Abstract
This chapter looks into young people’s hanging out in the context of urban public space. Against a reviewed background of earlier research, the phenomenon is explored by discussing the privatization of public space that is taking place in Western countries. Due to “security talk” and widely shared notions of “safety,” young people have few opportunities for independent mobility. Young people’s lives are often highly scheduled with school and organized activities, and they are pushed to spend even their limited free time at places specifically appointed for them. They are thus spatially planned “out” from the public. As a result of this development, shopping malls and other commercial spaces that are considered safe have become important scenes in the geographies of hanging out. For that reason, the chapter gives special attention to hanging out that goes on in consumption spaces and the ways in which young people negotiate the boundaries of public and private. This discussion is connected both to considering young people’s rights to the city and to evaluating urban spaces by their “tightness”/“looseness.” Finally, hanging out is approached as play with urban space. While hanging out, young people “actively do nothing” and are thus open to changes of direction and to encounters with people and places. They creatively carve out space away from the adult gaze and, though often only momentarily, make “loose spaces.” Hanging out thus adds to cultivating lively, mixed-use cities.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aitken, S. C. (2001). Geographies of young people: The morally contested spaces of identity. London: Routledge.
Ameel, L., & Tani, S. (2012). Parkour: Creating loose spaces? Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 94(1), 17–30.
Amin, A., & Thrift, N. (2002). Cities: Reimagining the urban. Cambridge: Polity.
Anthony, K. H. (1985). The shopping mall: A teenage hangout. Adolescence, 20(78), 307–312.
Bennett, A. (1999). Subcultures or neo-tribes? Rethinking the relationship between youth style and musical taste. Sociology, 33(3), 599–617.
Bennett, J. (2001). The enchantment of modern life. Attachments, crossings, and ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bickford, S. (2000). Constructing inequality: City spaces and the architecture of citizenship. Political Theory, 28(3), 355–376.
Brown, D. M. (2013). Young people, anti-social behavior and public space: The role of Community Wardens in policing the ‘ASBO generation’. Urban Studies, 50(3), 538–555.
Childress, H. (2004). Teenagers, territory and the appropriation of space. Childhood, 11(2), 195–205.
Chiu, C. (2009). Contestation and conformity: Street and park skateboarding in New York City public space. Space and Culture, 12(1), 25–42.
Crampton, J. W., & Elden, S. (Eds.). (2007). Space, knowledge and power. Foucault and geography. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Crawford, M. (1992). The world in a shopping mall. In M. Sorkin (Ed.), Variations on a theme park: The new American city and the end of public space (pp. 3–30). New York: Hill and Wang.
Davis, M. (1990). City of quartz: Excavating the future in Los Angeles. London: Verso.
Fernando, N. A. (2007). Open ended space: Urban streets in different cultural contexts. In K. A. Franck & Q. Stevens (Eds.), Loose space: Possibility and diversity in urban life (pp. 54–72). London: Routledge.
Franck, K. A., & Stevens, Q. (2007). Tying down loose space. In K. A. Franck & Q. Stevens (Eds.), Loose space: Possibility and diversity in urban life (pp. 54–72). London: Routledge.
Gearin, E., & Kahle, C. (2006). Teen and adult perceptions of urban green space Los Angeles. Children, Youth and Environments, 16(1), 25–48.
Gill, T. (2008). Space-oriented children’s policy: Creating child-friendly communities to improve children’s well-being. Children and Society, 22, 136–142.
Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public spaces. New York: Free Press.
Gray, K., & Gray, S. F. (1999). Civil rights, civil wrongs and quasi-public space. European Human Rights Law Review, 1(4), 46–102.
Harris, A. (2004). Future girl. New York: Routledge.
Horton, J. (2010). ‘The best thing ever’: How children’s popular culture matters. Social & Cultural Geography, 11(4), 378–398.
Horton, J., Kraftl, P., & Tucker, F. (2011). Spaces-in-the-making, childhoods-on-the-move. In P. Foley & S. Leverett (Eds.), Children and young people’s spaces: Developing practice (pp. 40–57). Buckingham: Open University Press.
Jackson, P. (1998). Domesticating the street: The contested spaces of the high street and the mall. In N. R. Fyfe (Ed.), Images of the street: Planning, identity and control in public space (pp. 178–191). London: Routledge.
Katz, C. (2006). Power, space, and terror: Social reproduction and the public environment. In S. Low & N. Smith (Eds.), The politics of public space (pp. 105–121). New York: Routledge.
Koskela, H. (2000). ‘The gaze without eyes’: Video-surveillance and the changing nature of urban space. Progress in Human Geography, 24(2), 243–265.
L’Aoustet, O., & Griffet, J. (2004). Sharing public space: Youth experience and socialization in Marseille’s Borely Park. Space and Culture, 7(2), 173–187.
Lee, N., & Motzkau, J. (2011). Navigating the bio-politics of childhood. Childhood, 18(1), 7–19.
Leonard, M. (2006). Teens and territory in contested spaces: Negotiating sectarian interfaces in Northern Ireland. Children’s Geographies, 4(2), 225–238.
