Due to its complexity, size, diversity (internal or external) and meanings, it is possible to analyze the city from various points of view, which are, ultimately, referentials for the construction of knowledge about the urban space and the logic of apprehension and appropriation, used by individuals and organizations, in relation to the place they inhabit.

Cities today, as ever larger and more densely populated, are also, increasingly, isolation and exclusion contexts (Borja & Muxí, 2003), where individuals share less and less experiences, which become, therefore, less and less significant. These are contexts where individuals experience increasing difficulty in predicting directions and thus assigning meanings, where identities tend to fragment because of the absence of a "safe harbor", a reference.

In the context of the City, and especially the cities of the contemporary Western world, we can identify a number of obstacles to the construction, by the individual, a viable image of the city that he/she inhabits (Benevolo, 2006; Lynch, 2007, 2009; Ascher, 2010). The definition of an "image of the city," based on the uniqueness of what we observe and experience, is somewhat difficult. Practical limitations to the relationship of individuals and organizations with the City (Lynch, 2009), i.e., the effective range of action each given entity can have, is clearly limited. This interferes, of course, with the process of producing practical and emotional meanings, since the messages that the City passes to those who inhabit it turn out to be that it is a space defined "in spite of people" and not "because of people".

Nevertheless, cities are privileged spaces for the integral development of individuals and groups, because they are the contexts in which individuals find more, better and more diverse opportunities for acquiring knowledge and developing skills, discussing, and developing significant interactions that enable the construction of identity. If Education is a fundamental dimension of the human experience, the City is a particularly favorable context for the construction of meaning(s) for this experience, by reference to the social and communitarian frameworks.

The experience of space is a fundamental condition for the emergence of the dynamics of cooperative work, since it is this shared understanding that a certain space (the city, the street) is a shared place, full of meaning and memories, both individual and collective, that allows the emergence of an understanding of the City as a platform for ​​Education and Development.

"First we shape the cities - then they shape us" (Gehl, 2010); what is, then, the role of children and young people in this process over which they have, for the most part, little (if any) influence? In this paper, we will discuss the young people's role in the process of decision making about the management of city life, the ways in which they meet the standards of city experience building, but also the ways in which they subvert these conditions and shape, themselves, the spaces, times and the future of urban contexts.

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