 Welcome, once again, let's talk about urban planning. Today we explore a topic that often goes unnoticed in urban planning, which is the rule of young people in shaping today's smart cities. And we have the pleasure of welcoming Simeon Tabunaev from the Birmingham City University. So he will tell, but together we will talk about young people's perceptions, values. So the key considerations for planners about this, we focus this conversation on a question. How can we shape the future of our cities with the voices of the next generation? So let's jump into it. Simeon, welcome. Hi, welcome then. Thanks for having me on the podcast. It's fantastic. It's a very good question. I mean, I didn't have the framing, but that's a very good question. I think very personal question. And it's really nice that you opened it up beyond just smart cities, but also just future cities as a whole, because I think that's quite a key distinction as well. Yeah, do you have any questions for me, or do you want me to just go into background of the paper? Yeah, so I'm... I wanted to ask you, and correct me if I'm wrong, to give you, to start this conversation. So the main message of your article is the importance of engaging with young people in shaping future cities, smart city initiatives. Can you elaborate on that about the importance of this research? Yes, so smart cities people might have been familiar with for quite a while, since 2010s. It became a visionary and idea about the future city that took a lot of root, specifically with politicians, and specifically with decision makers and budget holders. And there was a lot of pushback from social sciences and urban planning where some of those visions were very technocratic, very much rooted in efficiency, rooted in computer science. There was a shift towards human-centric visions. But in that shift, that sort of multiplicity of voices of what does it mean to have a human-centric vision just kind of go lost, I think. And from my perspective, my interest was, well, who has the least amount of power in the decision-making process? When I set out on this research, I was really looking at citizen's power and citizen power relationship in the smart city context. And actually, when you start thinking children and teenagers are quite often the least consulted, don't have enough financial power, don't have enough political power, they don't have a lot of the levers that maybe other groups of society could utilize in sort of getting their voice heard. So for me, that was really interesting. And I was thinking if I'm going to test smart cities as a vision for our future, youth is the bed that is really, really key to engage. And probably in my view is if you're actually doing a proper future city vision, that's a good test to see if you're actually really engaging everybody because the ones without power engaged. And yeah, that makes the most sense. Of course, yeah. I would like to explore a little bit is what just said. This question is two-fold now. I would like to go deeper into the relevance of the topic and understand specifically so what was missing before and who are in your article, who are these young people? So who was the focus of your research specifically? So as I was saying, there was a lot of research which emerged around how do we actually construct smart city visions with people? So in collaboration and co-creation models. But when you talk about people, so that's where the kind of the research gap was. It was about engaging people, but not which people and also how. So for me, teenagers became a demographic which I've worked with in the past. I've been an educator in secondary schools and so on. And for me, that was a demographic which is really interesting to think about. Okay, if we're talking about people-centered smart cities, we should be really be thinking as well who were the people. So for me, that 50 to 19 year old group of young people who were just about getting their citizen rights and voting rights and becoming workers and contributors to the economy and how are we actually engaging them in the creation of those visions? So that was very important. And I think that was the gap in the research and it's still quite a big gap I think when we talk about creating future visions is how do you actually create an intersectional and intergenerational body of collaborators to actually create that. So it's not just technocratic decisions there is space for that but when co-creation is considered it needs to be intersectional. Okay, so let's jump into the findings. What can you tell us about that? Well, I mean, one thing which I always find quite surprising is when you actually talk to teenagers so I talked to 121 teenagers across four contexts. So Manchester and Birmingham in the UK and then Valencian in Spain and Sophie in Bulgaria. So there was a bit of a European context from three different nations. Everybody talks about how young people were very digitally savvy. Actually the perception of youth was quite negative about that. They didn't feel as confident. So it's really interesting that there was a key reflection about them being users of digital technology and then actually creators. So what does that mean to the smart cities if you have a population that doesn't feel confident in using some of the smart tools? There was critical engagement missing in the urban realm. People weren't entirely sure about how to engage, what urban technologies are. But there were a lot of similarities, a lot of priorities such as health, safety, education, which are all kind of missing from a lot of smart city models. What top priority for that generation? Also sustainability and post-antropocentric models. So how do we engage different parts of animals and falcon and so on in the way that we plan the city? So it was really interesting to see how many new nuances there were and how teenagers were really able to understand that there is a shift in the way that we plan our cities and how that shift is actually being controlled, how that shift is being channeled in funding and really kind of able to advise on that. I think that was quite surprising for me that there was a lot of nuance. A lot of people spoke about policies, especially the UK mixed communities and things like that came up and also talking about post-capitalist models as well, which was really interesting. Of course, and I would like to follow on that. I'm curious about now about the policy impacts because, well, there are teenagers as you said. And because there's a geographical diversity, as you indicated, how do you see the policy makers or other actors using research like this to inform, to shape policies related to urban planning and development of smart cities? Yeah, so I think, I mean, there is a big myth that teenagers are not hard to connect to and to kind of engage. That's not true. If you actually go and ask them, it's quite easy. So I think one of the bits is actually when you start planning a process, think about who do you actually