This article reports on a study where we used a novel method to work with university students at a media technology and design programme to innovate on questions related to futuring in an educational context. Participating students used creative methods, paper crafting and design methods to “hack” the university campus in a post-COVID-19 scenario. This study situates hackathon as a design method that can be used to foster problem-solving and critical thinking skills in the context of current challenges. The students were asked to identify possible challenges in a post-COVID-19 return on campus and consider solutions to these challenges. They were tasked to shape their solutions in the form of a “sustainable artefact” meant to facilitate a smoother, safer, and welcoming return to campus life. In this study we reflect on how they engaged critically with the campus green and built infrastructure and how have they considered changes that would make their return to campus life a positive experience. Through the analysis of students’ assignments, we demonstrate how this method allowed for space in finding one’s own voice, how the design material supported students’ work on future design, and how aspects of future design are helping students finding a way of acting upon current calls to re-work our cities.

The discourse on environmental challenges has evolved significantly in recent years, with climate change emerging as a central global concern. This transformation has been heavily influenced by the last wave of youth-led social movements, notably the Fridays for Future movement, who have mobilized young people at a global scale contributing at a shift in public discourse on the topic of climate action. However, despite the impact of the newly emerged youth-led movements it is still rather unclear if and where has youth gained recognition as a group with special interests within environmental policy and governance. In this study we report on a research were we investigated the positioning of youth in contemporary environmental governance, and propose a theoretical perspective to understand how the subject category of “youth” is constructed in public discourse and its implications for political recognition. We study the progressive emergence of Greta Thunberg as a voice for a generation of youth climate activists and undertake a document analysis of selected material generated in relation to selected international political events. By addressing questions of recognition, discourse structure, and legitimacy, this research aims to shed light on the nuanced dynamics shaping the role of youth in environmental policy and governance.

Social movements are known to be a driving force of change processes. Scholars long had an interest in how social movements form, develop and fade out, and how such activism is shaping public discourse and policy change at different levels. Also, there has been growing interest in studying what motivates people to engage in activism and what they get activated about. Of special interest is the last wave of mothering activism – understood to be activism undertaken by mothers who mobilise and become active in groups and movements made of other mothers seeking change in the context of environmental equity and climate justice (Sengupta, 2022). Overall, mothering activism emphasizes the interconnectedness of personal and social change, the importance of addressing the needs and experiences of families and communities, and it puts forward care as a fundamental pillar and cornerstone for a better society.The latter is of a special interest to research that seeks to advance understanding of how an ethics of care could inform more contemporary governance models. Thus,we are interested to learn more about how mothering activism might be challenging models and ideas of care,and how it might be contributing at pushing and redefining care in the context of inter- and intra- generational equity. To the best of our knowledge no study of this specific aspect is currently available. With the ambition to fill this gap we undertook an inventory of mothering activism at a global scale. In this report we introduce the database developed in that process and summarise some first trends we observed emerging from that preliminary investigation.

Over recent years youth has emerged as an influential voice on the topic of climate change, raising the alarm about climate change-related risks and calling for policy action. Youth have been active and mobilising across squares and streets from where they called upon those in power to act on their duties to protect citizens from environmental harm and to secure a sustainable future. In addition to street protest, youth of different ages, including children, have been turning to courts to sue national governments for non compliance with national and/or international law, or conventions. Youth-led litigation appears to be emerging as a significant tool for promoting the representation and inclusion of young people’s voices in contemporary decision-making processes. In this report, we present the outcomes of a project activity where we sought to map and compile informationon litigation cases. The result of this activity is a descriptive database summarizing the status of youth-led litigation cases as of April 2023. In this document,we provide a summary of that information and highlight a few observed trends, which can serve as a resource for those interested in studying youth-led mobilization and its governance outcomes for a more sustainable future.

This datafile contains information about movements at a global scale, that were identified as being composed mainly by mothers, fathers and others who have close connections with youth and children, on behalf of whom they seek and demand change.

The data summarized in this file is about groups, movements and organizations made up in large extent of mothers who in that role engage in activism and related activities in the public sphere.

In spatial planning of urban areas, there is a need for new methods for meaningful inclusion of less represented voices as those of young people. This study focuses on how participatory design, design fiction and sound design can be combined to engage youth in urban planning processes. This is investigated by developing and testing a method called participatory sound fiction. The method was tested with a group of young residents in a suburban area in Sweden. Sound fictions of the suburb in 2170 were created and discussed among the youth participants. The results show that through discussions and speculations about the future, important insights were revealed about the youths’ reality, which can be of value in spatial planning processes as well as in understandings of how the youth experiences their living area. Furthermore, the study found that sound can broaden youths’ perspective on their immediate environment, that participatory sound fiction has the potential to engage youths, and that youths prefer to discuss the present to feel that their voices are being heard.

