A Conceptual Model for Youth-Led Urban Utopias: Leveraging Critical Environmental Pedagogies for Sustainable Futures

Young people today navigate a politically complex landscape; they are consumers living in a global capitalist society and, at the same time, express climate anxiety in various ways, including through collective actions. However, traditional education often fail to provide the necessary tools to address the urgent challenges of the climate crisis. This paper presents a conceptual model grounded in utopian scholarship and education, integrating interdisciplinary perspectives to empower youth in shaping sustainable urban futures. Through participatory workshops, the model centers youth experiential knowledges, exploring how they can challenge the inequities perpetuated by neoliberal, top-down urban planning and advocate for more inclusive and equitable approaches. Drawing on literature that define utopias as both concrete and methodical, along with youth-led utopian practices, the proposed model leverages place-based and speculative pedagogies to foster prefigurative experimentation. The workshops, structured in four phases, utilize speculative design to help youth envision and enact transformative urban utopias.