With a focus on childhood and adolescence, this chapter seeks to understand how people come to act responsibly on behalf of the environment. It begins with a brief overview of selected theories related to the development of agency and the motivation to act as a framework for research reviews in three areas of young people’s experience: informal play and exploration in nature; environmental education programs in schools and in the field; and wilderness experience programs. The chapter compares research results in these areas with the goal of understanding the types of experiences that prepare young people to take action for the environment, considers how these results correspond with processes that would be predicted by developmental theory, and distills recommendations for the design of school-based programs, wilderness adventure programming, and the design of communities that facilitate free access to nature. Directions for future research are suggested.

Child-Friendly Cities were conceived as a means to integrate children's rights into city decision-making and governance. Participatory research about child-friendly cities consistently finds overarching themes across ages and regions: children desire access to services, nature, and play; freedom from physical danger; and opportunities for inclusion within the city. This article explores a two-year visioning and participatory design process that engaged approximately 225 young people, aged 4–16, in the planning and design of a prominent public space in the City of Boulder. While participatory research with children has received much attention in the academic literature, much less attention has been given to what can be achieved through sustained integration of children into municipal planning processes, particularly in the USA. This paper thus moves children's participation beyond rhetoric and into the challenging reality of planning a city with children as a valued constituent.

Photovoice, a Participatory Action Research method developed by Wang and Burris, has gained popularity as a pedagogical tool to engage youth with environmental, sustainability, and conservation issues. Influenced by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, feminist theory, and documentary photography, photovoice supports reflection about place, critical dialogue about community issues, and social change by reaching policymakers. Some scholars have modified the method and applied varying frameworks to increase relevance for diverse participants. However, adaptation also may lose the original tenets. Through a scoping review, this study examined methodological applications to science, conservation, and sustainability education and whether emerging approaches align with Wang and Burris’ original goals. The scoping review identified and analyzed four applications of photovoice: i) place as pedagogy, ii) conservation and sustainability, iii) STEM teaching; and iv) decolonizing education. Current scholarship shows promise for photovoice in environmental education applications to support participatory, diverse, and equitable educational settings, but some projects would benefit from more explicit attention to the original emancipatory intents of the method.

Socially just, intergenerational urban spaces should not only accommodate children and adolescents, but engage them as participants in the planning and design of welcoming spaces. With this goal, city agencies in Boulder, Colorado, the Boulder Valley School District, the Children, Youth and Environments Center at the University of Colorado, and a number of community organizations have been working in partnership to integrate young people’s ideas and concerns into the redesign of parks and civic areas and the identification of issues for city planning. Underlying their work is a commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and children’s rights to active citizenship from a young age. This paper describes approaches used to engage with young people and methods of participation, and reflects on lessons learned about how to most effectively involve youth from underrepresented populations and embed diverse youth voices into the culture of city planning.

This article shares outcomes from a year-long participatory planning process – one that brought together children and youth engagement, city planning, campus planning, and a university environmental design course to explore child-friendly, dense and affordable housing for a city of approximately 100,000 residents. This process of engagement asked design students to include youth participation and child-friendly cities as an integrated component of sustainable cities. The article shows varying degrees of transformation, views of children as credible participants, and values gained from the project. Many undergraduates changed their thinking about the role of young people in design processes and outcomes.