This article reports on a study examining the pathway to and practices for inclusive participatory planning in Sweden. Recently, the Swedish government has transposed the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child into national law, making it a requirement for Swedish planners to involve children and youth in participatory spatial planning processes. The challenges planners face when needing to open up planning and engage children and youth in more structured ways, have not been discussed very much just yet. This study uses Sweden-centered empirical literature together with interviews with a selected group of respondents to contribute at that debate.

Intergenerational justice (IGJ) has long been utilized in academic contexts such as philosophy and political theory. However, IGJ has increasingly become politicized. That is, it has been translated into more tangible ideas and discourses for public scrutiny, contestation, and action. This politicization is strongly represented by youth activism, which has utilized the concept to demand urgent political action and to defend the right to be included and represented in decision-making processes, particularly regarding climate change-related issues. The central topic of discussion in this perspective article is the strategic identification of youth inclusion with IGJ, and specifically the risks involved in accepting this identification. In this article we focus on urban environmental planning and argue that it is important to separate the practice of youth inclusion and the concept of IGJ to address these concerns and explore alternative strategies for incorporating IGJ in urban environmental planning. We then proceed to explore potential urban environmental planning approaches that are more intergenerationally just and conclude by critically reflecting on how the current political economy enables or hinders a more intergenerationally just approach to urban environmental planning.

The youth movement “Fridays for Future” has spurred new interest from the research community aboutthe way in which young people engage in politics and governance of social and physical environment.The recent wave of youth activism originated from school strikes concerning the failure of the adults totake any serious measures against climate change. Over the past two years, there is a growing researchinterest to study how youth articulate their concerns about the present and the future, and how adults payattention to these, and act on these demands in practical terms e.g., if, and how these translate into currentsocial and political affairs. Youth research trending in the last decades has investigated why youth politicalorganizations fail to attract young people. Researchers have investigated the ways in which young peopleengage politically e.g. via social media, rather than being loyal to traditional political parties. Much ofthis literature is research done on the young, but more recently a new strand of research has been emergingwhere researchers work with the young, in order to gain a better understanding of how social and politicalengagement can be articulated.

Cities are becoming increasingly complex as a multitude of interests, needs, values and ways of living converge. For this reason, it is important to understand this diversity and explore how it could be captured by planning and governance processes. This is commonly done in participatory spatial planning processes where well-educated, adult, and economically stable citizens would commonly provide input to the process. Younger demographic groups as children and youth are rarely involved. In 2022 Sweden, however, passed an act that states that children and youth shall be part of spatial planning when they are to be affected by given interventions. 

There are many diverse good examples of youth participation that offer valuable insights and grounding to this new turn. Yet, youth is not an easy catch. Youth is a very diverse group, and more often than not, they are critical of the status quo, and thrive most when challenged on tasks that they find interesting. Engaging youth in classical workshop sessions with experts discussing maps or models might not work at all. Here some have suggested that art, crafting, and novel technology could help to develop meaningful participatory processes. 

In the study presented here, we report on an attempt to explore a novel method. We introduce an activity where 52 students at a media and design bachelor program at a Swedish university explored the use of art and design methods to ‘hack’ their campus in a post-Covid-19 scenario. The students were asked to work with the design materials – paper and cardboard – to give shape to alternative ideas about how to hack the campus environment. They were asked to develop a “sustainable artefact” representing a solution to the challenge of returning after the pandemic. They were asked to critically look at the current infrastructure and think about what they would like to change to make it a more sustainable place. 

The data set for this study consists of 52 assignments including tangible material representations of the work in the form of images of i) the resulting designed artifact  (details, work-in-progress, final prototype), ii) of montage images of the designed artifact contextualized and placed into the campus environment, as well as iii) written reflections about the task at hand. The assignments were analyzed using a thematic content analysis and analysis of the sustainable artifacts. 

The designed artifacts were created from a range of different ideas and observations. Some were made with the purpose to reduce stress, others to promote mental and physical health, or to boots social gatherings and togetherness. The typology of these spans from artifacts that are inspired by furniture that promotes meetings and social interaction, collective gardening areas, bird nests, litter containers, green houses, training equipment, tools to provide feedback, interactive screens and power stations both for bikes and phones.