A walk in the park

An experiential approach
to youth participation

By Joshua Spier

A park design “walkshop” was facilitated by a lecturer as

part of an undergraduate unit in youth participation at an
Australian tertiary college. Inspired by the work of landscape
architect Lawrence Halprin (1916–2009), the “scored” walkshop
simulated a consultation walk designed to engage students
in the hypothetical redevelopment of an urban park. The goal
was for students to re-experience the urban park adjacent to
the college’s campus. Based on their sensory responses from
moving around the park, the participants produced consensual
ideas for improving the park. An evaluation was conducted
inviting students to reflect on their transformative experiences
and the walk process. Students reported that their walkshop
experiences transformed their understandings of the park,
and enabled them to realise their creative agency as social
actors to shape public spaces. The evaluation of the walkshop
suggests that Halprin’s walk process has potential applications
in urban design and youth work practice today. Modifications
are recommended to Halprin’s walk method for greater youth
participation.

Previous literature has explored walking within
local spaces as a methodology for qualitative
inquiry, spatial analysis and understanding
the lived experiences of children and young
people (Loebach & Gilliland 2010). Similarly,
this paper reports on the evaluation of an
adaption of the “city walk” technique for
enabling young people to collectively co-create
their parks and public spaces. A youth work
lecturer facilitated a park “walkshop” in the
context of an undergraduate youth participation
unit during a scheduled lecture session.

Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013

The walkshop was inspired by the participatory
city walk technique of Lawrence Halprin
(1916–2009). Halprin, an influential American
landscape architect and urban designer, used
the term “city walk” to describe a key component
of his firm’s Take Part public planning process
(Halprin & Burns 1974). While the term “city
walk” conjures up the idea of group walks
through cityscapes and streets, Halprin’s firm
developed walks in many contexts, including
downtown spaces, woodlands, parks and coastal
environments (Hirsch 2005, 2011). As such, the
term “city walk” is used broadly in this article,
and has been adapted for a park-based walk.
Drawing on student feedback, this article uses
the walkshop as a pilot case to explore the
potential application of the city walk method
for urban design and youth work contexts.
The first section describes foundational
concepts that have grounded this first-hand
case study. The second section presents the city
walk methodology and the walkshop design.
The paper then analyses the key benefits
and limitations of the city walk approach in
light of the walkshop experiment and youth
participation literature. The final section offers
some practical modifications to Halprin’s walk
method for greater youth participation. It will
be argued that this limited study supports
further experimentation and adaptation of
the city walk approach for contemporary
urban design and youth work practice.
Philosophical underpinnings
Based on Hart’s (1992) model, “youth
participation” is understood as a lived relational
process of young people sharing decisions with
adults that affect their everyday lives within
the public realm. The particular scope of this
article is to apply this concept to planning
processes that give shape to the redevelopment
of “publicly owned communal spaces”, such as
council reserves and parks (White 1998, p.1).
Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013
The position maintained here is that if youth
participation does not involve young people
having the “real power” needed to influence
the actual outcome of a design process, then
participation is an “empty ritual” or even
manipulative (Arnstein 1969, p.216). This article
is particularly interested in the preliminary
phase of urban and park design, which White
(2001) identifies as a key ground for youth
involvement in design and planning (p.21).
Youth participation then, in the context of
consultative urban design, has integrity if and
when young people are empowered to have
a serious impact on the practical outcomes
of the design process (Hart 1992, p.12).
Adapting part of Howard et al.’s (2002) typology
of rationales for youth participation, typical
justifications for involving young people in
urban design processes may include obligatory1
(“we are involving youth because we have to:
it is a technical/policy requirement”), and
pragmatic (“we are involving youth for practical
reasons: young people’s future usage of a space
is dependent on the extent to which the young
people themselves contribute to its creation”2).
Perhaps less considered are ontological
reasons for community participation. That is,
participation as “fundamental to the nature
of our being, an ontological given” (Reason
& Bradbury 2001, p.8). As Freire (2000, p.88)
states: “To exist, humanly, is to name the
world, to change it”. It follows that to involve
young people in a naming and co-creation
of a local park is not only about ticking the
“participation box” or ensuring a “better
outcome”, it is also about creating opportunities
for young people to live out a fundamental
“ontological vocation” of co-acting upon and
transforming their worlds (Shaull 2000, p.32).
