Urban Box Obeservatories for Youth

The young people of the European Union live today in a social, economic and technological context which is rapidly developing; young people play a key role in the economic and political scenario, especially if looking to the future. The approach that young people has to cultural and linguistic differences, to the economic and social differences and their commitment to an integration that takes into consideration and that valorizes diversity are fundamental to the future of Europe.

Furthermore, it is also vital that local stakeholders have updated data, realistic surveys and fast mode of access to information so that they can implement public actions and policies that respond to the real needs of young people.

EU should aim at creating a technologically advanced Permanent Observatory on young people and their trends, characterized by cross-cutting and inclusive features in order to ensure the widest participation in terms of countries and number of people involved. The Observatory should be constructed through the use of newly emerging technologies in order to allow financial, political and social institutions to have meaningful data, updated in real time. In addition, the project aims at developing permanent places (Urban Box) that can become centres of aggregation, in order to use the energy of young people, the strength of their ideas and projects to enable a permanent process and concrete social and economic development.

Through the use of new technologies, the project should aim at creating a permanent system for:

1. data collection, analysis, permanent monitoring and update on juvenile condition and economic, political and social guidelines in the youth/seniors universe;
   
2. creation of a GIS platform for the geographical representation of collected and analyzed data (using GIS and automating data collection);
   
3. setting up of Urban Boxes as places of dialogue and incubators of ideas and projects with high social content.
   

All this in order to obtain meaningful and immediately available information, to allow a social picture of the moment and to realize, through participatory planning, projects that may have an impact on the daily life and the universe of reference made up of youth and seniors.