A group of 18 Hillsborough County high schoolers was treated to a special presentation and tour of the city May 31 as part of a Future Leaders in Planning (FLiP) summer program to introduce students to the planning profession.
Plant City was the first stop of the three-day program, which took students all across the Tampa Bay area including trips to environmental facilities, the Tampa River Walk, a boat tour near the Port of Tampa, the Channelside district and more. At the end of the program, students were even able to complete a planning project of their own based on a visit to a site in Ybor City.
FLiP is a student leadership development program designed to expose young adults to the world of planning during the summer break. Planning is something, Lynn Merenda, the program’s coordinator, said they might not otherwise be exposed to until college or even graduate school.
Planning is a growing field. According to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment of urban and regional planners is projected to grow 6% from 2014 to 2024, about as fast as the average for all occupations.”
While many of the program’s activities centered around Tampa, Merenda said Plant City offered a more diverse view of the planning profession.
“We’re showing you can be in a smaller town, even rural areas further out,” Merenda said. “Everybody has a need for planning. Everybody needs to plan for the future.”
Mark Hudson and Mara Latorre of the Plant City Planning and Zoning Division gave presentations about the importance of planning in a growing city like Plant City.
“There’s a great need to properly plan and be proactive to maintain that hometown charm as Plant City’s population nearly doubles by 2040,” Hudson said.
Wiatt Bower, a project manager with Atkins, gave presentations on planning from the private sector side of the business and East Hillsborough Historical Society Executive Director Shelby Bender took the students on a tour of Historic Downtown and Midtown during their Plant City stop, as well.
Three high school students from Plant City were part of this year’s program, the second in the program’s history. They included Daniel Lewis, 16, and Noah Hensley, 17, from Strawberry Crest High School and Sean Yagins, 16, from Plant City High School.
Lewis and Hensley said they went into the program with an idea of what planning was. Lewis became interested in planning through a documentary on urban planning he saw in school, he said. Hensley said he wanted to be an engineer, likely a civil engineer. Both were interested in exploring planning as a profession. Yagins, on the other hand, said he went into the program not knowing much about planning, but was able to be exposed to a dynamic new career option.
“(The program) really explored the way cities work and how to try to make them better,” Yagins said. “When it comes to choosing careers, I would maybe consider it because there are so many options with planning, from transportation to landscape and architecture, there are many options of what to do in this field.”
Merenda said having a presentation from someone like Latorre, a recent graduate of the University of South Florida and the city’s youngest planner, was important to show the students that a career in planning could be well within their reach.
“ It shows them that from where they’re sitting, they’re not far from being a working planner if that’s what they desire,” Merenda said. “They learn to be involved citizens. They can be involved in what their communities will become. Even if they don’t become a planner, they can learn to be active citizens in the process.”
FLiP will be offered again during summer 2018. Applications will be open to Hillsborough County high school students in early 2018. For more information on the FLiP program, Merenda can be reached at merendal@plancom.org.