Growing Up in Cities of the Twenty-First Century A Global Study with Young People and Their Urban Environment

Beau B. Beza was a 1990s Growing Up In Cities (GUIC) team member and is now co-project lead and co‐ordinator with the GUIC III research project. Beau is Associate Professor, Planning (School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University) and registered landscape architect in Australia. He has published widely regarding the social production, perception and use of urban / natural space(s) in both applied and theoretical contexts. An academic and studio teaching passion of his is collaborating with undergraduate and postgraduate university students that supports their questioning of established Anglo-Western perspectives / approaches to realising built environments, which is then used as a mechanism to broaden their design thinking. Underpinning this ‘philosophy’ are cross-discipline and cultural collaborations with design practitioners and communities that lead to the co-production of projects. He provides his Doctor of Philosophy students with a learning support structure that facilitates a two-way transfer of knowledge and scholarship development, enabling successful research outputs and, importantly, study completions on topics such as landscape architecture, heritage and conservation, brownfield redevelopment and young people’s perceptions of the urban environment.

Angela Kreutz is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work lies at the intersection of architecture, anthropology, and environmental psychology, focusing on how children and young people experience and help shape their environments. She is particularly interested in cross-cultural and participatory approaches that inform human-centred architectural and urban design. Through collaborative work with young people, communities, and interdisciplinary teams, she explores how spatial design can enhance wellbeing, identity, and belonging. Angela’s research has engaged children from diverse contexts, including Indigenous and rapidly changing urban communities worldwide. She is the author of Children and the Environment in an Australian Indigenous Community: A Psychological Approach (Routledge, 2015) and has contributed widely to international scholarship on child–environment relations, cultural diversity, and participatory design. Her work continues to shape global understandings of how environments support children’s health and agency. Angela is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Built Environment at Deakin University.