Young Charlestonians learn to design cities

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Leaders from the Charleston Civic Design Center teach young citizens what it takes to design a city. Watch »

Grace Beahm
The Post and Courier

Olympia Holmes (from left), Allison Chang, Jason Urton, Garth Brown, Elisa Coaxum, Alex James and Tre McLean work on designing their city during City Challenge sponsored by the Charleston Civic Design Center.

It's not easy to design a city, which some of Charleston's young residents learned Friday.

Everything has to balance, said 12-year-old Charlie Black. "People are happy they have parks, but they also need jobs and a place to live."

Charlie was one of a dozen 11- to 15-year-olds who participated in the Charleston Civic Design Center's City Challenge.

Michael Maher, the center's director, said the city has been bringing in groups of young people for the day-long program for the past three years. Center leaders teach the students the basic concepts of urban design, he said. Then, they have them build model cities with Legos using the lessons they've learned.

The center's job is to engage the community in creating an urban design direction for the city, Maher said, so education is an important part of its mission.

In the City Challenge, center leaders want youth to consider "the values of good city-making and how to achieve those things," he said.

Joey Moody, 11, and Tre McLean, 14, said they learned a lot about transportation when they were designing their Lego city. It's very important and very expensive, they said.

All of the students had to include single-family houses and businesses in their cities. But they also had to include facilities for education, parks and affordable housing. And they had to connect those components with roads, trains and bike paths.

Maher said staffers taught the young people about striking the right balance between economic and social issues. They also had to balance aesthetic and social issues, he said.

Reach Diane Knich at dknich@postandcourier.com.