Another key question relates to whether
decision-makers and designers should use
separate consultative activities to target young
people, or whether it is more appropriate to
include young people in universal participatory commissioned by government departments to
projects. In terms of urban design, Cameron bring together various stakeholders and groups
and Grant-Smith (2005) sensibly recommend for the design of major landscapes, such as the
that specific youth participation activities master planning of city parks (Hirsch 2005).
be provided (as “protected arenas”), to be
Halprin’s firm would prepare a series of
followed by “broader participatory activities
instructions that directed people to particular
that bring together a range of groups” (p.33).
locations in a community space (Creighton 2005,
Based on this premise, in this paper the “city
p.106). Halprin referred to these instructions
walk” method will be explored as a potential
as a musical “score”, which guided participants
youth-specific participatory activity for
to carry out a sequence of specific activities
urban design and youth work projects.
(Halprin & Burns 1974, p.32). The “walking score”
was a choreographed route through a town or
The ‘city walk’ methodology other type of public space (Hirsch 2011, p.136).
for park design
At each stop during Halprin’s scored walk,
de Certeau (1984) implicitly critiques the
participants were prompted to sketch what
“master” planning and “strategies” of the urban
they saw, and to note their immediate and
planner, architect and bureaucrat who gaze
instinctive feelings about how the space
down upon the city from an aerial vantage
should be used (Halprin, Hester & Mullen
point (Stevenson 2013, p.16). In contrast, de
1999; Hirsch 2011). For example, one scored
Certeau poetically reclaims urban space
activity for a stop in the Chicago Lakeshore
that occurs through the everyday lived (and
Drive workshop asked participants:
sometimes subversive) experience of walking
in it (Stevenson 2013, p.16). In a similar vein, What activities are occurring around you?
participatory researchers, educators and … Imagine what you would like to see
planners have used walking as a method for here in the future and include a view of
understanding the spatial aspects of young the skyline. Use both words and drawings
people’s lived experiences (Hart 1979; Ward (Halprin, Hester & Mullen 1999, p.45).
& Fyson 1973; Langsted 1994; Breitbart 1995;
En route, participants recorded their
Ishola et al. 2003; Loebach & Gilliland 2010;
intrapersonal reactions and experiences in a
Malone 1999). This previous work provides the
notebook, and sketched their visions for the
backdrop for this firsthand case study, which
future. Within this process, the walk designer/
aims to evaluate the usefulness of the “city
facilitator was the “workshop conductor” who
walk” methodology for participatory urban
helped people to work together (Sanoff 2000,
design and planning with young people.
p.62). After the walk, the conductor guided the
Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin participants to debrief on their experiences,
pioneered the city walk as a methodology for and craft consensus ideas that became part of
participatory design in the late 1960s. The city Halprin’s design recommendations and plan
walk was the first stage of his public planning for the project (Creighton 2005; Ford 2010).
process called Take Part (Halprin & Burns
1974; Hirsch 2011). Halprin and his firm were Case study: The park design ‘walkshop’
commissioned to facilitate their Take Part
The lecturer of an undergraduate unit,
workshops in a diverse range of situations
inspired by Halprin’s legacy, scored a park
(Halprin & Burns 1974). The firm was often

Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013

design walkshop for students enrolled in a
second-year unit entitled ‘Youth Participation
and Community Development’. This is a core
unit for students enrolled in the Bachelor of
Social Sciences (Youth Work) offered at Tabor
Adelaide – a tertiary education provider.
The lecturer chose the urban park adjacent
to the college’s campus as the site for the
scored walkshop. Tabor’s campus is situated
adjacent to Orphanage Park in Millswood,
South Australia. This space is located within
the City of Unley, a metropolitan area located
directly south of the centre of Adelaide.
In the colonial context of European “settlement”
in South Australia, the Sisters of Saint Joseph
first reconstructed the space in 1888 as an
orphanage (Outerspace Landscape Architects
& Helen Smith Consultancy 2007). In 1976,
the site was purchased by the Government of
South Australia and became a teacher training
facility and the open space was developed as
a recreational area for students (Outerspace
Landscape Architects & Helen Smith
Consultancy 2007, p.2). In 2000, the City of
Unley purchased the large grounds of Orphanage
Park. At the same time, Tabor purchased
the allotted buildings for their campus. The
walkshop took place within Orphanage Park,
while the subsequent debrief and evaluation
was held in a lecture room on campus.
