Rebels in their own job: How digging into a municipal mystery turned invited youth participation in an urban planning process into uninvited activism

Abstract

Youth participation has become an important mechanism in many aspects of society, research and democratic institutions and in urban planning specifically. Yet, the ideal of participation often collides with the realities of planning as practice. In this article, we outline the halting process of transforming an old villa owned by the municipality into a youth house, and how youth trained as co-researchers transitioned from being invited participants to becoming uninvited activists wanting to hold decision-makers accountable for the delay. The empirical findings from Oslo, Norway highlight the complex processes of ‘thick’ participation practices to strengthen local democracy building.