Youth, Identity and the City focuses on the role of young people in the City of Cape Town. How do young people understand their position, community, identity and location in relation to the city? The central concern of this research project is the involvement of young people in actively creating safer, more socially just and enabling communities.

The research hopes to gain a better understanding of the relationship between spatial inequality, exclusion and youth identity by examining how young people from two marginalised communities in Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha make sense of and relate to the broader City of Cape Town – spatially, socially and emotionally – and the difficulties they experience in accessing the city.

In this way, the project hopes to build capacity amongst young people in these two communities through leadership and practical skills, emphasising the important role they play in transforming not only their communities but the city as a whole.

The project facilitates engagement and builds cohesion across two ethnically diverse groups of young people who are in close proximity geographically yet remain very distant in terms of social interaction and cultural understanding.

The work aims to raise awareness amongst policymakers about the particular experiences and needs of young people and to lobby them to implement appropriate policies and programmes which speak to these.