The first few days in....

After meeting everyone, laying out the basics of what we would all be doing this summer at Yesler Terrace, we got right to it.

The Yesler2014 Team is made-up of 12 youth from Yesler Terrace and the surrounding neighborhoods. The project is partnered with the Seattle Youth Employment Program and seven of the youth were recruited through thier summer employment program.

The goal is to bring in their personal experiences that relate to planning and design and then frame them in the context of formal planning and design process, practices, and policies. The goal is to open-up the terms and tools, translate them, make them practical and real-world.

TOD's, Networks and Nodes, traffic management, linkages. For people who study this stuff it is difficult, but take twelve 14-18 year old youth who haven't really thought about what we were trying to discuss and it made a very interesting conversation.

"Why would we use the bus when we can drive a car?"

"I want my right to drive, how can they make us stop driving?"

"Why are there traffic circles in the middle of the street?"

"What do you mean they are not trying to stop congestion?"

"Why was the trolley removed from Yesler Hill?"

All valid questions for a teenager having to face the possibility of not being able to do what their older siblings or parents do now for transportation. We talked about it more and in two weeks we go to SDOT to find out all about it.

So, their first writing assignment is to prepare questions for the Executive Director of SDOT. Aaaaaawwwwwww, man!! Why? Because you signed up for this....to learn how the city works, how a community is planned, how your surroundings are moved, guided, coordinated. To represent, to learn their voice(s), to think about things a bit more for a little while.