Episode 10: “Are cities built for me?”

Early-childhood experts often like to say that a child's environment is one of their most important teachers. But what can our built environments learn from children? In this Raising Curious Learners episode, Ann and Elizabeth welcome a special guest who makes a strong case for listening to our most creative citizens. Mara Mintzer is a mom, author, speaker, and the co-founder and director of Growing Up Boulder, which taps into play as a strategy and lifts the voices of young people in the city planning process.

Transcript

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Elizabeth Romanski (00:02):
You're listening to Raising Curious Learners, a podcast from Britannica for Parents, where we talk to experts and discuss issues and trends in child development, education and parenting.

Elizabeth Romanski (00:31):
Welcome back to Raising Curious Learners. I'm Elizabeth Romanski and my cohost as usual is Ann Gadzikowski. For those of us who live in an urban environment, the concrete jungle can sometimes feel all consuming. Our guest today is trying to reimagine our environment by listening to the most creative citizens of our society: children

Ann Gadzikowksi (00:52):
You know, early childhood educators often talk about the importance of the child's environment. We like to say that the environment is one of the child's most important teachers.

Elizabeth Romanski (01:05):
Yeah. And that's especially interesting right now to think about because so many children are out of school and they're learning from home due to COVID.

Ann Gadzikowksi (01:13):
And we've talked a lot in our podcast in the past about learning outdoors in nature, but we've also been wondering about children who are in more urban environments and thinking about how cities and buildings and the built environment impact how children learn and grow.

Elizabeth Romanski (01:30):
And those are just the kinds of questions that we are actually going to discuss today with our special guest Mara Mintzer. She is co founder and director of Growing Up Boulder, which is an initiative that works to include children and youth in city planning. Welcome Mara. Thanks very much for having me.

Ann Gadzikowksi (01:46):
Mara we're so glad to talk to you today. You gave a popular Ted talk in which you described your experience involving children and young people in a renovation project of a city park in Boulder, Colorado. Can you start by telling us about that project?

Mara Mintzer (02:01):
Sure. So that's what we call the downtown civic area, and you can think of it kind of as the heart of our city of Boulder, Colorado. It's about 26 acres and the area really needed a facelift in order to address a few different issues. One was that it could feel unsafe at times. A second, was that it's a high flood zone, so we needed to really look at how to restore the habitat or to make the habitat better in terms of floods. And then the last was how do we connect it to our farmer's market? And so we had an opportunity to work with 225 children and young people.

Elizabeth Romanski (02:36):
Wow.

Mara Mintzer (02:37):
And when I say children and young people, I mean from ages four, all the way through 16, and we did this over the course of four years, and then we've been lucky enough to actually see this park get built. And so now we get to go down there and enjoy the fruits of our labor and of the kids' input.

Ann Gadzikowksi (02:53):
So what kind of ideas did the children bring to the project?

Mara Mintzer (02:57):
So as you can imagine, kids come with all sorts of different ideas. And we start with the idea that kids are experts on their own lived experience. So, you know, you may be only four years old and not have visited that many places, but you know what has resonated with you and what matters to you. And so we started by capturing what the kids had already experienced or already loved, but then we expanded their understanding a bit to get more ideas from them. So their ideas range from everything, from kind of crazy ideas, like having a, a water cannon that could go from the bridge above the river and, and shoot at unsuspecting kayakers down below.

Elizabeth Romanski (03:36):
Yeah.

Mara Mintzer (03:36):
But it ranged all the way to that to having cozy reading nooks right outside the library so that kids could take out a book and find a great place to curl up and read and really share their love of reading with others.

Elizabeth Romanski (03:46):
So I'm very curious because you know, the idea to bring kids in on this planning is very ingenious because they give such unfiltered ideas that can spark so much creativity. So how did the idea to include kids come about?

Mara Mintzer (04:03):
So if you take a step back to how we formed Growing Up Boulder, it was a confluence of, of people at the same time and same place. I had recently moved from California, where I had spent my career running programs for underrepresented children and families. Then there was a new planning director for our city, David Driscoll, who happened to have written a youth manual on participation. So how do you get young people's participation in creating better cities for all? And then we had two professors, Willem van Vliet and Louise Chawla, who had dedicated their careers to engaging young people and getting their voices in planning and really making communities more child friendly. So we all came together and formed Growing Up Boulder, and then each year, as we did more demonstration projects, more city departments would come to us and say, "Hey, that was pretty good. Can you, can you come offer us a little help on our plans?" And so it's gotten to the point now where we've worked with something like eight city departments, on everything ranging from transportation master planning to this year, we're gonna work on police reform and youth voice and a police master plan.

