The period of adolescence is strongly associated with explorations of one's identity, values and surroundings. Youth organizations can offer a platform for young people to work collectively on community organizing and campaigns for social justice. Through the process of participating in social conflict and contestation, youth are often engaged in spatial conflict and contestation. The concept of the geographical imagination or critical consciousness about space makes this connection between the social and the spatial explicit. The geographical imagination includes the knowledge and meaning one ascribes to different places, along with an awareness of the social, spatial, political and economic forces that help to produce and maintain these spaces. There is little research that considers the contexts in which the geographical imagination develops in young people and how this relates to their emergent identities as political actors and activists.

Interviews, participant observation and a participatory mapping project were conducted over the course of a yearlong case study at a Harlem-based organization. The findings articulate: (1) how young people learn about the social and material aspects of their neighborhood and the world in an ‘education for liberation’ context, (2) how they apply ‘dimensions’ of this spatial lens to trace root causes of issues, analyze the current context and gather perspectives about places, (3) how they enact their geographical imagination using specific ‘modes’ of engaging the environment and (4) the ways in which the goals of social justice youth programs could be furthered by fostering the geographical imagination.

This interdisciplinary research clarifies the geographical imagination as a critical construct to analyze the role of space and place in one’s biography and as a critical capacity to experience and intervene in the built and natural environment. As young people collectively work to address uneven development, they are learning about the social and spatial relations that affect their lives and taking on new roles as political actors in their community. By extending the concept of the geographical imagination to community engagement, this work contributes to understanding and establishing conditions for young people to not only see things as they are, but how they could be.