Living conditions play a crucial role in determining opportunities, long-term health, wellbeing, and emotional and affective experiences. In a time when most of the world is rapidly urbanising, there is growing interest in how mental health and urban environments interact, but not enough focus is given to how mental health is situated in space and time. In many urban areas around the world, socio-economic inequality is pervasive, making living conditions extremely precarious for some social groups, including young people. Young people are impacted by uncertain economic futures, and there are still many unmet needs for mental health services. This scoping review's goal is to create an interdisciplinary, global understanding of the urban factors that influence young people's mental health on a variety of fronts. In order to create an interpretive framework based on viewpoints shared by young people, we aim to broaden the focus of urban mental health research beyond the physical characteristics of urban environments. We provide examples of how social theory ideas can be applied as a framework for integrating both the lived experiences of young people and the larger cultural and political dynamics of urban mental health.
