Vacant homes, overcrowdedness, and trash: How youth perceive their communities

The WAVE study includes young people in disadvantaged communities from Baltimore, Johannesburg, Shanghai, New Delhi, and Ibadan. Researchers conducted key informant and in-depth interviews, community mapping, focus groups, and a photovoice, where adolescents took photos of ‘health' in their communities. The analysis is based on codes and themes across sites that relate to the built environment. Youth described the built environment as one of the most influential factors influencing their health. There were similarities along several dimensions. In all sites, respondents spoke about the cleanliness of their environment and safety. All of the young people pointed to spaces where they felt safe or not based on the structures, zoning, or production that occurred in those localities. In all sites, respondents referred to their homes as one of the places they felt safe; but in Baltimore and Johannesburg, there were some youth who felt that there were no safe places. The youth also pointed out particularly challenging aspects of the built environment that differed across sites. Baltimore respondents commented on the abundance of vacant buildings. Johannesburg respondents spoke of overcrowding. In Delhi, respondents differentiated between gendered safe spaces. In Shanghai, respondents complained about pollution and industrial waste; while in Ibadan young people spoke about problems of basic service delivery. Most literature on adolescents and the built environment focuses on how physical activity is restrict by the environment; this paper adds to the literature by showing how many different ways the environment affects adolescent health and the differences around the world.