Engaging ‘Future Generations’ in Meaning Making through Visual Methods: An Alternative Approach to Defining City-Regions

Abstract

AbstractCity-regional planning has gained significant attention and funding in the UK, as national and local authorities decided that an intermediary level—the city-region—would be the appropriate one to drive economic development. Nonetheless, city-regions have long been criticized for their undemocratic and closed structures, enlarging the engagement barriers especially for young people. Encouraged by Wales’ innovative legislation, The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, this research tried to fill the gap in the city-regional youth engagement literature. Specifically, it asked: How could a research project stimulate a conversation with the future generations about the areas where they live, and how could it encourage meaningful reflections on previously unfamiliar concepts, such as city-regions? Two creative participatory research methods, web-mapping and Photovoice, helped explore young people’s lived experience within a newly created administrative layer—Cardiff Capital Region. Results show that despite failing to emancipate the participants’ voices and needs, the two methods employed helped to attract participants, facilitated the understanding of the city-region concept and enabled young people to reflect on their surrounding environment.