themselves and that could have really low-cost coffee and um snacks so that they could just hang out. Because again, there aren't a lot of these free or low-cost spaces or also interstitial spaces. So, how do we mindfully create them uh for our young people? And then that actually helps with um some of the complaints we hear about, oh, the kids are doing X, Y, and Z. Well, that's because we're not really giving them great options of where to be. So, how can we create those options? And also how can we offer them healthy risk-taking opportunities because that is a normal part of development, so that perhaps they are taking risks in um ways that are more safe versus unsafe.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Mara, I'm gonna take this in in a direction that I'm not sure you're you're qualified to to go in that direction. I I would imagine you are. Um I don't think that this is an approach that's singular to kids. I can imagine elderly and disabled, uh, neurodivergent, like there's so many different types of communities out there of people that we really do not uh have represented whenever we're doing placemaking activities and and real estate development. Do you have any kind of exposure into this type of participatory process with different groups that are, you know, what are just as kind of like obvious as, well, we should be talking to these people. Like we should be talking with kids about this.

SPEAKER_00 50:16

Absolutely. So um there's a saying in our field which is a city friendly to children is a city friendly to all. And what it means by that is it means that when we think about the needs of children and young people, we are often creating communities that work for other underrepresented groups. But I would also say um this is why we also need to hear from those underrepresented groups. So um one project we did on what we call the 11th Street Corridor, which goes from downtown up to the hill where our college is, um, we paired up senior citizens with uh fifth grade, uh, sorry, fourth grade students. And they talked together about how do we make this corridor safer, more inviting, more user-friendly. Well, a lot of the needs that the seniors expressed were the same ones that the kids expressed. So, for example, it's a really steep hill and they wanted a bench halfway up it so that they could have somewhere to pause, catch their breath. Also just to look around them and make it more beautiful. So both age groups noticed that there was a lot of trash there. Um, there wasn't great lighting. And so again, both the seniors and the kids wanted better lighting. The city did put in better lighting in that location. So there are so many user groups that we forget to think about. But if we actually start by centering their voices, we create a community that actually works for everyone. If I'm able-bodied, it still works really well for me. Um, if I can get onto the bus easily without a big step, because say I have like a little cart that's carrying groceries. That's much easier to get it up on there versus having to go up four steps. Um, there are just so many examples of where when we're listening to those groups, we're actually all better off.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

So fun. Um it seems like Boulder is so lucky to have you and growing up Boulder in it, but there's a countless number of places throughout the world that could benefit from this approach. And that's where it's like, what is the the impact roadway that you see this can become just the way that placemaking, urban planning, and development takes place where growing up boulder doesn't exist?

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Yeah. So when I started this work, it was a much smaller group of people thinking in this area, working in this area, and it has just exploded. Um, it is so heartening to me to see all the great work being done. So there are a few different avenues that someone elsewhere besides Boulder could look. One is UNICEF USA has its own child-friendly cities framework now that they're working with, which is based on the UNICEF global standards, but it is adapted to the American context. Within that, they're not expecting all cities to go through the whole recognition process, which is a multi-year process and is very in-depth. But cities can start coming and learning about some different techniques and even ways of thinking that they might not have considered before. And so they could dip their toes in through that collaborative and that group. Another is through safe roots to school, which also is doing a lot of efforts to really listen to young people and design transportation that is safe and beneficial to young people. Another is green schoolyards and looking at that movement, which is taking schoolyards and transforming them, removing the asphalt and putting in, you know, native species and green areas that are both climate resilient, better for kids' health, both mentally and physically, and has all sorts of benefits in terms of storm runoff and all of that. So uh the other thing is uh Save the Children has something called Cities for Children. And that website has all sorts of resources. So there is just on our website and Growing Up Boulder's website, we have a list of resources. So you can link to that and see some great resources. Growing Up Boulder also does trainings for other communities wanting to start thinking about this and even thinking about why does this matter? Like why should we care? Um, so so we're in a good spot right now.

