Society is facing and will continue to face increasingly complex issues. Therefore, the need for youth participation to address these challenges has been growing. It is crucial not only to involve young adults in real-world issues but also to enhance the competencies necessary for active engagement. Specifically, geography education, with its content and methodological potential, is in a unique position that can contribute to participatory projects, although this potential is still underutilized. Therefore, this study explores the development of a learning and participation initiative at the intersection of real-life urban planning and geography education. The aim is to empower young adults to engage and participate more deeply in societal discourses such as the mobility transition while building the competencies needed for meaningful participation. This chapter examines current participation practices for enhancing participatory competencies within geography education. These findings are distilled into ten design principles for creating participatory education for sustainable development projects, accompanied by implementation suggestions. In addition, the chapter presents a research project in which the design, application, and evaluation of a participatory school project following the CIPP evaluation model are pursued to examine practical implementations of the design principles in order to develop similar learning approaches.