Orphanage Park is used for a variety of
community activities, and was redeveloped in
2009 after a planning process that involved
community engagement (during 2007). The wide
engagement methods that were used featured a
community reference group, community forums
and online comment forms on the council’s
website (City of Unley 2007a, 2007b). In regard
to specific youth consultation, efforts were
made to communicate with the Unley Youth
Advisory Committee, and planning workshops
were also held with two local primary schools.
In terms of consultation walks through the
Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013
park, on-site consultations were held where
people were asked to review draft plans while
they walked the site. Feedback from these
consultation mechanisms was incorporated
into the development of the draft concept plan
(City of Unley 2007a). This actual case of public
consultation for the park-site redevelopment
informed the lecturer’s design of the walkshop.
For the walkshop, the majority of the students
were aged 18–29. Out of the 13 participants,
there were four males and nine females.
Tabor’s youth work education program aims
to prepare students to work in a variety of
roles across the diverse public youth sector.
Several of the student participants for this
study were already working with young people
in various settings, including refugee services,
local government, school chaplaincy, and
church-based youth work. The walkshop was
scenario-based: the lecturer asked the students
to imagine that the walk was a way that they
could communicate their views, needs and ideas
for the hypothetical redevelopment of the park
to decision-makers and landscape architects.
Informed by the actual community interests
and issues that emerged during the consultation
process in 2007, the lecturer designed the
walk path so as to direct the students to
specific locations around the park that each
corresponded to a particular theme or aspect
of the park environment. Themes included:
histories, sacred spaces, natural environment,
families and children, public art and youth-
friendly spaces. Rather than facilitate the walk
as one large group with a walk leader, students
undertook the walk in pairs using a workbook
that guided them through a sequence of simple
activities which they enacted as they walked
through the space (in the allocated 90 minutes).
The histories activity, for example, guided
students to read the Kaurna story (the Kaurna
are the traditional Indigenous owners of the
land) while walking through the park, noting
anything that acknowledged living Kaurna
histories. Students then noted any feelings and
ideas about how this park (and Tabor) can better
acknowledge Kaurna living histories. Similarly,
for the “sacred spaces” activity, students were
prompted to “walk to a spot in the park that
is quiet, still, restful, peaceful”, and “simply sit
silently, looking and listening to the earth and
environment that surrounds you”. Students
were then asked to imagine any sacred space
they wanted to see in the park in the future to
“help people find peace”.3 In the spirit of city
walk, the overall intention was to help students
interact directly with the park, and to note
and sketch their “gut reactions” and ideas.
Following the walk, the lecturer called the
group together and facilitated a debriefing
session. Each pair was asked to propose
their “top project idea” for improving the
park. The group then ranked each idea as a
way to decide, as a group, which project idea
they wanted to propose to the local council
(imagining that the local council was willing
to fund one park project of their choice).
Evaluation methods
The lecturer conducted a participatory
evaluation following the walkshop. The students
were invited to reflect on their experiences by
completing a personal evaluation. Following
this, the lecturer facilitated a focus group
conversation to empower the students to
critically analyse the walkshop and the
potential usefulness of the walk method
in various contexts with young people. All
13 students who participated in the park
walkshop took part in the evaluation process.
The city walk as an experiential
process for creativity
Analysis of the student feedback on the
walkshop showed that the main strength of
Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013
the city walk approach was that it provided a
“sensory-emotional experience process” for
participants based on the “idea of experience,
interaction and communication, not just
talking” (author’s emphasis) (Halprin, Hester
& Mullen 1999, p.43). This experiential aspect
was prominent in student responses when
asked what most stood out to them about the
walkshop. For example, one student commented:
I liked that we didn’t just talk about a place
– we had a chance to experience the place
before reflecting and talking about it.
Many of today’s educational and consultative
activities are still based on talking. In both
contexts, the process is often built around
“informing” people, and asking them to talk
about their views and ideas. Halprin and
colleagues saw this process as “[getting] in
the way of most creativity” (Halprin, Hester
& Mullen 1999, p.43). Even when consultative
planning and design takes place on-site,
the aim is usually to generate “discussion”
about the site. By comparison, the city walk
approach offers a way to allow young people
to image a place via embodied experience
in situ and in motion (Halprin, Hester &
Mullen 1999, p.43). This is a departure from
participatory design and planning that is fixated
on participatory design through dialectics.
