This edited volume explores how global issues such as urbanisation, globalisation, digital practice, and global warming are experienced and interpreted by young people in their local contexts. Drawing on research from 13 countries and 20 study sites, this volume examines how adolescents perceive urban space and how their environments shape their daily lives. The broader research in this volume builds upon participatory action research practices and principles that aim to empower young people by giving them a voice and supporting their agency in decision making. These approaches are used to advocate for youth health and wellbeing in contemporary urban contexts across Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Germany, Lebanon, Nepal, the Netherlands, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Nigeria, the Philippines and the United States of America. The research project focuses on low-income communities undergoing rapid change, examining ways to engage minority and youth populations in informal settlements who are particularly reliant on the resources of their immediate environments and whose circumstances hold significant implications for urban policy. Providing a broad-ranging and comparative perspective on young people’s experience of urban life, this volume offers valuable insights for students, researchers, social workers and policymakers concerned with youth wellbeing, urban and community development and related fields.

Beau B. Beza was a 1990s Growing Up In Cities (GUIC) team member and is now co-project lead and co‐ordinator with the GUIC III research project. Beau is Associate Professor, Planning (School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University) and registered landscape architect in Australia. He has published widely regarding the social production, perception and use of urban / natural space(s) in both applied and theoretical contexts. An academic and studio teaching passion of his is collaborating with undergraduate and postgraduate university students that supports their questioning of established Anglo-Western perspectives / approaches to realising built environments, which is then used as a mechanism to broaden their design thinking. Underpinning this ‘philosophy’ are cross-discipline and cultural collaborations with design practitioners and communities that lead to the co-production of projects. He provides his Doctor of Philosophy students with a learning support structure that facilitates a two-way transfer of knowledge and scholarship development, enabling successful research outputs and, importantly, study completions on topics such as landscape architecture, heritage and conservation, brownfield redevelopment and young people’s perceptions of the urban environment.

Angela Kreutz is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work lies at the intersection of architecture, anthropology, and environmental psychology, focusing on how children and young people experience and help shape their environments. She is particularly interested in cross-cultural and participatory approaches that inform human-centred architectural and urban design. Through collaborative work with young people, communities, and interdisciplinary teams, she explores how spatial design can enhance wellbeing, identity, and belonging. Angela’s research has engaged children from diverse contexts, including Indigenous and rapidly changing urban communities worldwide. She is the author of Children and the Environment in an Australian Indigenous Community: A Psychological Approach (Routledge, 2015) and has contributed widely to international scholarship on child–environment relations, cultural diversity, and participatory design. Her work continues to shape global understandings of how environments support children’s health and agency. Angela is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Built Environment at Deakin University.