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Purpose – UK urban state schools have recently experienced increased pressure to improve pupil performance levels and punitive policies appear to be one way of dealing with “problematic” young people. While some are permanently excluded for serious acts, others, who are by comparison less problematic, are unofficially “excluded” and referred to off-site educational provision (OSEP) where they receive reduced timetables and unchallenging courses. This research study set out to examine why 20 young people were “unofficially” excluded from school and their progress in OSEP.

Methodology – The study made use of ethnographic methods with 20 excluded young people in one south London borough in the UK. The research was undertaken from March 2009 to August 2009.

Findings – This chapter shows how “unofficial” exclusionary processes, to which these urban young people are exposed, have implications for their identity, self-worth and lifestyles, and makes them increasingly vulnerable to crime and victimization. The chapter makes use of labeling perspectives to understand the significance of the social reaction to deviant labels young people receive in school (Becker, 1953) and how they respond as a consequence (Lemert, 1972).

This chapter examines how young people relate to and engage with their city. Framed by a sociological approach to childhood, we assert that young people are competent social actors, living a complex relationship with their urban environment, while facing paternalism. The study draws on participatory activities including focus group discussions, neighbourhood walks, city mapping and song and video creation with 54 youth aged 9–17 years from six areas of Montréal (Canada). Our findings point to young people’s mixed experiences and views of Montréal. On the one hand, the city is experienced as unwelcoming, excluding, homogenising and stressful. Among recreational facilities, mental health services and venues to hang out, there is little that meets youth’s specific needs and aspirations. They also pointed out the inequalities across neighbourhoods, pressures to fit into uniformising models, the limitations of gender roles and a lack of support from adults. On the other hand, youth are responding to and shaping their environment by seeking belonging in the city. They question the inequalities and homogenising forces, seek meaning in places and community and value relationships and diversity. We contend that moving towards child–youth friendly cities calls for better listening to youth to enhance the type of opportunities that reflect their needs and aspirations, while providing for inclusive cities that feature alternative forms of citizenship, accessibility to local places, diversity and community.

This paper comprehensively investigates the lack of youth involvement in the intricate tapestry of urban policymaking in the Jordanian context. It attempts to present and illustrate the obstacles, challenges, hindrances and complexities facing engaging youth in urban planning in Jordan. Participants aged 18–24 were the primary focus of the investigation, as Jordan's population is predominantly youthful, with approximately 70% of the population under the age of 30.

The research methodology adopted in this study is a mixed-methods approach, which integrates both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analytical techniques to provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the research problem.

Youth involvement in Jordan's urban policymaking is limited and inconsistent. Most notably, the prevalence of adultism emerges as the predominant and most substantive impediment, exerting a considerable influence on constraining the agency of young Jordanians in shaping urban policy.

Detailed examples can be developed to offer discerning elucidations relevant to each frame of reference.

A total of 12 discernible barriers emerged from a systematic deductive thematic analysis of primary data.

This comprehensive inquiry highlights the pervasive gaps in support for youth participation in urban policymaking within the administrative framework and across Jordanian society. Subsequent quantitative analysis was employed to strengthen the external validity of the research findings, thereby enhancing the generalizability of the qualitative insights. By employing Jordan as a case study, this paper significantly contributes to the expanding corpus of scholarly work on planning processes and practices within the Global South and the Arab world.

The research aimed to identify ‘(1) current volatile solvent use practices, (2) health beliefs and perceived effects of volatile solvent use, (3) social dynamics of volatile solvent use, (4) significance of reputation, and (5) barriers to volatile solvent use intervention’ in a sample of Irish adolescents (Carroll et al, 1998, p1; Anderson & Loomis, 2003). Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 20 adolescents who reported inhaling volatile solvents, during the course of doctoral research (n=1,400) investigating substance misuse among adolescents aged 12 to 18 years in Ireland. Their average age was 13.2 years, and they used a range of substances. Solvent users were found to be most commonly congregated in small peer and sibling groups and one young male also reported using alone. These young people indicated their average age of initiation of inhalant use as 10.3 years and most did not use inhalants after the age of 13 years. This coincided with first‐time alcohol use, at an average age of 12.5 years and experimental use of cannabis in some. All reported some awareness of short‐term medical risks involved in solvent use, and most commented on negative effects, such as headaches, dizziness and vomiting. Teachers, probation and juvenile liaison officers, health promotion and drug education workers, youth workers, social workers, and parents should ‘familiarise themselves with the real world experiences of adolescent volatile solvent users’; in order to develop appropriate and timely drug education interventions (Carroll et al, 1998 p6).

Increasingly, punitive policies on ‘poblematic’ pupils are implemented in poor‐performing UK urban state schools. While some are permanently excluded and referred to local authority educational alternatives, others are unofficially ‘excluded’ and referred to other forms of off‐site educational centres, where pupils receive a significantly reduced timetable, undertake unchallenging courses and are unlikely to return to school. Based on an ethnographic research project with 20 excluded young people in one south London borough, this paper will discuss what happens to these young people after their ‘exclusion’ from school. I will suggest that this form of unofficial ‘exclusion’ has significant life implications for these young people, contributing not only to their social exclusion, but also to their increased exposure to crime and victimisation. Moreover, their life options are truncated despite the efforts that they may make otherwise.

