Many low-income young people of color living in cities today face great adversity and the resiliency of the cities they live in is being challenged on many fronts: violence, poverty, gentrification, and homelessness as well as the threat of global climate change. The predicament is that, despite their enthusiasm and innate intelligence on the matter, the youth of today are rarely invited into the city planning process. The purpose of this paper is to introduce an equity-driven framework to guide and assess the quality of young people's engagement in city planning -- using resilience as a case study -- for cities now and in the future. The first part of this paper examines the experiences of young people involved in Youth - Plan, Learn, Act, Now! (Y-PLAN) Initiative, a civic learning and engagement initiative centered on the belief that fostering relationships between civic leaders and young people around meaningful action creates more resilient cities that work for all residents. The second part of this paper examines the importance of students' lived experience and the value of the tools of professional practice in relation to the effectiveness of their proposals for how to respond to climate change and enhance resiliency in their communities. This paper concludes that then both young people's lived experiences and adult professional practices are equally privileged, the results can be formidable. Together these efforts can lead to the development and adoption of innovative, inclusive, and equitable new approaches to city planning.