engage, how do you actually engage them? I think also for an individual level, there could be more critical engagement with the planning of the cities. So when a city vision gets announced, do people actually engage with that? And on an educational level, the young people get thought about that. And I think for planners, I think when you actually start defining a project, that should be a demographic that you should be thinking about, okay, how do we include that? But I think there was a bigger issue as well. And we talked about the smart city domain that a lot of smart city visions don't necessarily rest with the planning and the urban planning departments. Quite often it's economists or tech departments that are actually dealing with the smart city planning, which even though it has a spatial element, doesn't necessarily kind of correlate with the planner. So I think there is another bigger question which maybe urban planning has some of those answers and it has done some of that engagement in the past, but we really need to be reaching beyond those silos and really be saying, what actually if you're gonna be doing a future city vision which is going to impact spatially, we should be talking to people that live in the area. So I think it could be a nice wake-up call and also a nice cross-section to kind of start a conversation maybe with your colleagues in a different department or so on. Yeah. Of course, it's so a bigger stage for urban planning and also teenagers as you're valuable. So their voices is more valuable than what people would expect. And based on this, I'm interested in the possibilities. So you touched upon this a bit. I'm interested in the possibilities that your research creates for future research. So in your opinion, what are now some promising avenues for further study in this field? How can, as you said, researchers and planners listening to this episode have a further understanding of youth engagement in smart city planning? So youth engagement as a whole in urban planning is on the research topic. So there is plenty there to kind of dig into. I think in the small city planning field, there is a lot to think about the digital tools that actually could be used. I think there isn't a lot of funding and a lot of research going into how do we actually create that interface between citizens and the smart city or whatever the smart city takes shape as. So there is opportunity there. There is opportunity as well to really kind of do a full blown cross national research beyond just three contexts to understand if the values are actually overlapping because in my research, the trends were very, very similar even though the context were very, very different. So there is some generational kind of alignment around what the priorities are at that age. So that would be something interesting to look at. And also after COVID, I mean, my research was impacted by COVID. So after COVID, there is a lot to discuss about how health is actually kind of risen of the priority, especially with young people. So it's really, really interesting to think a bit about, okay, all those visions that we developed about smart cities before COVID are they still serving the same population and how we're going ahead with it? And I think also on the climate side, a lot of the young people are very, very skeptical about whether smart cities are the answer because they're saying, okay, that's fine, but it's still creating new emissions is still kind of dealing with that presumption of growth. So actually that was, I was really surprised about that. But there is research there to realign some of those visions and to really think critically how we're testing them. So whenever the next crisis comes, we're not necessarily having to scratch everything, but there are better frameworks, yeah. Of course, yeah. And so with so many to explore still, research and not research, are there any additional materials that for our listeners would be interested in delving deeper into this topic? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the bits obviously is the special issue of the journal because this is part of a special issue on smart cities and there is actually, I was reading some of the other papers and there's a really, really nice rounded view of what smart city literature is at the moment. We published at Birmingham City University some podcasts called Driver of Change and one of them is on youth inclusion. So that might be something accessible for people to listen to. And similarly, there is a podcast, Green Thinking on the BBC Three, which I was contributing to, which is about youth and activism. So if people are interested on that, that would be another angle to hear about. And maybe the thought and education trust, that's another charity in the UK, which has been collating a lot of planners, architects and other people engaging with young people and sort of collating with a bit of a database. So that might be an interesting place for people to go and look and understand how they can engage young people in their own work, whether they're doing smart city planning or just urban planning more generally. Okay, that's very good. And if you are watching, for those who are watching this episode on the Let's Talk About Urban Planning websites, below you can find the recommended materials that Simeon just got us, including, of course, the thematic issues of some self-promotion, both from our board and Simeon. So all the materials are below the video of this episode. Simeon, let's wrap this episode up. What would you say is the key punchline or the main takeaway from today's conversation? So in a nutshell, what should all listeners remember and consider when it comes to involving young people in the planning of future cities? I've worked with young people for the last 12 years and obviously I've been a young person before. So one thing which I always think, and it comes very strong from the paper, is young people are not a homogenous group. Teenagers are not a homogenous group. There is as much nuance and as much variety and complexity in that group as in any other. And they are also capable of generating variety and complexity in a lot of nuanced opinions, which actually quite often are quite informed because with the knowledge economy, people are out there learning new information from anywhere. So it doesn't matter what age they are, if they really want to learn something, they go and do it. So that's the one thing I would say, just shift your perceptions of teenagers. Actually imagine them as a more complex and nuanced group and go and actually discuss some of those issues with them. That's the main takeaway. Sure, inspiring and promising. Simeon, it was a pleasure. Thank you very much. For our watchers, if you are watching us on YouTube, you can find all the resources. As I said before, all the materials have this conversation on the Let's Talk About Urban Planning website. And you can also listen to this episode, whatever you get your podcast.