Study to compare city youth issues

How young Christchurch residents facing growing inequality and mental health issues compare to other cities is to be the focus of a three-year research project.

Led by the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, the project will also assess challenges around education and employment access, comparing findings with seven other cities around the world.

Researchers will collate ‘‘day in my life’’ focus group interviews and photo diaries with people between 12-years-old and 24-yearsold and living ‘‘urban lives’’.

Christchurch residents’ challenges will be measured against Delhi, India; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Grahamstown, South Africa; London, UK; Sao Paulo, Brazil and Yokohama, Japan.

‘‘Our hope is to launch a vital conversation about young people’s prospects,’’ said professor Tim Jackson, director of the university’s Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity.

‘‘To understand those prospects is to understand the hopes for human development.‘‘

A scoping report to preface the project briefly profiled the key issues for young people in each of the cities involved in the study.

It referenced New Zealand leading the OECD for 30 years in youth suicide rates and Christchurch having the highest in the country.

The ‘‘stocktake’’ of the cities identified three shared challenges each city faced if young people were ‘‘to live well’’.

‘‘These are the challenges of growing inequality, access to meaningful education and employment, and securing youth wellbeing, particularly mental health.’’

The project, dubbed CYCLES (Children and Youth in Cities – Lifestyle Evaluations and Sustainability) would seek to determine ways to help overcome such challenges. Unique or separate issues in each of the cities would also be taken into account to create an international survey ‘‘about the urban experiences of a wider sample of young people’’.

‘‘Our ambition is to extend this work to a wider range of cities and a deeper range of issues,’’ the report read.

University of Canterbury associate professor Bronwyn Hayward said it was ‘‘exciting’’ to be involved in the project, which launched on Tuesday. It would help young people across the world achieve their potential ‘‘within the limits of a finite planet’’, she said.

‘‘CYCLES will identify and learn from best practices in these communities how to support young people to flourish.’’