The Xiamen Symposium on Marine Environmental Sciences (XMAS 2025)

1540 / 2024-09-27 22:57:48

Activating Youth in East Boston, MA, USA to Design Sustainable Shorelines

human-centered design,place-based education,nature-based solutions

East Boston, MA is an urban coastal city in the northeast region of the United States vulnerable to climate change. It lies at just 5.8 m above sea level with a high population density. The urban heat effect is increasing, and sea level is predicted to rise 9” by 2030 and up to 40” by the 2070s (Climate Ready Boston, 2022). The Traditional Ecological Art & Science – Designing Sustainable Shorelines (TEAS-DeSS) project uses a transdisciplinary approach towards activating community involvement in coastal resilience. By combining art, science, and local knowledge we worked with a group of high school youth (ages 14-18) to create visualizations of sustainable shorelines. Over the course of two years, we worked with the youth organizers from Neighborhood of Affordable Housing in East Boston, MA to expose them to the human-centered design cycle, place-based education, and nature-based solutions. We then brought in some architects to teach them how to express their plans on paper. Youth in East Boston have completed designs for three shoreline sites and organized a community meeting to share their plans. By starting from the perspective of those most affected by climate change, the young people in marginalized coastal communities who will have to live with the adaptation decisions that we make today, we can transform the framing of coastal resilience planning and implementation. Kids are worried, and TEAS-DeSS is an example of giving the future leaders of climate adaptation some agency to make real change that will have a positive impact on their own futures.