Youth Leadership for Safe and Resilient Cities

This global dialogue foregrounds youth-led initiatives shaping safer, more inclusive, and resilient urban futures. As cities confront intersecting challenges of rapid urbanisation, housing insecurity, climate stress, safety concerns, and widening inequalities, these pressures are experienced most acutely by young people. Yet, despite being primary users and shapers of urban spaces, youth are often excluded from formal urban planning and governance processes. At the same time, young people across cities worldwide are already leading innovative, community-rooted responses to these challenges, demonstrating leadership, resilience, and civic commitment. This session responds to the urgent need to bridge the gap between grassroots youth action and formal decision-making spaces. The session brings together young leaders from diverse cities and regions to share grounded, lived experiences of designing and implementing action projects that respond directly to local urban challenges. Through stories of action—from improving perceptions of safety and inclusion in public spaces to strengthening community networks and civic participation—the dialogue positions young people as knowledge holders and change agents. By centring lived experience, the session will highlight how youth leadership contributes to practical, people-centred urban transformation. The discussion will explore how youth-led initiatives strengthen civic participation, build social cohesion, and foster trust between communities and institutions. It will emphasise the importance of moving towards sustained, meaningful involvement of young people in urban governance, planning, and decision-making processes. By connecting young leaders across geographies, the session also creates space for cross-city learning, exchange of strategies, and global solidarity among youth working to transform their cities from the ground up. This Voices from the Cities session will be both a platform for recognition and a call to action. It underscores the critical role of youth leadership in building safe, resilient, and inclusive cities and communities and calls on policymakers, urban practitioners, and institutions to invest in and partner with young people as co-creators of urban futures.