Empowering Youth for Peaceful Urban Futures - From Next Generation Urban Governance to Inclusive and Safe Cities

Today, half of the world’s population is under the age of 30. Most of these young populations are concentrated in urban areas, and, as a result, local governments are grappling with the question of how best to serve their young residents amidst a range of challenges, such as resource strains, rising inequality, housing issues and the local impacts of global crises such as climate change and regional and international conflicts.

City leaders across the world are thus seeking solutions on how to engage young people as both contributors to and beneficiaries of public service delivery and broader community safety efforts. This event will provide a platform to discuss this important topic, framed around two key understandings:

1) The youth “bulge”, coupled with the rapid pace of socio-technological transformation, raises the question of next generation urban governance, or urban governing by and for the next generation. The degree to which this is utilized in cities is currently unclear, as is whether youth actors benefit from developments in digital technology and data availability to participate in urban governance processes, particularly considering the broad gaps in digital access and social media that exist in some contexts, especially for low-income communities.
2) Of key concern for cities globally is how to protect youth from violence, recognizing that they are overrepresented as both perpetrators and victims. Cities globally are therefore implementing or seeking support to implement peacebuilding initiatives with youth and more broadly elevating the positive role young people can play in shaping their neighborhoods and cities.

This event will ultimately provide a forum to a) discuss the importance of youth participation, inviting audience members to consider how next generation technologies can support this, and b) highlight examples of how youth can be engaged in particular to address urban violence. The event will feature insights from LSE Cities’ NextGenC project on the intersection of youth political participation, digital technologies and urban governance, as well as provide a platform for youth and city leaders to share practical examples of partnerships to address violence and strengthen social cohesion, with a focus on those that do not require large scale investments (and are thus easily replicable).

It will draw upon the expertise of networks such as LSE Cities, the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), UCLG Peace Prize, Strong Cities Network, and Peace in Our Cities (PiOC), contributing to a broader effort to support city leaders in promoting peace and providing efficient and equitable governance.

The event will have a hybrid, dynamic and interactive set-up, resembling a talk-show format and leveraging tools such as Mentimeter.