This alternative approach is primarily about
design through place-based experiences.
For example, one of the project ideas (developed
by students) that came out of the walk was for
the installation of Indigenous artworks related
to the living history of the Kaurna people. This
idea may not have been generated without the
scored “histories” activity. This emphasises
how scores are written to direct participants
towards having experiences, and not to tell
people what their emotional responses to
that space or facility should be (Creighton
2005, p.107). These subjective experiences and
embodied responses in situ are seen as the
catalyst for empowering the participants to
access and formulate their own ideas for change.
Halprin developed the city walk method in order
to help groups “re-experience” their familiar
shared environments, and to “resensitise” people
to communal spaces to which they may have
become accustomed (Creighton 2005, p.106).
Student evaluations indicated that the walkshop
had effectively achieved this goal. Prior to the
walkshop, students had been familiarised to the
park to various degrees. For example, in order to
access Tabor’s campus car park, students need
to drive through the public Orphanage Park.
Students reported that the walkshop experience
had caused them to see the park – their
proximate learning environment – with “fresh
eyes”. One student described her experience as
“eye opening”, and elaborated that it altered the
way she understood the park environment:
It’s changed the way that I think about the
ways the spaces are used by other people
… as well as making me aware of the
space that is there – I had never walked
around [the park] before, although I drive
[through and over] it twice a week …
Ultimately this process of reorientation is a
means of fostering “collective creativity” (Halprin
& Burns 1974). The city walk seeks to guide the
group through a series of activities that create
a common experience – a shared language of
experience (Halprin, Hester & Mullen 1999, p.44).
In turn, this common ground of experience
informs the co-creation of solutions that
contribute to the final design. In contrast to
more abstract, rational and quantified ways of
making decisions about public spaces (Schroeder
2012), the city walk approach allows people to
intersubjectively experience and dialogue a
space, trusting that their direct lived experience
will reveal to them how a lived space needs to
change (Halprin, Hester & Mullen 1999, p.50).
Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013
To demonstrate this approach, Halprin (in
Halprin, Hester & Mullen 1999) gives the
practice story of a downtown planning process
in Texas. Faced with resistance to change,
Halprin scored a city walk for the mayor, city
council, developers and others to undertake
together on a hot day. They walked the city
and ate lunch in a “cubby” that was hot and
uncomfortable (Halprin, Hester & Mullen
1999, p.50). When the walk was over, they came
back and demanded air-conditioned buses,
improved transit, cooling fountains and trees.
Similarly, student responses reveal that the city
walk can be used to produce creative solutions
for local urban environments. Students agreed
that they saw the park differently – not only
from the perspectives of other local user
groups – but as a horizon of possibilities. Many
students felt excited about their perception
of the park as a site for potential change. This
feeling is evident in the following statements:
It got me really excited to make and
build stuff. It changed the way the space
can be utilised and appreciated.
It helped me to look at the space for
what it can be for a wider range of
punters, not just for my uses.
Hence the city walk method appears
to provide a means for young people to
reimagine urban parks at a “deeper level
than language” (Schroeder 2012, p.137). Such
a method is appropriate for park design
given that city park environments affect
people in experiential ways that are hard to
express in words (Schroeder 2012, p.136).
Student responses also indicate possible
applications of the city walk method beyond
park/landscape design contexts. When asked
about applications to their own future youth
work practice, students agreed that the city
walk was a useful participatory technique that
had potential for a diverse range of settings.
Students critically translated their walkshop
experiences to their own current and future
youth work contexts. For example, one student
imagined using city walk as a way to engage
young people in the design of residential care
houses (for young people). Similarly, another
imagined using the walk as a counselling tool
to help clients explore their “inner worlds”.
The city walk as a kinesthetic
process for ecological imagination
In research involving young people in the
creation of the their urban environment, Malone
(1999) has reflected that young people like to be
“mobile and stimulated by their involvement
– this is what excites them … In contrast,
community meetings often lead to disinterest
and the silencing of young people” (p.23). The
walkshop evaluation reveals that the city walk
process provides one such method to enable
young people to be mobile and stimulated by
their involvement in urban design and planning.
