Shaping places shapes people.
Creating youth agency in placemaking.
We believe that the more that young people are able to create and shape the places around them, the greater the potential for those places to have a positive impact on them, in ways that have real consequences for their health, their agency, their psychosocial wellbeing and their capacity to drive civic and economic regeneration. By excluding the youth from shaping the places they live, it impacts our ability to shape the youth themselves.
We have developed an integrated, systemic approach to engagement and social and human value in placemaking that is innovative, evidence-based and uses empirically proven tools and processes to generate multiple simultaneous key social value and engagement outcomes to maximise the potential of placemaking.
Why youth agency in placemaking matters.
The design argument
Most adults understand little about how young people use public space or would like to use public space. There is often a good deal of civic anxiety about the ways in which young people do use the public spaces that are not designed for or by them, with their use often being framed as problematic and antisocial. This is especially the case when young people use unsupervised and informal spaces or ‘non-places’ such as doorways and stairwells.
There is also a role for understanding young people’s liminality in the design process. Liminal spaces are spaces of transition in society that enable a transformation from one spatial status to another, especially for young people whose everyday existence is understood as a liminal transitional lifestage between childhood and adulthood.
Youth agency in design is fundamental if we are to understand where the positive liminal spaces of status and belonging are for young people and how they can be encouraged and expanded, whilst being mindful that ‘we’ might not always like the results. Through design we have to understand, recognise and cocreate liminal spaces for young people that strengthen relationships; build confidence and connectedness and allow for modes of passive or active resistance. They need to support young people to ‘try out’ transitional identities and provide sometimes oppositional, but also healthy, ways of reimagining themselves. This is especially vital for those young people most disadvantaged who can find themselves ‘drowning under water’ during liminal times of transition.
Through design we have to understand, recognise and cocreate liminal spaces for young people that strengthen relationships; build confidence and connectedness and allow for modes of passive or active resistance.
The justice argument
We know that unjust practices have historically shaped the built environment, from land dispossession to discriminatory planning, to harmful material extraction, toxic production processes and wasteful construction and consumption practices.
Justice in the built environment should be community driven and centre on those made vulnerable by systemic injustices. To remedy this requires collective and inclusive processes to move toward repair and fairness and we would argue that this, both historically and currently, has to include children and young people.
Young people have not only been excluded from decision making but have also borne witness to the continued injustice of the shrinkage and limitation of their public space and play space.
Young people have not only been excluded from decision making but have also borne witness to the continued injustice of the shrinkage and limitation of their public space and play space.
Over the last 30 years, there has been a steady decline in children’s independent play (including nature play) globally, and children and young people are spending significantly less time outside and in nature than ever before. This decline has been precipitated by many factors, including: increased risk aversion and fear amongst parents, poor play opportunities for children, streets being given over to cars, and the rapid embrace of digital technology as recreation by young people.
But children fundamentally seek the same characteristics from their urban environment as everyone else: a healthy, safe and secure place to call home, safe and clean streets, access to public and green spaces, clean air, things to do, the ability to confidently get around and the freedom to see friends and feel like they belong.
Despite the wealth of evidence to suggest that the built environment is a key determinant of health for young people, there has been insufficient national leadership on this issue. Children and young people are developing rapidly; physically, emotionally and socially, and the environments around them can have a profound impact upon their educational performance, social and emotional development, future work outcomes, income and lifelong physical and mental health. However in English planning policy, and too often in practice, children and young people are not mentioned and not considered. In the main body of the National Planning Policy Framework for England, children are mentioned only once – in relation to providing housing for families. The words ‘youth’ and ‘young’ are entirely absent.
There is clear and consistent recognition that we need to champion young people’s voices but in order that we embody procedural justice, young people should have agency to understand and challenge the place-based injustices that they experience. The justice argument is clear- young people experience multiple spatial injustices and these are compounded by their lack of agency and voice in placemaking.
The psychosocial argument
Many young people grow up in a world of exclusion and othering, feelings that are amplified for those growing up in disadvantage. The impact that this can have on the way that they come to understand themselves and their place in the world around them is profound. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely than those from higher socio-economic backgrounds to feel in control of their futures and those from long-term unemployed or “never worked” households are more likely to feel people like them don’t have much of a chance in life. Providing opportunities for genuine agency in this context is vital.
The process of young people shaping places can literally shape the young people themselves. Firstly, it allows them to start to design spaces that address and genuinely respond to many of the drivers of their exclusion and poor health outcomes. It allows them to create spaces where they feel that they belong rather than be subject to lazy caricatures of antisocial behaviour and social nuisance.
But perhaps more importantly it allows them to develop a sense that they matter. Psychologists have defined mattering as the perception that we are a significant part of the world around us and as the belief that we make a difference in the lives of others. Mattering is crucial for well-being, mental health and self-esteem and can also impact productivity, motivation, and engagement in work or social activities.
Mattering is crucial for well-being, mental health and self-esteem and can also impact productivity, motivation, and engagement in work or social activities.
We believe that the more that young people are able to create and shape the places around them, the greater the potential for those places to positively impact young people, and in ways that have real consequences for their health, their agency, their psychosocial wellbeing and their capacity to drive civic and economic regeneration. When we exclude young people from shaping the places in which they live, we lose the chance to shape young people themselves; their sense of civic agency, their health and wellbeing, their social connectedness and their economic and educational prospects.
