ABSTRACT
A decade of experiments involving the participation of nearly 700 children and young people in neighbourhood improvement in Finland, Switzerland and France indicate that young people are sharp analysts of their settings and creative producers of ideas for planning. This chapter discusses the mechanisms for inclusion and strategies to mainstream intergenerational equality in local and regional development. It aims to conduct a brief meta-analysis of a series of case studies in the participation of children and young people in local development in Finland, Switzerland and France over a decade. Since the participation of young people in planning and development is aimed at achieving change, it calls for an action-oriented design of the change process integrated with research, one which is open and emergent. The design and implementation of this kind of environmental development and research consists of a combination of critical constructivist inquiry, planning, implementation endeavours, and theory-driven evaluation.
