About us

The online Journal of Urban Youth Culture offers concerned scholars the opportunity to contribute to our awareness and understanding. Diverse young people in the broad spectrum of urban environments face a rapidly changing world, one with increasingly fewer positive alternatives for those without the skills to compete in the Information Age. The overarching goal of this Journal is to provide a place where people who care about the future these young people face can share fresh ideas and insights. Among the many questions the Journal will address are:

• How is life changing for youngsters growing up in an urban environment? What challenges and opportunities do they face? What role does youth culture play in shaping the future for them and their children?
• Why do some youngsters succeed and others fail? How can the public, private, and non-profit sectors work together to promote positive youth development? What does that mean in a contemporary urban environment?
• How can government do a better job of enlisting the power of the community in ensuring each youngster reaches his or her full potential? How can society do a better job of harnessing informal social control instead of the formal juvenile justice and criminal justice systems?
• How must the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems change to promote positive youth development? What are the incentives and disincentives and the institutional obstacles and barriers to such changes?
• What are the causes and cures of disproportionate minority confinement of youth?
• What can be done to strengthen families and community as positive forces in the lives of young people?

Boldness is the hallmark of this Journal, in both content and tone. We encourage contributions from both academic and non-traditional scholars. The urgency of the challenges that young people face are such that more must be done to promote discussion among researchers, public policymakers, and practitioners. Our goal is to harness the interactivity of the Internet as a tool in promoting and expanding this important conversation.

We also encourage young people to contribute to our Youth Gallery, so that we maintain the all-important contact with the young people we care about. As adults, we must always strive to find new ways to hear the voices of the young and to include them in decisions about their future.

Carl S. Taylor
Senior Editor