Ann Gadzikowksi (05:06):
Wow. That sounds really important.

Mara Mintzer (05:08):
It's so timely, and we couldn't be more excited, especially to raise the voices of young people of color, to make sure that they have an opportunity to help shape what our police looks like moving forward.

Ann Gadzikowksi (05:19):
When you gather input from children and youth, I know you work with schools, but do you also work directly with families and parents?

Mara Mintzer (05:27):
Great question. We do all of the above. So what we do is we go wherever the children are or where the families are, and we go to them and hear what matters to them. We'll often partner in a preschool classroom or an elementary through high school classroom, and it can be over multiple weeks. Sometimes it'll take an entire year of working with a group of students to really hear their ideas. But we also partner with groups that work with underrepresented parents. So for example, in a week or two, I'm going to be meeting with groups of Latinx parents to hear their thoughts on what outdoor learning could look like for their kids on a public school campus, and really make sure that that learning is responsive to their family's needs, that we're addressing any fears that they might have, taking into account any great ideas they have. And we're going to partner with El Paso, which is an organization dedicated just to hearing the needs of Latinx parents in our community. So that's how we do a lot of our work best is by partnering with those expert organizations and then meeting their families wherever feels comfortable. So for us, this will be over Zoom, and I'm just going to be a part of their regular meeting.

Ann Gadzikowksi (06:35):
Wow. I'm going to jump in now and ask a question about children as citizens, because I know that that's something that's been really important in your work. And for me as an early childhood educator, I've worked in schools where we use a Reggio Emilia inspired approach, which is based on a philosophy that originated in Italy, but is quite prevalent in the United States as well. And the idea is that every child from the very beginning, from birth, is considered a citizen of their community, and should have a voice in their community. And I think that's reflected in your work. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about children as citizens.

Mara Mintzer (07:12):
So, you know, I think we often talk about citizens or residents as only counting after they turn 18 years old. And if we look at them that way, we're missing a huge part of our population that lives in our communities that experiences our communities and the barriers that we may create inadvertently on a daily basis and who better to know what is working for them or not than the people who are experiencing it ourselves. And this applies to kids and it applies to adults as well. I think what holds adults back often is this fear of, well, what if the kids say something crazy that we can't do, or what could the kids possibly know about a complex issue? But it actually turns out that a lot of the problem is the structures that we put in place, it's not the kids that are the problem. So what we need to be better at is figuring out how to translate between child and adult what is needed. I'll give you an example of that. So we worked with Boulder Journey School, which is a Reggio Emilia based approach that they use at that preschool. And we wanted to get really young children's input for the transportation master planning process. Well, what we decided to do, and this was inspired by a series of films called Young Explorers, which you can look up. We strapped GoPros to the toddlers heads, and then the toddlers went out for walks with their teachers and we recorded them and then their GoPros recorded them. And we just observed and asked them questions about their experience on the streets. And all of a sudden you could see what it was like to be three foot high and have cars whizzing past you. And one of the kids said "The cars see us, but they haven't seen us." In other words, like they know they're there, but they're not paying attention to them. So how can we get those cars to really be paying attention and needing to slow down so it's not so scary and dangerous for our toddlers? Again, if you know how to listen to them correctly and can translate child to adult, you can really have a big impact. And I should say the outcome is that our more recent transportation master plan now has vision zero policies implemented on all residential street. The speed limit has been reduced to 20 miles per hour on residential streets, and I would like to think that some of that came from the young kids input.

Elizabeth Romanski (09:24):
Oh, of course! Once you hear about all of this amazing research and all of these ways that you've tapped into how the kids interact with their environment, it makes so much sense. You kind of almost forget about their perspective as adults, but that is so important not to forget because they are living in this world too. And they're being impacted even more with their, with their little absorbing brains. So I think it's so important.

Mara Mintzer (09:50):
And Elizabeth, I'd like to add also that, so why should someone care about this who may not have kids, or who has kids, but like, why do you care what they have to say? Well, it turns out when we make a city that's friendly for children, we're actually making a city that works for all people. And I think that's a really important point when we're looking at our most vulnerable populations, whether it's children or the elderly or impacted communities, we are creating a place that actually works for all of us better. So I would love to have a place where I can feel safe walking or biking down the street and have greenspace next to me so I'm not breathing and exhaust fumes like that benefits me as well as my child.

Ann Gadzikowksi (10:27):
So we're not just talking about the size of the children. I mean, that is a big part of what you're describing is that they're smaller. And so their perspective is, is from a lower level, but there's more to it than that. They're still growing. They're more vulnerable. They need protection and care. And so it sounds like you're saying when we provide that protection and care for children, we're also better caring and protecting adults as well.

Mara Mintzer (10:50):
Absolutely. And I'll tell you as a parent and from a parenting point of view, when we make our cities more child friendly, it alleviates our stress as well. I want to give an example for that. When I was in Japan, I routinely saw kids traveling - you know seven, eight years old - on the subway by themselves. They'd created a system where kids and parents felt safe enough that kids could travel independently. Well, can you imagine how much time that would free up for parents to not be shuttling their kids around town? And then the level of independence and joy that it brings to children to just be on their own and not have parents hovering over them and to be outside, engaging with nature or the community or their friends. So there, there's so many benefits from creating a society that works that way.

Ann Gadzikowksi (11:36):
What about the element of play? That's another factor that children would bring to the equation. How does play fit in with urban planning?

Mara Mintzer (11:43):
What I love about kids and urban planning and play is that they put play at the forefront of all their designs. I have yet to see a child design that's very serious and not playful, and really we adults would benefit from that as well. It's really important to our own physiology. You know, there are studies of mammals that show that adult mammals play as well, not, not just the child mammals. It's part of what makes us who we are. And so their suggestions often have beautiful colors and artwork and different ways of using space that we adults don't think about. One of my colleagues from the Netherlands talks about the playable edge, which was a term I hadn't heard of. And anyone who's walked with a child will immediately understand this. You know how a child will immediately find, um, a ledge that they can walk on or a log to balance on.

Elizabeth Romanski (12:32):
Yep.

Mara Mintzer (12:32):
You know, you'll be walking on the sidewalk, but they find that playable edge. And so what she started doing was she started designing, playable edges into the spaces where the adults would walk and bring their children so that it would encourage the kids to get out and about more often.

Elizabeth Romanski (12:47):
I mean, that's, that's amazing. And it's even more crucial right now with what we're going through and that necessity to be outside and also have that component of learning as well in an outdoor space.

Mara Mintzer (13:00):
Absolutely. And there's a great example in the Philadelphia area where they purposely integrated in learning into these everyday spaces. The Brookings Institute has looked into this a bunch, and basically what they do is they find where the kids already are - It could be the supermarket, it could be waiting at a bus stop - and integrate, play, and learning into those spaces. And wouldn't, we all be better off if, if every place we went had these elements to them, that could challenge all of us?

Elizabeth Romanski (13:26):
Yeah, I think so!

Ann Gadzikowksi (13:27):
You know, I'm thinking of another way that a child centered design would benefit adults as well, and it has to do with getting from place to place. So many families use strollers to transport children from place to place. And I'm, um, wondering about how the use of strollers also connects with designing for people who use wheelchairs. How do those issues play together?

Mara Mintzer (13:49):
Looking at mobility issues for people who are differently abled as well as families pushing strollers are so important and so well aligned. In my own personal life, I experienced it. My daughter was young at the same time my mother was in a wheelchair, and so everywhere we went, I needed places where there were curb cuts that were smooth and in good condition. You know, if we were going to take public transit for both my mother and my daughter in the stroller, I had to think about, well, how easy was it going to be for her wheelchair and the stroller to get on and off of a bus? In fact, there's a lot of overlap and a lot of work we can do together to really make our cities more accessible for more different ways of getting around town. That also works for skateboards, right? For our teenagers who might be wanting to skate somewhere. So it really helps a lot of different types of people.

Elizabeth Romanski (14:35):
Don't go anywhere! We'll be right back after this short break.

Ann Gadzikowksi (14:52):
How has the present moment changed the way you think about urban environments? Because what you're talking about, a lot of it has to do with bringing people together, and now because of COVID-19, we have to keep apart. What, what are your thoughts on that?

Mara Mintzer (15:06):
Well, certainly our needs for connection are greater than ever because we've been kept apart so much. So for our own work, we've really had to be creative about how can we get together safely, um, virtually or in person? One thing that works well, like I mentioned before, is tapping into existing communities that are already gathering together. So the fact that I've been invited to participate in a weekly meeting of this group of parents to talk about outdoor learning, that's really wonderful because it means that we're staying connected and we're still hearing important voices in our community. Another really great opportunity - not that I would wish COVID upon us, but - is to look at outdoor learning more.

Elizabeth Romanski (15:46):
Yeah.

Mara Mintzer (15:47):
So I've been lucky enough to be involved in multiple ways with helping our school district think through what outdoor learning could look like to keep us physically safe, but also mentally and emotionally. And so we're hoping that we're going to develop more permanent structures for bringing education outside and really making use of place-based learning, experiential learning, environmental education and integrating it into our daily curriculum so we're not having kids just sit inside and not move their bodies throughout the day. So again, I wouldn't wish it upon us, but I think opportunities can arise too, if you're really creative about how you look at challenges.

Ann Gadzikowksi (16:25):
So we're thinking and talking a lot about air quality and ventilation, and that's one of the benefits of outdoor learning. I wonder, even with climate change, and, um, the forest fires that have been in the news tecently, if that's also something to take into consideration in terms of urban environments and children and families.

Mara Mintzer (16:44):
Absolutely. My colleague, professor Louis Chawla, who helped start Growing Up Boulder recently wrote an article. She really wanted to look at how are kids processing the idea of climate change emotionally? How are they coping with it? And one of her findings that she got from reviewing all the literature is kids have hope when they can take constructive action to make their communities better. And a lot of the work that we do involves that of how can kids give input in a way that they're actually making positive impact on their own communities. And that gives them a sense of hope to keep moving forward and keep improving, and can remove the despair that is really easy to feel in the face of climate change. When it comes to the logistics, we have to take into consideration, you know, if they're going to be bad smoke inhalation days, those might be days that we either have to stay home from school and do online learning or, you know, potentially be in the classroom with masks on. So we're navigating the realities of balancing all these different parts of our environment right now, to do it as healthfully as possible.

Elizabeth Romanski (17:44):
I will say though, that the, the idea that you need to be outside more, obviously stemming this year from a health perspective, you know, it's safety outside, but it's not going to go away. You know, especially with the kind of overcoming COVID, there is still going to be that idea that it's safer to be outside, but also just, I think there's going to be so much more interest in being outside. Have there been any, like, immediate changes to existing places I'm thinking even the city park, have you had to like go back this year and like, "Oh, we should add this sort of like learning component." Like, have you had any of that or are there plans to revamp certain projects that you've already completed?

Mara Mintzer (18:22):
Well, one thing I think about is, um, you know, once people experience something in a positive way, they want to keep it. And so in a way, what we're having right now is a chance to experiment with what being outside more could feel like. So some of the schools that might start doing outdoor learning, maybe for them, it'll just be a tent or two to begin with and see what learning outside is like. And then I'm hoping that once they experience that positively, then there'll be more desire and more momentum towards creating more permanent structures that allow for that. In Finland, I visited a forest kindergarten, which is where they literally spend the entire time in preschool outside. And they said they stay out there when it's negative 20 degrees. I can't even imagine. The kids come completely prepared though! They know how to dress appropriately. They know what to expect. The parents know what to expect. Well, I'm hoping that right now, we're in the training wheels time for ourselves of doing forest kindergarten type things that we start to learn, how do we dress appropriately? How do we make use of the outdoors? How do we keep attention focused? And that over time will grow to love it so much that we'll put more permanent structures and more funding in place, right? The funding follows what people choose to prioritize. So if we choose this as a priority, it can be done, but it's a matter of what the public demands.

Ann Gadzikowksi (19:40):
So I'm thinking of parents who might be listening to this podcast and they might say to themselves, well, that sounds great, but I'm not in Boulder. I don't know if there's anything like that going on here. I'm, I'm not aware of any initiatives like that in my town. What advice do you have for them to find out more about what might be going on and also, if not, how do they get involved?

Mara Mintzer (20:01):
Well, I have a real answer to that, which is that this actually is happening all over the country. It's happening from Alaska to New York City, to Arizona, to South Carolina. And I know this because I've been part of a national working group. Um, it's run by Green Schoolyards. They're a nonprofit and Sharon Danks is their director. And they've pulled together people from all over the country to do what's called the Outdoor COVID-19 Learning Group. And so we are on weekly phone calls where we're actually working through these problems. There are 12 different working groups that are addressing each aspect of outdoor learning, because we know there are a lot of challenges. And so we're actually using collective action and collective thinking to make change throughout the country, and you know, when someone has a question of, well, what do I do on a bad air quality day? I can reach out to my colleague in California and find out how they might be addressing it, or I can contact someone in Maine to find out, well, what are you going to do about the snow? Like what happens when the snow lands on the tents? Everyone's thinking this through together, and so it's a really exciting time to make progress.

Elizabeth Romanski (21:08):
I think that's amazing because the network is so large and you have so many folks who are experts of the environment that they live in, and so you can really tap into ideas that you might not have thought about. So I think that that's awesome. It also makes me really optimistic because while COVID has really made us re-look at how you learn outdoors, we're also faced with climate change. And so I think by incorporating more outdoor learning and hopefully growing the idea of having, you know, forest kindergartens or any sort of outdoor learning the children at a young age, develop a new connection with their environment and the outdoors. And I think that that will hopefully really foster a new appreciation and respect for the environment. So I think that in a way, we have a lot of potential.

Mara Mintzer (21:57):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And in fact, sustainability underlies all the work that we do at Growing Up Boulder. Part of the thinking behind this is - so Growing Up Boulder is based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is a treaty that says anyone under the age of 18 should have certain protected rights, including a voice in decisions which affect their lives, um, but also the right to healthy air to breathe and, you know, a healthy spaces to live in. This treaty aligns very well with the UN sustainable development goals. And so all of our work really comes from a place of sustainability, whether that's social sustainability or environmental sustainability. We actually have a vision at Growing Up Boulder. We would love to be actually sharing and supporting other communities in doing this work if we could find partnerships with more foundations or individuals who believe in it, because we really like to test out all these ideas and say, okay, this is a great lofty idea, but what does it look like on the ground? Let's test it out in the most challenging conditions we can find, and then learn from it to be able to support others in doing this kind of work. And so you're right. Sustainability is really important.

Ann Gadzikowksi (23:05):
So I'd like to loop back to this idea of listening to the children and the children being part of the planning. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you actually do that? Because the children have a lot of knowledge, but they can't always share it with us in ways that we can use it, or ways that we can hear it. Can you tell us more about the methods that you use to learn from the children?

Mara Mintzer (23:30):
So I'll give you an example on something that sounds too hard for kids and they did a brilliant job on. So the question is how do you design sustainable, affordable, child-friendly housing? What does that look like from a nine year old's perspective and from a high school student's perspective? And we worked for an entire semester with several third grade elementary school classes. What we did was we went in, we presented the project and why their voices mattered. And from the very beginning, we captured their ideas about what their ideal housing looks like, you know, where do they live? Having them really reflect upon their own experiences and capturing that through drawings. Then we took them out on a field trip, where we used red and green frames and they looked at an example of dense, affordable, sustainable housing. And they took photographs through red frames and green frames about what they liked about this example and what they didn't like about the example. They also watched videos about some really cutting edge communities from around the world to get inspiration, and they did their own research on the computer. They wrote persuasive writing essays, which aligned with the English language standards for third grade, they wrote letters to city council, and then they created final projects where they synthesized what they had learned and made their recommendations. And for all of this, we brought in the top city planners in our community. So the director of city planning, the director of the library, the director of housing for the university. We really had a dialogue between the kids and the adults where they challenged each other to think about these issues. And when those adults left the classroom, they said, if we could get adults to think this thoroughly and comprehensively, we would be in a much better place. These kids knew way more than many adults and were more open to different ideas. They were much better listeners, active listeners of each other.

Elizabeth Romanski (25:17):
And I'm sure they were much better at being willing to share and be more vulnerable because, you know, I think as adults, there's a lot of fear behind sharing ideas that could sound a little bit bizarre, but actually could have a lot of validity to it. And so for kids, there's hardly that fear, you know, for them, they're just, this is a conversation and I'm going to share everything. And so I think it's that too.

Mara Mintzer (25:40):
Absolutely, and that's about setting a tone where we really want to hear a diversity of ideas and being open and making the space for that.

Ann Gadzikowksi (25:48):
Sounds kind of like a design thinking or design engineering process - a problem solving process. Do you ever work with children or youth and have them build models out of blocks and other kinds of materials?

Mara Mintzer (25:59):
We love to do 3D model building. It's a great way of getting their input and they love it too! It's, it's usually rated as one of their favorite parts of any activity. And we have done it with every material you can imagine, whether it's clay and natural objects that they've picked up like pine cones and rocks. Sometimes it's art materials, and other times we use a wonderful technique developed by an urban planner named James Rojas, who's out of Los Angeles. And he created something called Cities Play, or Place It, where you use found objects like pink plastic curlers, or silk flowers, or Mardi Gras beads, and you're asked a provocative question and you have to design the answer to that question. This works equally well for young children as it does for someone in their seventies and people whose primary language may not be English because all of us are forced to think outside the box when you don't have Legos that fit perfectly together. And when you're looking at objects in a new way, there's no way of doing it wrong. There's no way of drawing wrong. People are often afraid when they have to draw, but when you're designing with a Easter egg plastic shell, you, you can't do that wrong. And the input we get from that is incredible. And then our job, again, at Growing Up Boulder, we often take those ideas and help translate them by creating a report that city planners can use. We pull out the themes that we've heard from the kids. And what we also do is we'll create graphic representations of what we've heard so that the kids can see how their ideas were used, and, and it also helps the adults too.

Ann Gadzikowksi (27:31):
That sounds like so much fun.

Mara Mintzer (27:32):
It's the best.

Elizabeth Romanski (27:33):
A lot of what we've talked about is the importance of kids perspective, but I'm curious if there's one thing that you feel that we can learn as adults and as parents from kids that maybe you wouldn't expect.

Mara Mintzer (27:45):
What I think kids have helped me realize is that they can help us become unstuck in problems that seem intractable. We get really fixed in the same way of thinking over and over, and our adult brains do that on purpose as a way to make sense of so much information in the world. But Alison Gopnik, who's a professor in California, has done research on how children's brains are actually much more flexible and creative and actually can be better problem solvers. And this reminded me when I was a consultant in the nineties, we used to play with little toys like Koosh balls or, or other little fidget type activities to try and get us to think more creatively. And reflecting upon that, I thought, why didn't we just go to kids and give them this problem and see if they could help us come up with ideas? Cause I have a feeling they would have gotten there more quickly than we did.

Ann Gadzikowksi (28:35):
Well, I know we need to wrap up and I'd like to bring the conversation back to parents. We know that they're our primary listening audience. So I'm imagining a young parent with a little baby and say, they're living in a fairly urban environment. And they're wondering, you know, how are they going to bring up their child in this space? Do you have any advice for them or how to make it work and how to be, you know, active shapers of that environment?

Mara Mintzer (28:59):
My recommendation would be to start small. Find something that you feel really passionate about, and then go sending emails, making phone calls, knocking on doors, talking to people. Whatever inspires you most, because what I've found is that when you are persistent and keep talking to everyone who will listen, eventually someone will open one of their doors that you've knocked on and start partnering with you. And that's when you can start building momentum around whatever it is that really matters in your life. Whether that's a city official or a school district official, and then bring others along with you once you start to create that momentum. You know, we started out really, really small at Growing Up Boulder. We didn't have any money at the beginning, but it was our persistence and our belief in this mattering that has helped move it forward, and that keeps working. We just keep knocking on doors and we're never going to stop.

Ann Gadzikowksi (29:49):
You've given us a lot of inspiration and a lot of hope. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much, Mara.

Elizabeth Romanski (29:56):
Yeah, thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Mara Mintzer (29:58):
Thank you both. This was really fun.

Elizabeth Romanski (30:05):
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Raising Curious Learners. Special thanks to our guests this week, Mara Mintzer, co founder and director of Growing Up Boulder, an initiative that works to include children and youth in city planning, for teaching us about how we can better cooperate and recognize children as citizens of their own cities. You can find more examples of Mara's work at growingupboulder.org or by listening to her Ted Talk, "How Kids Can Help Design Cities", at ted.com. I'm Elizabeth Romanski, and my cohost is Ann Gadzikowski. Our audio engineer and editor for this program is Emily Goldstein. If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, leave us a review and share with your friends. This program is copyrighted by Encyclopedia Britannica Incorporated, all rights reserved.

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