Unlike previous lectures, all students – including
the students who had previously seemed
disconnected from classroom learning –
actually participated in the process and keenly
contributed ideas for the improvement of the
park. One student reflected that, “It didn’t feel
like a lecture – it felt recreational”, while another
student remarked that it was her “favourite
lecture!” With further probing, she explained:
I’m not a classroom kind of person. To be
out there, and learning practically and
watching people do things is how I learn
the best … Sitting here and listening to
people talk doesn’t do much for me.
Although such reflections were made in the
context of tertiary education, this has relevance
for consultative planning contexts. As White
(2001) observes, “conventionally presented
‘public forums’ tend to have much less appeal
Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013
to children and young people” (p.23).
Even the more interactive community
engagement tools seem limited in their
appeal to young people. For example, some
popular tools require participants to fill out
a quantitative questionnaire while on a walk.
The city walk approach may provide a more
animating and artistic alternative. Through
the generation of interactive scores, the city
walk could engage young people with diverse
education and cultural backgrounds, literacy
levels and learning styles. As Kumar (2002)
highlights, participatory activities that enable
non-literate and “not so articulate” people
to express their priorities means more fun
and creativity for everyone involved (p.44).
The city walk appears to offer planners
and young people a creative sensory-based
experience, one that encourages bodily-
kinesthetic and reflective involvement in
reimagining a space. White (2001) explores
creative strategies for involving young people
in urban design processes, including mapping
exercises that tap into the “five senses in a way
which dramatically [illustrates] the feelings
and perceptions of … young people about the
places in which they [live]” (p.23). In the same
way, the creative impulse of the city walk
approach implies “active involvement in the
generation of ideas” based on the immediacy of
human intuition and kinesthetic experiences
(Hirsch 2011, p.128). Alexander’s (2012) story of
the design of the Eishin Campus in Japan offers
support for this kind of phenomenological
planning. In this project, the site plan was not
produced in a planning office, but rather was
discerned “in the land”; it was derived from
being in the land itself (p.163). In other words,
phenomenological architectural procedures, as
opposed to “unfeeling mechanical procedures”,
arguably translate into human environments
that provide greater opportunities for what
Alexander (2012) calls “life-giving situations” (p.1).
This discernment process was evident in the
“sacred spaces” activity during the walkshop. In
pairs, the students felt drawn to “certain places”
within the park, akin to Alexander’s reported
project (2012, p.197). Students were interested to
discover later that they had independently and
spontaneously converged on similar locations
in search of “peace”. Students readily accepted
the invitation to “simply sit and listen to the
environment”. Modern urban design projects
tend to bypass contemplative ways of “reading
the land” in favour of dominant cerebral and
positivist lines of production (Schroeder 2012;
Alexander 2012). The city walk approach seems
to allow for a more intuitive approach.
City walk scores are written to help people to
become aware of their “gut level”, immediate
and primal emotional responses to the locale,
and to help them collectively envision ideas
for the space (Hirsch 2011). Halprin’s objective
was to engage people’s sensory and kinesthetic
awareness (Hirsch 2011). Student responses
indicated that the walkshop was effective in
achieving this, with one student commenting
that it was “good for kinaesthetic learners”.
For Halprin, stimulating immediate kinaesthetic
responses to the environment was more
than a strategy for participatory landscape
design. It was designed to evoke what is
described here as the “ecological imagination”.
In capitalist nations like Australia, there is a
need for such an endeavour. Australian poet
Leunig (2012) suggests that when a nation loses
“sight of its natural setting” it may suffer:
… some deadening loss of imagination …
A nation may turn its back on its greatest
source of wisdom and underestimate
how much it needs the natural world.
The city walk offers a potential vehicle through
which young people can participate in the
restoration of an ecological imagination by
being involved in urban regeneration projects.
Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013
As such, the city walk process is aligned with an
ecological model that “treats human societies
as being irreducibly integrated with the natural
systems [such as parks] in which they are
embedded” (Sarkar & Montoya 2011, p.979).
The study revealed that the city walk may be
useful in cultivating young participants’ critical
ecological consciousness towards park renewal.
For example, the scored “environmental” activity
energised the students to devise project ideas
to enhance the park’s “eco-friendliness”.
Beyond being a strategy for helping young
people to find pragmatic solutions to perceived
environmental management “issues” (e.g. the
need for more trees), this strategy is seen as one
way to cultivate caring ontological relationships
in people in regard to their environments.
