Circular Visions: Binghamton and Circularity through the eyes of high school students
2023 - Ongoing
Cornell Urban Research to Action–Youth (CURTA-Y) is a program of the Just Places Lab that connects Cornell University students with high school students in the Binghamton tri-city region of New York to identify opportunities for creating a more circular and sustainable built environment in their community.
The program is dedicated to supporting the growth of high school students. It focuses on teaching high school students about circularity in the built environment. Participants learn about related educational and career opportunities, including in city and regional planning, public policy, historic preservation, building trades, architecture, and allied fields. Participation in the program builds high school students' research skills, knowledge of urban policies and planning, and communication skills across various media.
For example, using Photovoice techniques, participating high school students have gathered photographs and videos and employed interview techniques to explore what they have observed in their community. They have learned how to estimate greenhouse gas emissions associated with buildings and building materials, used community mapping to identify opportunities for building reuse, and produced creative media, such as zine-making and videography.
Are you a high school student in Binghamton interested in participating in our Fall 2025 program? We'd love to hear from you! You can contact August Guba, jg358@cornell.edu or Jenni Minner for more information. Fill out an application here
August Guba, a rising sophomore in the Urban and Regional Studies program at Cornell, currently serves as the lead researcher for the Just Places Lab and is working to extend the CURTA-Y program into Fall 2025. Notably, August was a participant in the inaugural high school cohort of the program. Dr. Jenni Minner, director of the Just Places Lab, is the primary instructor for the university-based workshop that supports and implements this program.
The program has worked with two cohorts of high school students from Binghamton and Vestal area high schools in 2023 and 2024. Cornell students enrolled in Dr. Minner's class CRP 3850/5850 Circular Cities and Research to Action led the curriculum in Fall 2024. They worked with high school co-researchers to explore planning and design-based approaches and produce media to reach policy-makers and the community. In Fall 2025, Cornell researchers will work with a third cohort of high school students.
CURTA-Y Program Updates:
In May 2025, students in CRP 3850/5850: Circular Cities and Research to Action recieved an New York Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association Award for Outstanding Student Project for their work on Circular Visions: Binghamton through the Eyes of Youth!
In May 2025, this program was featured in a CR0WD Conversation webinar. View the recording here. CR0WD Conversations are monthly lectures organized by the Circularity, Reuse, and Zero Waste Development (CR0WD) network.
In Spring 2025, a team of Cornell researchers in the Just Places Lab, including lead researcher August Guba (URS '28), Nikhil Mathew (MRP '26), Daphne Okuyama (E&S '25), and Jessi Guo (MRP '25) led the effort to plan for a third year of this program. Through strategic engagement with policymakers, educators, and community stakeholders, the team worked toward strengthening dialogues about circularity and policy change in collaboration with youth.
In fall 2023, Just Places Lab researcher Dingkun Hu, Andrew Boghossian (Circular Construction Lab), and student leaders Najeh Abduljalil, Evan Dickinson, and Sebastian Dunbar were instructors for the program. The high schools learned about how to take drone photography, estimated the embodied carbon in an existing building using tools produced by the Circular Construction Lab, and produced a zine that presents building reuse and deconstruction scenarios for the vacant Masonic Temple in Binghamton.
Download a printable and foldable PDF of the zine:
August Guba
Lead Just Places Lab Researcher; High School participant from Binghamton High School (Fall 2023)
Photograph of Najeh Abduljalil and Alisha Robbins receiving a grant award from Cornell's Einhorn Office of Engagement Initiatives.
The program originated through the efforts of Najeh Abduljalil and Alisha Robbins undergraduate researchers in the Just Places Lab in the spring of 2023. The program was launched as Research-for-Change South Central New York and later known as Cornell Undergraduate Research to Action-Youth.It is now a participatory research initiative within the Just Placs Lab.
Before establishing this program, Najeh Abduljalil worked as a lead researcher at a youth-led research-to-action program in Reno, Nevada named Research for Change NV (R4CNV). Two professors at the University of Nevada recruited 15 low-income, first-generation high school students to study and act on issues such as uneven infrastructure development in Reno’s low-income neighborhoods and the death of Reno’s unhoused people during the city’s deadly winters.