Given their origins, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are most obviously applicable to youth planning and engagement projects. A keyword search for “youth commission” on Facebook turns up more than 50 separate “groups,” ranging from a network of 588 Jordanian youth contributing to King Abdullah’s vision for the development of their country, to more typical municipal youth commissions in Columbus, Ohio, Clark County, Washington, the Yukon Territory, and everywhere in between.

The Hampton (VA) Youth Commission is one group taking advantage of the social networks already developed by its constituency. One of the oldest and most well-established youth commissions in the country, Hampton has experimented with text message chains to inform youth about events.  It also maintains a Facebook page notifying members about news like staff changes and a teen center that is opening soon, and inviting youth to take a survey. But for Hampton, it may turn out to be more useful as a way to keep in touch with existing youth commissioners than to attract new participants. With email and cell phones becoming tired communication tools for a certain set, Planner Donald Whipple describes Hampton’s new strategy: “In addition to making phone calls, texting [the Youth Commissioners], and sending emails, we could also send things to their Facebook sites and encourage them to check out what’s going on in the youth commission whenever they get online.”

On MySpace, dozens of youth groups have created pages with more self-expression but fewer technical applications. The San Francisco Youth Commission page mirrors its website, with announcements about meetings and the application process. With 177 official “friends”—paltry by MySpace standards—the page is becoming an effective place for youth to communicate and post important announcements (“hey commish – dnt 4get 2 go 2 mtg with mayor on 2sday”).

TakingITGlobal takes social networking to another level. The Toronto-based non-profit is designed to connect youth around the world to one another and to the information, resources, and opportunities they need to improve their communities locally and worldwide. According to Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics, “TakingItGlobal is one of the world’s best examples of how N-Geners are using digital technologies to transform the world around them.” The site draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each month and develops robust partnerships with the United Nations and other international corporations and NGOs. Youth have many of the same options as they do on Facebook or MySpace—they can create profiles and groups, send invitations, post events, and add creative elements like poems and stories—but they can also create real-world projects and seek help, search for local organizations to assist, and read briefs on current issues.

Social networking in planning isn’t limited just to youth, or to G-rated causes, as Calgary, Alberta discovered when its planning department received an application for the infamous Cowboys Night Club to re-open downtown. The City received more than 250 letters of opposition to the proposal and the media decried potential increases in crime and public drunkenness. At the same time, however, more than 2,400 people signed up to join the Facebook group Vote for Cowboys!, which kept members apprised of the process, allowed them to leave comments, and linked to an online petition.

In a tamer initiative, Bradford, England created a Facebook page for the new City Centre Action Area Plan (not to be confused with Bradford, Ontario’s Zombie Protection Plan). Planning Assistant Ben Marchant thought Facebook would be a “good way of reaching out to younger people, who traditionally do not take an interest in the planning process,” but he also recognizes the potential for attracting residents of all ages. One of the greatest benefits of social networking is reaching people in a short amount of time, and Bradford wanted to supplement its existing public participation opportunities with just such an option. Noting that public meetings typically require hours of a citizen’s time, Marchant says that Facebook could “give people the chance of commenting on the Action Plan in a very informal and quick way.”

Other communities are following Bradford's lead: the Southern California Regional Comprehensive Plan page advertises local Future of the Region meetings and links users to a website with more information, for example, and Pinal County, Arizona has a page for its Comprehensive Plan Update, giving members a chance to weigh in on what they’d like the County to look like in 20 years. 

Professional planning groups also have a presence in the social networking world. According to its MySpace profile, the American Planning Association is single, Capricorn, and looking for networking; its 300+ “friends” post short blurbs on related organizations and events. The APA’s Facebook group contains little more than a description of the organization and relevant links, but the group has attracted 730 members who can remain abreast of important happenings. One unaffiliated urban planning interest group on Facebook, boasting nearly 2200 members, has 31 ongoing discussions with topics from the expansive (math in urban planning) to the narrow (revitalizing Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, DC). Cyburbia, an independent website, is one of the oldest networking options for planners, hosting discussion forums and informational resources since 1994. In keeping with the times, Cyburbia added an online wiki and now has its own page on Facebook.

Tools like Facebook and MySpace aren’t a panacea for planning. Social networking frequently fails to translate into real world action; it doesn’t integrate naturally with most formal planning processes; and networks often link people who are already friends, rather than encouraging new and diverse connections. Facebook and MySpace have developed reputations for attracting different types of people, so friends often form networks on one or the other, but not both. This means that a community seeking to reach everyone would need to maintain pages on both sites—and a handful of others like Friendster and LinkedIn that are also popular.

Participation also varies widely. Despite the apparent interest in a planning issue spurred on by the Cowboys conundrum, few Facebook members attended public meetings or submitted comments through the City’s official feedback processes, and there was little dialogue between the neighbors opposing the project and those who voiced their support online. While some online groups have members numbering in the thousands, discussion forums may be dominated by a few voices and stray off topic, much as they do in public meetings. In other cases, social networking groups are not actively maintained or advertised; keeping sites up to date and active requires extensive moderation.

Still, with work, networking tools can help create more inclusive, participatory processes. Web guru David Weinberger suggests that social networking “sites will be more useful if they integrate with external solutions.” Most social networking sites allow members to post events and invite friends, so the Cowboys’ owners could have instantly alerted 2,400 people of upcoming planning board meetings. Other sites organize around commitments to action and encourage people to meet face to face. On 2people.org —a site that founder Phil Mitchell calls the “MySpace of climate action”—users join and are prompted immediately to begin taking action. Users are asked to add at least two people to the network and to link up with projects in their cities or regions. TakingITGlobal’s projects section likewise shows the power of commitment: more than 12,000 youth members in 171 countries have started 2673 distinct projects, from building a school library in South Korea to developing an e-governance system in India and promoting Fair Trade events in the United States.

Like most web technologies, social networking will continue to evolve and expand, and so will the opportunities to use it for planning and engagement. The best way to understand its potential is to experiment with real projects. If your community struggles to engage teenagers, young adults, or even the throngs of middle-aged neophytes now flocking to Facebook, consider creating an account and exploring the options. It’s fast. It’s free. And while you’re waiting for your new friends to comment on a comp plan, you can challenge me to a round of Lexulous (formerly Scrabulous).

Rebecca Sanborn Stone is a Senior Communications Associate with the Orton Family Foundation. She has been involved in youth engagement and education as an environmental educator, a high school teacher and an adjunct professor. She lives with her husband in Bethel, Vermont.