There is a mental health crisis, particularly among young people. Despite many young people living in urban settings, reviews about the association between exposure to green or natural environments and mental health tend to focus on either children or adults. The aim of this review is to examine the scope of the global literature for this age group, to inform a systematic review on the role of exposure to green space in preventing anxiety and depression amongst young people aged 14–24 years.

Seven databases were searched for quantitative and qualitative sources published from January 2000 to June 2020. This identified 201 sources and their characteristics are described here. Gaps in the literature are also highlighted.

The number of relevant studies published per year has increased over time. Most studies are set in North America (28%) or Europe (39%). The most common study designs were observational (34%) or experimental (28%). A wide range of exposures and interventions are described.

This review included literature from predominantly high-income countries and has shown the under-representation of low-middle income countries and lack of ethnic diversity in study populations. It has also highlighted the lack of clinical measures of anxiety and depression as outcomes.

This inter-disciplinary review has contributed to the field by describing the geographic distribution of the literature and the broad range of exposures to green spaces being reported. Unlike previous scoping reviews, this review focused specifically on young people and on measures of anxiety and depression and their pre-cursers.

Newly created spaces are subject to surveillance and control due to the fact that ensuring that urban spaces are viewed as safe is one of the key priorities for regeneration agencies (Raco, 2003). One such space is the Millennium Quarter in Manchester, which comprises a number of public and private spaces, all of which are policed. This paper draws on data from interviews with various patrollers including a police officer, a private security guard and street wardens. All of these individuals expressed the view that the presence of youths was problematic. An important question here is: why are youths seen as problematic or threatening in such spaces? This question will be answered using the Millennium Quarter and its dominant users (teenagers) as an example.

The aim of the chapter is to analyze the attitudes of young city inhabitants toward the traditional urban space (city center, neighborhood) and commercial space (the mall). When they spend their time, where are the places important for their individual activity and group identities? What role is played in their lives by the urban center and what by the mall? I searched for the answers to these questions using studies carried out on teenagers from two Polish cities: Krakow and Katowice (qualitative research: expert interviews and observations; followed by questionnaires on two samples: the first comprised 838 teenagers aged 13–16 attending secondary schools from the cities). The empirical research indicates two models of the urban spaces of young city inhabitants: the first one with strong meaning of the city center (which does not correlate with the everyday practices) and the second with “absent” traditional center and relatively strong neighborhoods. The neighborhood has the biggest potential for socializing young people as the citizens; the city center and the mall are – for teenagers – rather the spaces for “consuming.” It is vital to understand the developing typical relations of young people with urban spaces to see what the “city is becoming.”

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine, then come, let's work together”. These words of Lill Watson, an indigenous activist, frame the context for this article. The purpose of this research was to examine the historical evolution of “grassroots movement leadership” model and its incarnation in the present time. A corollary purpose focused on how this model can transform urban schools by focusing on “movement” efforts of one large urban school district that espouses the values of this form of leadership. As part of a larger reform effort, the district engaged students, parents, teachers, school leaders and communities in becoming equal partners in urban school reform in an effort to co‐create schools and communities that might lead all of us toward liberation and learning.

Theory and practice come together through the lens of three researchers who operate from a similar philosophical stance for educational transformation, best described in the words of grassroots leader Ella Baker, who said, “We are the people we have been waiting for”. Qualitative research procedures (i.e. interviews, field notes and observations) were used to generate data on a “movement model” for grassroots leadership. This model is best demonstrated in various youth‐oriented initiatives (i.e. Student Exhibits, Action‐Research Projects, Algebra Project) within a local urban school district. This model, influenced by Civil Rights legend Robert Moses, has implications for educational leadership and urban school reform and simultaneously grounds our scholarship and research in liberation epistemology.

It is argued that children are often the victims of ideas, structures, and actions that come to be seen by the majority of people as wholly natural, preordained, and working for their own good, when in fact they are constructed and transmitted by powerful minority interests to protect the status quo that serves those interest. The words of Ella Baker epitomize the authors' struggles to steer away from models of hierarchal leadership in education and stay connected to the practice of excavating community wisdom through the “Movement Model”.

This study bears a substantive argument for community leadership efforts that focus on “grassroots leadership”. It further fosters new insights and propositions for future research in the form of a “Movement Leadership Model”.

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, this work examines the relationship between housing price and the probability of marriage among the young.

By exploiting land reform as an exogenous change in housing price and employing a differences-in-differences framework, this study investigates the effects of housing price on the marriage probability of young people.

This work confirms that land reform decreased young people's likelihood of marriage. This finding is robust to a series of model specifications. The effects of land reform increased over time because of rising housing unaffordability from progressively inflating housing prices. Moreover, land reform had larger effects on renters and young adults aged below 30 than homeowners and young adults aged above 30.

Overall, this study highlights the negative consequences of an overheated housing market on marriage in developing countries.

Housing prices have increased dramatically in urban China after 2002 upon the implementation of the assignment system of the use right of all kinds of profit-oriented lands by means of public bidding, auction and quotation. High housing prices indicate serious housing unaffordability, especially for young people who typically have low income and wealth. Homeownership that comes with various benefits can theoretically increase the likelihood of marriage, particularly in China where a house is often regarded as a prerequisite for marriage.