Lieberg, M. (1995). Teenagers and public space. Communication Research, 22(6), 720–744.
Mahtani, M. (2011). David Sibley. In P. Hubbard & R. Kitchin (Eds.), Key thinkers on space and place (2nd ed., pp. 368–373). London: Sage.
Malone, K. (2002). Street life: Youth, culture and competing uses of public space. Environment and Urbanization, 14(2), 157–168.
Malone, K. (2007). The bubble-wrap generation: Children growing up in walled gardens. Environmental Education Research, 13(4), 513–527.
Matthews, H., Taylor, M., Percy-Smith, B., & Limb, M. (2000). The unacceptable Flaneur: The shopping mall as a teenage hangout. Childhood, 7(3), 279–294.
McCulloch, K., Stewart, A., & Lovegreen, N. (2006). ‘We just hang out together’: Youth cultures and social class. Journal of Youth Studies, 9(5), 539–556.
Mitchell, D. (1997). The annihilation of space by law: The root and implications of anti-homeless laws in the United States. Antipode, 29(3), 303–335.
Mitchell, D. (2003). The right to the city: Social justice and the fight for public space. New York: The Guilford Press.
Nairn, K., Panelli, R., & McCormack, J. (2003). Destabilizing dualisms: Young people’s experiences of rural and urban environments. Childhood, 10(1), 9–42.
Németh, J. (2009). Defining a public: The management of privately owned public space. Urban Studies, 46(11), 2463–2490.
Pickering, J., Kintrea, K., & Bannister, J. (2012). Invisible walls and visible youth: Territoriality among young people in British cities. Urban Studies, 49(5), 945–960.
Pyyry, N. (2015). ‘Sensing with’ photography and ‘thinking with’ photographs in research into teenage girls’ hanging out. Children’s Geographies. 13(2), 149–163.
Pyyry, N. (2014). Learning with the city via enchantment: photo-walks as creative encounters. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. doi:10.1080/01596306.2014.929841.
Rautio, P., & Winston, J. (2013). Things and children in play – Improvisation with language and matter. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. doi:10.1080/01596306.2013.830806.
Sibley, D. (1988). Survey 13: Purification of Space. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 6(4), 409–421.
Skelton, T., & Gough, K. V. (2013). Introduction: Young people’s im/mobile urban geographies. Urban Studies, 50(3), 455–466.
Sommer, R. (1974). Tight Spaces: Hard Architecture and How to Humanize It. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Sorkin, M. (Ed.). (1992). Variations on a theme park: The new American city and the end of public space. New York: Hill and Wang.
Stevens, Q. (2007). The ludic city: Exploring the potential of public spaces. London: Routledge.
Tani, S. (2014). Loosening/tightening spaces in the geographies of hanging out. Social & Cultural Geography. doi:10.1080/14649365.2014.952324.
Thomas, M. E. (2005). Girls, consumption space and the contradictions of hanging out in the city. Social & Cultural Geography, 6(4), 587–605.
Thrift, N. (2000). Afterwords. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18(2), 213–255.
Travlou, P., Owens, P., Eubanks, W., Thompson, C., & Maxwell, L. (2008). Place mapping with teenagers: Locating their territories and documenting their experiences of the public realm. Children’s Geographies, 6(3), 309–326.
Valentine, G. (2004). Public space and the culture of childhood. Aldershot: Ashgate.
van Blerk, L. (2013). New street geographies: The impact of urban governance on the mobilities of Cape Town’s street youth. Urban Studies, 50(3), 556–573.
van Lieshout, M., & Aarts, N. (2008). “Outside is where it’s at!” Youth and immigrants perspectives on public spaces. Space and Culture, 11(4), 497–513.
Vanderbeck, R. M., & Johnson, J. H., Jr. (2000). “That’s the only place where you can hang out”: Urban young people and the space of the mall. Urban Geography, 21(1), 5–25.
Voyce, M. (2006). Shopping malls in Australia: The end of public space and the rise of ‘consumerist citizenship’? Journal of Sociology, 42(3), 269–286.
Walsh, C. (2008). The Mosquito: A repellent response. Youth Justice, 8(2), 122–133.
Weller, S., & Bruegel, I. (2009). Children’s ‘place’ in the development of neighbourhood social capital. Urban Studies, 46(3), 629–643.
Woolley, H. (2006). Freedom of the city: Contemporary issues and policy influences on children and young people’s use of public open space in England. Children’s Geographies, 4(1), 45–59.
Woolley, H., & Johns, R. (2001). Skateboarding: The city as a playground. Journal of Urban Design, 6(2), 211–230.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this entry
Cite this entry
Pyyry, N., Tani, S. (2015). Young People’s Play with Urban Public Space: Geographies of Hanging Out. In: Evans, B., Horton, J., Skelton, T. (eds) Play, Recreation, Health and Well Being. Geographies of Children and Young People, vol 9. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-96-5_8-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-96-5_8-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Online ISBN: 978-981-4585-96-5
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Social SciencesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences