Students In Kanawha County Learn the In's, Out's, and Challenges of City Planning.

May 08, 2006
Model citizens
Students play city planners for a day
By Eric EyreStaff writer
It wasn’t until the developers arrived that things got dicey.
About two dozen eighth-graders from John Adams Middle School designed a mock city last week at the West Virginia State Theater in Charleston. They plunked down cereal and shoe boxes that represented downtown buildings. They set aside land for a zoo, peach orchard, parks and a small beach and performing arts center. Everything was darn near perfect.
But then the “evil” developers arrived.
They wanted to level the park and build a cigarette factory. They wanted to raze the historic district and put up a giant shopping center. They planned to tear down a church and open a liquor store in its place.
That’s when the arguments started.
The students playing the role of environmentalists howled. The “mayor” and “city council members” were up in arms. The debate was heated.
“Now you’re starting to see what city council meetings are like,” said Linda Harper, an Arlington, Va.-based planning consultant who facilitated the land-use planning program for students last week.
“All day long, you’ve worked really well, and all of a sudden, the issues get put on the table and you’re like cats and dogs.”
The students were taking part in a pilot program called “Planners R Us.” The Charleston Area Alliance, a local economic development group, sponsored the program. Funding was provided by the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation.
It was a chance for students to build a city from scratch.
They started with nothing but a large white sheet and a few roads scrawled across it.
Then they generated a list of what communities need to function: schools, utilities, police and fire departments, grocery stores and hospitals. They fashioned office buildings out of cardboard boxes and dropped them on the sheet. They added parks, libraries and retail shops.
At one point each student was handed a plastic “berry basket” and assigned an occupation. They rushed to find the best location for their office or store in the mock city.
Eighth-grader Emma Grose was an innkeeper, searching for a site for a bed and breakfast inn. Her classmates were quickly dropping their baskets throughout the city. The empty spaces were filling up.
“By the factory?” Grose asked her teacher.
“A B&B by a factory?” wondered teacher Mary Francis Williams.
“But there’s no room anywhere else,” Grose said.
At length, Grose squeezed her basket between a pet shop and jewelry store, just a few doors down from the Cool and Cream ice cream parlor.
“I wanted it to be a little far from the downtown hotel and residential area,” Grose later explained. “But near the university, if parents wanted to stay there.”
Earlier, students met with Charleston, S.C., Mayor Joe Riley, who was in town to give a speech at the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia’s annual conference.
Riley, an eight-term mayor, praised students for wanting to protect historic buildings. He said city planning should start with ideas from locals. You don’t have to be a planning expert to build a successful city, he said.
“Now you start with the citizens, with the people in the neighborhoods,” Riley said. “What are their values, what are their hopes and dreams?”
Susie Salisbury, community development director with the Charleston Area Alliance, said the organization might expand the pilot land-use planning program to other Kanawha County middle schools next year.
The hands-on program gives students a chance to think about where they live, how to make their community better and how to balance economic development with environmental concerns.
“They’re learning about business, land use, environmental issues, social issues,” Salisbury said. “It’s a way to introduce kids to community planning. Some of them could wind up some day on a municipal planning commission. Or they could become mayor.”
To contact staff writer Eric Eyre, use e-mail or call 348-4869.