Learning with the City: Establishing a Culturally Sustaining School-University-City Partnership

San José Y-PLAN connects San José State University (SJSU) faculty, undergraduate and graduate students with area youth and civic partners. This chapter describes an emerging partnership between UC Berkeley, SJSU, the City of San José, and East San José middle and high schools as they adapted the Y-PLAN model to strengthen connections between systems that regulate students’ current realities and possibilities for the future. We analyze how the Y-PLAN methodology, which has operated with great success for years in urban, progressive cities, intersects with the context of a predominantly Latinx community of the third largest city in California. Specifically, we examine (1) street design as social justice work: how the Y-PLAN methodology enabled our community of practice to gain understanding of how our quality (and inequality) of life is shaped by city planning and how we can participate to make those processes representative of community needs, (2) linguistic capital and planning: how our community of practice leveraged existing competencies and developed new linguistic capital through this process, and (3) Higher education as a connector of cities and schools: what unique affordances a regional state school can bring to serve as an integrated resource for the local community.