Paper short abstract:

A reflection on the everyday knowledge(s) and adaptive practices of youth in dialoguing with resource insecurity and disaster risk in the urban periphery of Sao Paulo, based on a case study with 30 young people aged 12 to 18. A reflection on alternatives to urban development and improved well-being.

Paper long abstract:

Young people in cities the majority global South grow up a context of multiple crises that have a detrimental impact on their well-being. Unhealthy and unsustainable patterns of urban growth coupled with the harmful impacts of climate change produce key challenges such as insecure and unsafe access to food, water, and energy. Moreover, the intersectionality of factors such as socio-economic status, age, race, gender, and disability reinforces patterns of exclusion. To navigate these challenges, young people in situations of vulnerability have developed important everyday practices to engage with and adapt to resource scarcity and environmental risk. Using (remote) participatory research methods, we have engaged approximately 30 young people aged 12 to 18 from the urban periphery of Sao Paulo in a reflection on their everyday environments, challenges, everyday adaptive actions as well as their future visions for youth-friendly cities. By enabling a critical reflection on social change, participatory research methods can play a fundamental role in empowering young people as co-producers of knowledge in a process of getting from problems to solutions. Our research shows that that young people have developed important ways of adapting to resource scarcity through everyday adaptive actions (e.g., by saving water, local food production, and collective community support systems for recovery after flooding). Our reflection on living (well) with unsustainable urban environments furthermore raises the question of which alternatives to urban development are needed to improve (youth) well-being; and how then, improved well-being can lead to a more sustainable urban development?