Exercising the ecological imagination means
seeing ourselves as integral to a bigger
ecological whole (Ledwith & Springett 2010,
p.29). The walkshop revealed the capacity of
the city walk approach to help young people
move towards a new consciousness in relation
to their local environment. For example,
one student expressed that she felt more
connected with the park space. This raises
the possibility of using scored park walks as a
method of helping young people explore their
sense of interrelatedness with their natural
environments, such as parks. As a precedent
for this usage, Halprin’s process has been
applied with a group of teachers and higher
education students (across disciplines) who
spent several weeks in a workshop exploring
the interrelationships between themselves and
their environment (Halprin & Burns 1974, p.21).
The challenge for practitioners working in
urban “asphalt worlds” is how to foster young
urban dwellers’ relationships with the land
“under the concrete” (Hawke 2012). Hirsch (2011)
believes this pursuit was Halprin’s ultimate
motivation in his methodology, interpreting
his work as devotion to “the re-humanization
of the urban experience and the restoration of
ecological relationships” (Hirsch 2011, p.139).
Limitations of the city walk approach
Hirsch (2012) acknowledges that Halprin’s
“participatory process” began with his
“preconceived objectives”, and inherent was an
“unresolved ambiguity between facilitation and
manipulation” (p.117). In examining the park
walkshop, the city walk method can be critiqued
for being adult-led, and for not involving
participants in the process of deciding the walk
route or writing the score (Kumar 2002, p.101).
Malone and Hartung (2010) argue that youth
participation is typically “defined in terms of
the roles that adults ascribe to [young people],
as though [young people] cannot participate
in decision-making or contribute to society
unless they are formally engaged through
adult-initiated projects” (p.26). This common
approach, they contend, is built on a deficit view
of young people, failing to see them as capable
social actors who are already shaping their social
worlds. As Save the Children (2005) specify for
participation projects involving young people,
best practice means involving young people from
the earliest stage and enabling them to shape the
design of the participatory process itself (p.5).
Through this lens, a strong argument can be
made in favour of youth-led walks that are
more open-ended: enabling young people
to navigate their own way, and discover and
experience places for themselves without the
influence of an adult agenda. In the case of the
4
walkshop, in emulating Halprin’s approach, an
adult-designed score was constructed by the
lecturer with preconceived themes and desired
outcomes. In rigid keeping with this legacy,
the process remains adult-initiated, adult-
controlled and influenced by an adult agenda.
A noteworthy comparison is the work of Ward
(1978) in mapping children’s environmental
Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013
experiences. While Adams and Ward (1982)
recommend Halprin’s approach to teachers,
more unstructured methods are also offered
that emphasise children experiencing public
space for themselves. Ward and Fyson (1973)
suggest that students themselves can develop
their own urban trails in their own locality
(p.46). For the youth participation practitioner,
the challenge in modifying Halprin’s method,
or any other method, is how to allow young
people to design and own the process itself as
a way to name and create their own worlds.
This brings into question the adult’s discretion
regarding which participatory methods will
be used in the first place. In the context of an
urban design and planning consultation, rather
than determining which tools will be used to
“engage youth” and how these tools will be
conducted, young people can be empowered
to decide, in partnership with adults, which
methods to use and how they will work. In the
case of the walkshop, the lecturer was personally
enthusiastic about using a participatory walk,
and thus made an independent decision to
conduct one. While in this instance students
embraced the activity, the walk may never
have happened if the students had been first
asked if and how they wanted to be “consulted”.
However, to maximise participation, the
lecturer could have introduced the students
to different methods before giving them the
final say on how they wanted to participate.
Once the group had chosen their preferred
method, the lecturer could have empowered
them to design and facilitate the activity. Such
a revised approach is more closely aligned
to classic participatory action research
with young people (Hart 1992). From these
critical reflections on the walkshop, some
“real world” implications begin to emerge
for practitioners facilitating participatory
activities for young people in various contexts.
Suggested ways that the city walk can
be adapted for greater participation
This section provides some ways
that practitioners could modify the
city walk approach, across different
fields, for greater impact:
• Planning the walk: involve young people
from the start in decision-making regarding
the walk. Empower young people to design
the route, write the score, determine how,
when and for how long it should run, etc.
Rather than inform young people about the
purpose of the walk, start by constructing and
agreeing upon shared goals between adults
and young people (Save the Children 2005).
