Youth attitudes to urban sustainability, activism and political agency

Abstract

This paper examines arguments that there is a significant attitude-action gap between reticent everyday attitudes of urban youth about sustainability and the recent evolution of youth led environmental activism. Drawing on qualitative focus group interviews and photo-elicitation exercises with young people aged 12-24 years, in Christchurch New Zealand and Dhaka Bangladesh, discussion examines how the barriers to understanding the political dimensions of everyday sustainability, and engagement in political action can be overcome. In two contrasting cities, youth leadership fuelled remarkable political activism– in Christchurch through the school strikes of 2019 and in Dhaka with the youth led urban transport protests of 2017. Discussion identifies the significant impact of peer to peer political learning in particular, which enables the scaffolding of activism skills and political insight, and supports the capability of young citizens to move beyond fear or incremental individual action often associated with environmental challenges, to imagine and enact, collective, transformative action.