Everyday resilience and youth city-making in post-pandemic Indonesia: a participatory visual study in Kediri

City resilience is often framed in policy and infrastructure terms, but how it’s experienced by young people, particularly in non-metropolitan areas, tells a different story. This article reflects on a participatory visual study with youth in Kediri, a mid-sized city in East Java, Indonesia, who used photography to document their everyday encounters with the urban environment. Rather than positioning youth as passive recipients of development, the project invited them to narrate what resilience looks like on their own terms: uneven pavements, quiet prayer corners, dimly lit streets, and improvised gig work. Drawing from photovoice methodology and influenced by Freirean dialogue, the research revealed small but meaningful ways in which young people cope, adapt, and occasionally resist. Some found resilience in routines: school, prayer, online work, while others, like those in the PASAK Khadiri (Kediri’s heritage and culture preservation movement), took to the streets, pushing back against the erasure of historical spaces. These narratives suggest that youth agency is messy, non-linear, and embedded in everyday life. The findings complicate typical framings of resilience by highlighting its intersection with capability, memory, and place. In a city like Kediri, neither entirely urban nor rural, resilience is not always spectacular. It’s often quiet, sometimes defiant, and almost always unfinished.