• The walk briefing: ensure that the
participants understand how their ideas
and feedback will be used, analysed, stored
and “discarded”. While encouraging young
people to dream big, it is important that they
understand “how much impact they can have
on decision-making and who will make the
final decision” (Save the Children 2005, p.5).
• Follow-up: empower participants to report
and share their perceptions, experiences
and ideas with decision-makers and
other groups. Give participants timely
feedback on how their views and ideas
have impacted upon the decision-making/
design process (Save the Children 2005).
• Reversing the roles: empower and equip
young people to write a scored walk for
adult decision-makers and planners. One
aim could be for adults to “walk a mile in
young people’s shoes” – to build critical
awareness of the everyday lived experiences
of marginalised young people, which, in turn,
could inform the decision-making process.
• Maximising the sensory experience through
use of audio-visual technology: rather
than giving young participants a workbook/
journal, provide audio-visual scores (self-
guided mp3 scores could be downloadable
from a council website, together with an
online forum for young people to upload
their images, experiences and ideas).5
Conclusion
Conventional participatory activities often
involve the canvassing of a diverse range of
opinions, views and priorities for a site, as
expressed by different “user groups”. This can
easily reduce the participatory creative process
to the gathering and analysis of “data” through
questionnaires and survey-based activities.
Some popular tools now use sophisticated
software to translate the complex responses
given by a large number of participants
into quantifiable diagrams (Commission for
Architecture and the Built Environment 2007).
Faced with large groups and limited resources,
these methods have logistical merit. However,
as an alternative or complementary approach,
this article has explored the usefulness of the
city walk method for youth participation in
various urban design and youth work practice
settings. Despite the limited scope and
hypothetical nature of this case study, student
responses support further experimentation
with Halprin’s experiential walk method as a
way to meaningfully involve young people in
co-designing public spaces, such as urban parks.
However, reflexive critical analysis of this case
study has revealed modifications are needed
to ensure that contemporary scored walks
are “youth led”. Most significantly, it has been
recommended that practitioners critically
think through how to involve young people
in the preliminary decision-making related
to the design and facilitation of participatory
walks. Only when young people are seen as
capable, active citizens (Malone & Hartung
2010) can adults begin to “let go” of planning
and controlling participatory activities. Adult

Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013

professionals and participatory researchers
will never be able to fully “bracket” their own
(or institutional) pet agendas and preconceived
ideas for change. While Drinkwater (2003,
p.64) suggests facilitators will inevitably
influence community participation processes
(the “value-free”, “detached facilitator” cannot
exist), they are nevertheless encouraged to
relinquish ownership of initiatives, such as
scored walks, for park design. Adults are then
free to enable young people to ‘score’ and
conduct transformative walks for themselves,
for other young people and, hopefully, for adult
decision-makers and planners. It is conceivable
that, moving towards youth-led participation,
young people could write scores and facilitate
walks for and with adult decision-makers
(such as elected members). This may establish
a common ground of experience in which
young people can seriously participate in the
co-creation of their shared public spaces.
Acknowledgements
The walkshop took place on country belonging
to the Kaurna people. The author is grateful
for the enthusiasm and insightful reflections
provided by the students who took part in
Tabor Adelaide’s youth participation course in
2012. The author also thanks Helen Smith for
generously providing background information
regarding the consultation process for the
redevelopment of Orphanage Park. Finally,
the author wishes to thank two reviewers
of an early version of this paper whose
suggestions greatly improved this paper.
Notes
1. For example, see Australian
Government (2011).
2. Jane Jacobs (1961) believed that people
do not use open space “just because it
is there and because city planners or
Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013
designers wish they would” (p.90). Rather,
she said that urban spaces are places for
all “only because, and only when, they
are created by everybody” (p.238).
3. Another example: for the “environmental”
activity, students walked through the dry
creek bed from one end of the park to the
other, noting how they felt about the way
the environment is currently managed,
and sketching what they wanted to see
in the future in terms of environmental
management and rehabilitation.
4. For this point the author is indebted to a
reviewer of an early version of this paper.
5. Inspiration can be gleaned from
an award-winning participatory
art event called En Route (see: One
Step At A Time Like This 2009).
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Author
Josh Spier is a part-time lecturer within the
School of Social Sciences at Tabor Adelaide. He
teaches Youth Participation and Community
Development, co-teaches introductory
sociology, and is also a PhD candidate in the
School of Education at Flinders University.

Youth Studies Australia . Volume 32 Number 3 2013