SPEAKER_01 54:46

That's amazing. What and so for you personally, what's the next thing that you're really excited about that you're you're doing right now? Is there anything that that's like really lighting up your day with with the work that you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 55:02

Yeah, so this is an example of um something bad turning into something good. So because of the instability at the federal level in the country right now, um, we are facing severe budget cuts for growing up older. About 50% of our funding has been reduced because um most of our work has been through city contracts where we consult on different projects. After I've gotten over the mourning period of that, I'm starting to think, and my team's thinking really creatively. So, what can we offer that parents and kids have been asking for? One of those things is a program we're calling um Nature Together, where we bring parents with very young children together once a week and we create a cohort. So the families get to know each other and support each other, but we're also from the time a child is born or even with pregnant people joining us, they are connecting to nature and seeing how nature can help them both mentally, physically, um, and in community. And so I'm so excited for us to try this out as a different approach. Um, we've also applied for some really big grants that if we were to get, would allow us to really start with what the kids are most interested in. And then the kids create um the different actions that they want versus a lot of our funding has us asking for kids' input on specific projects that already exist. Um, so I'm excited about all of that and we will see what the new year brings.

SPEAKER_01 56:35

Oh, well, I wish you so much success with it. I want to plug your book one more time. It's placemaking with children. And there's a a longer title to that. What what is the full title here?

SPEAKER_00 56:46

It's a long title. It's Placemaking with Children and Youth: Participatory Practices for Planning Sustainable Communities.

unknown 56:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:55

Sounds like an urban planner wrote your book title. And I I kind of poke you about that, but she did. I I wrote down placemaking with children and then kind of underscored that on my notes. And that's what I was able to get out. Um, Merritt, this was such a treat. I like I say, I think it's incredible work. It's really ignited my um my thinking and and process. And it even if you wouldn't think it, like it, it is an impacting, uh, and it will impact more development projects that that we work on. And I'd love to just really sit down and and and emphasize this approach with with the teams that we work with. I'm certainly going to be getting your book. I haven't had a chance to to get that and uh can see it be great stocking stuffers for uh the people within within our field. Uh and and I really hope that it goes well. And despite the financial challenges that I think growing up Boulder is not singular to right now and in this really challenging time, uh, but you're doing fantastic work and um so glad that that you had the time to to come on to the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 58:06

Thank you so much, Neil. It's such a pleasure. And can I add one thing that I forgot to share?

SPEAKER_01 58:13

Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:15

Um, one of the things that Growing Up Boulder has created is the country's first printed child-friendly city map. This was a map designed with kids for kids. We had about 800 families, 52% of whom were from underrepresented backgrounds, co-create this map with us. And it's all of the free and low-cost activities that are most kid-friendly around our community. The reason I share this is that we have just developed a course for cities and planners and others to take if they want to create a child-friendly city map in their own community. It's a terrific way to start dipping your toes into how to listen to young people. It gives all the instructions for how to do it. It's very comprehensive. So I just wanted to offer that as another tool for communities that are curious about this kind of work.

SPEAKER_01 59:07

Where would people go to get that?

SPEAKER_00 59:10

Yes, it's on our website. So on our website under resources, we have information about the course and they can contact us.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Okay, great. Well, it is a pleasure, Mara. Thank you so much for coming on. We're gonna link all these great things into our show notes so people can easily find them. Uh, check that out on whatever podcast uh app that you choose to subscribe to. Thanks for tuning in to the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast. The show production is a reflection of the work that we do through Latitude Regenerative Real Estate in Hamlet Capital. This episode was edited by Asher Griffith of Cicada Radio. If you're a landowner, investor, or developer exploring regenerative projects, or if you're sitting on land and wondering what's possible, you can learn more or reach out through the links in the show notes. And if this conversation was useful, consider subscribing or sharing it with someone working at the intersection of real estate, investment, and impact. Until next time, this is Neil Collins signing off.