Barriers to youth participation in urban space

The benefits of youth participation in organizing activities in urban spaces are substantial. Despite the evidence that there is a necessity and a value in making young people participate in the elaboration and re-appropriation of collective spaces, there are barriers and challenges that hinder the development of guaranteeing the participation of young people in a systematic way.

Identifying these barriers and challenges is a prerequisite for generating inclusive and meaningful aggregation opportunities for young people.

A number of obstacles to youth participation have been identified as:

-barriers can be systemic when they are linked to the way in which institutions and society perceive and involve young people;

- are linked to how young people perceive their role in society or the obstacles they see for a significant, now lost, of urban spaces;

- some systemic barriers can be a lack of confidence in the potential of young people and not fully understanding their interests and needs is one of the main barriers that prevent the voices of young people from being heard and from acting.

Scarce opportunities for meeting young people with different abilities.

A shared vision that separates the free time life of young people if they do not belong to the same ethnicity, culture, language, ability or disability.

The resistance of institutional actors, a prejudice that young people are not interested, the perception that the opinions and skills of young people are not well developed, not sufficiently valuable and somehow it should be subordinated to adult guidance. The lack of structures - formal en informal - for the cohesion of active informal groups. Language and culture also play an important role: generational the gaps tra adulti e giovani, make it difficult to understand young people, their needs and values ​​and pose the challenge of

identify the right communication channels and style to attract their interest.