This is why involving young people in real decision making in their places is more than a design project. It’s more than using their expertise to design spaces and places that allow them to thrive, be well and connect. It can and should be an important psychosocial intervention for young people. We need to create spaces in the practices of urban design and placemaking, where young people, and particularly those experiencing disadvantage, develop their agency and an understanding that they genuinely matter.
We need to create spaces in the practices of urban design and placemaking, where young people, and particularly those experiencing disadvantage, develop their agency and an understanding that they genuinely matter.
The civic argument for custodianship.
Schools constitute one of the most significant spaces in which young people learn about and experience democracy, politics, and citizenship. But as a result, children and young people's civic political expressions largely remain contained within often ill-fitting, adult-defined and school-regulated notions of ‘acceptable’ political action. Furthermore, many of the participation opportunities offered to students mimic adult conceptions of participation, with the aim of equipping them for their future role as citizens rather than speaking to where they are in their lives now.
This sets up a divide in which adult-centred forms of participation are dominant, and the alternative ‘other’ child/youth-framed forms of politics are an inferior or soft version of participation. For many young people, this has the effect of pushing them away from the normative modes of participation in a civic society. We need to develop forms of agency and voice that pay attention to how they want to, or need to, represent themselves in communities which typically and routinely marginalise and exclude them.
We need to develop forms of agency and voice that pay attention to how they want to, or need to, represent themselves in communities which typically and routinely marginalise and exclude them.
In conclusion.
Young people today often experience feeling unseen and invisible. They are experiencing multiple spatial injustices which are compounded by their lack of agency and voice in placemaking. Spaces designed for young people are disappearing, and they often find themselves unwelcome in those designed for adults and for children. This can push them to the fringes of their communities, increasing feeling of otherness and reducing the chances they develop a sense of mattering. Their exclusion from the placemaking process means they have no power to change this, ultimately increasing the risk that these feelings spiral out of control and result in poorer mental health and educational outcomes.
This compounds young people’s inequalities and reduces opportunities to support young people to transition into agentic citizens who will be the future custodians of their environments. Changing this is vital for the wellbeing of young people, and especially so for those young people who are most disadvantaged and for whom opportunities are the hardest to access.
Many of the participation opportunities offered to students mimic adult conceptions of participation, and for many young people this has the effect of pushing them away from a civic society which seeks their consent to engage in acceptable political action rather than supporting them to represent themselves how they want to or need to in communities which typically and routinely marginalise and exclude them.
Get involved.
We believe that we need an altogether more radical set of principles to define the role of young people in placemaking. Youth agency in placemaking should become a standard part of the curriculum of the lives of young people and one where we prioritise the involvement of disadvantaged children, some of whom will have less opportunities to develop a sense of agency, belonging and mattering. By understanding youth agency in placemaking as a public health intervention which enables the co-creation of healthy spaces for young people and supports their psychosocial wellbeing, ultimately shaping them as future citizens, it has enormous potential to design out place-based injustices and shape a generation of young people and their place in the world.
We are developing a Youth Agency in Placemaking Manifesto and are seeking input from across the industry to help us define best practice and make a youth agency a standard part of any planning process. We’d love to hear from people who’ve successfully integrated youth voices into placemaking and those who have thoughts on how best to do this.
Anna Fredlander
Principal Social Value Consultant
SOCIETAL INSIGHTS TEAM
Anna has several years' experience working in social value, delivering projects for clients with various roles in the built environment industry and on projects across multiple sectors and scales. Anna has contributed to the development of industry standards including the UKGBC Social Value Delivery Guide, and the upcoming SEAM certification for assessing social impact in real estate.
Anna collaborates with clients to understand their material issues and create bespoke social impact strategies, using a combination of primary and secondary data to develop an in-depth understanding of stakeholder communities and inform the development of highly functional solutions which respond to the complex nature of communities' needs. She supports the ongoing delivery and evaluation of social impact throughout the development lifecycle to enable more resilient and adaptable places where communities thrive.
Start a conversation: AnnaFredlander@hoarelea.com
Dr Carl Walker
Head of Societal Insights SOCIETAL INSIGHTS TEAM
Dr Carl Walker is a chartered psychologist with over 25 years’ experience in academia, community engagement, community coproduction of wellbeing services and infrastructure, local authority strategic development and industry. Having arrived at Hoare Lea in 2024, Carl is working on a number of projects to bring a human and community-centric understanding to our approach. Carl is part of the Social and Human Value service alongside the Societal Insights Unit.
Carl is a community psychologist, a member of the British Psychological Society National Community Psychology Section committee and a visiting lecturer at the University of Brighton. His work involves leading action research projects on community wellbeing and coproducing community initiatives to address mental health and wellbeing needs.
He has used a range of social science methodologies to engage in collaborative, multi-stakeholder initiatives in the fields of health, mental health and wellbeing, disability, care and social infrastructure. He has published widely in the field of mental health and community activism with 9 books and over 70 peer reviewed publications .
Start a conversation: CarlWalker@hoarelea.com
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