Student Planning Workshop Samples

This spring/summer we are visiting local schools to find out what our County’s young people like about living here and how we can make it even better.

At the schools, we are teaching students about municipal government and community planning. Students get to act like planners and come up with some guiding principles and a long-term concept for a community or part of a community.

For this assignment, the students worked in groups of three to five people. They were asked to come up with a name for their fictional community that represented what they love about their own community or the values they want to promote with their design.

The students were then asked to choose a Reeve who would present the groups ideas.

Next, students came up with ten goals for their fictional community. The goals are meant to guide the design of their community by highlighting what they want to achieve for their residents. After coming up with their ten goals, the students were asked to design their fictional communities. A worksheet was provided that had a map of a fictional landscape containing typical features that you see throughout the County: a highway, a railway, a forested area, a lake, and a stream.

The students were asked to consider the size of the area, its diversity (e.g. rural agricultural areas to urban hamlets) and to consider the needs of all residents across these areas.

This student work will be used along with input from other consultation activities such as the Community Workshops as part of the County of Grande Prairie’s Municipal Development Plan update. The students’ goals will be used as a source for ideas for our own goals and/or goal topics for the review. The design ideas that the students create will also provide ideas for updated or new MDP policies. Even some of the student drawings may also be used to illustrate concepts in the updated plan.

To see a sample of the students' work, click on Student Planning Workshop Samples under Documents.