“Visioning Eco-Connectivity with Youth in the Rio Grande Valley” will at once make scholarly contributions and provide needed actionable insights to decision-makers while also modeling a method of community-led planning and design that prioritizes the needs of a group negatively impacted by a car-centric transit system: youth.
Maggie Hansen
Miriam Solis
University of Texas at Austin
School of Architecture
Cyclists enjoy the bike trail at Estrero Grande State Park, one regional precedent for our work. © Maggie Hansen.
Jury
Gia Biagi
Julia Day
Iker Gil (Chair)
Kit Krankel McCullough
Jeffrey Sriver
We are inspired by the SOM Foundation Research Prize’s history of supporting innovative interdisciplinary work and honored to develop our project through this opportunity. The award helps to acknowledge the importance of youth voice in shaping future connectivity investment in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere.
Maggie Hansen and Miriam Solis
Pedestrians, cyclists, and bus riders in many unincorporated and formerly unincorporated communities often face an uncomfortable journey of discontinuous sidewalks and paths, a lack of shade and shelter from the heat, and limited public transportation options. In Pharr, TX, a small city on the US-Mexico border, these conditions limit mobility for those without cars and inhibit the use of public park spaces.
Since 2022, our team has worked with youth in South Pharr. Through photovoice and focus groups, youth have identified environmental concerns, and they noted limited accessibility and mobility as high priorities for action. Using participatory design and collaborative pedagogical methods, our project will develop a design vision to inform green corridor connectivity in South Pharr, amplifying the voices of youth co-researchers to inform public space policy and planning.
The project engages two types of research questions: what are young people’s visions for eco-connectivity in south Pharr, Texas? And, how can designers, planners, and university-based researchers effectively engage and amplify community voice in accessibility and mobility research in Pharr? Our research will at once make scholarly contributions and provide needed actionable insights to decision-makers, including the identification of critical sites for green corridor investment to most effectively connect communities to amenities, while also modeling a method of community-led planning and design that prioritizes the needs of a group negatively impacted by a car-centric transit system: youth. Our work will culminate in a public exhibition of the design proposal at the local library with an opening co-led with youth speakers.
Regional hike and bike trails prioritize recreation and tourist experiences. © Maggie Hansen.
Resident advocacy informed the creation of this footbridge to Jones Box Park, connecting the local neighborhood to the only public park in the area. © Maggie Hansen.
I found the “Visioning Eco-Connectivity with Youth in the Rio Grande Valley” exciting in its approach to bridging process and product. Often times in research or practice we encounter robust processes for inclusive engagement only to find that these processes may not lead to clearly actionable decision-making. This research is focused on actionable results that grow from inclusive engagement, and I look forward to seeing how this process and its results may find success in this context as well as potential replication in other infrastructure decision-making contexts.
Jeffrey Sriver, 2025 Reaserch Prize Juror
Our youth workshops are developed in partnership with ARISE Adelante, a community-based organization. © Rodrigo Leal.
We use art-based engagement and participatory planning to gather input from local youth about their environmental priorities. © Rodrigo Leal.
Maggie Hansen
University of Texas at Austin
School of Architecture
Miriam Solis
University of Texas at Austin
School of Architecture
is an assistant professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Her work is concerned with how social practice methods in landscape architecture can amplify community voice to shape the future of their local environments. Her design experience includes professional practice and community-based design. As a designer at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, she contributed to design of award-winning projects at a range of scales. As director of Tulane’s Small Center for Collaborative Design, she co-developed a youth engagement initiative, piloted public programming, and fostered relationships across nonprofit, municipal, and grassroots groups. She is co-author of SMALLx20: Twenty Years of Community Design in New Orleans, which reflects on the Center’s university-based design process and its impacts. Professor Hansen’s research, teaching, and creative work draw influence from theater, gardening, participatory art, and activist methods to reimagine the boundaries of design as a relational practice. She is the recipient of the 2021–22 School of Architecture Award for Outstanding Teaching (Studio). Her students’ design work has been recognized for design excellence through awards from the American Society of Landscape Architecture at the state and national levels.
is an associate professor of Community and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Her research and teaching focus on the intersection of economic and environmental justice. She often uses community-based participatory research methods through partnerships with nonprofit organizations and local government agencies. Solis’s work has been funded by several entities, including the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. For her research on environmental career pathways for youth, she was awarded an Early Career Fellowship by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and a UT Austin Humanities Institute Fellowship. Solis teaches graduate student practicums that give students applied environmental planning experiences. These practicums have received multiple recognitions, including the American Planning Association-Texas Award for Advancing Diversity and Social Justice. Solis has also supported the development of interdisciplinary research as a leadership team member of UT Austin’s Planet Texas 2050, a campus-wide grand challenge research initiative, and as a Board Member of the Center for American Architecture and Design.
