Street Literacy: Urban Teenagers' Strategies for Negotiating their Neighbourhood

Abstract

The exploration of young people's environmental transactions and their strategies for negotiating the urban environment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, reveals the implications of the post-industrial landscapes of gentrification and disinvestment, informal economies, and current public policy and discourses for the public spaces adolescents traverse everyday and the private spaces of their mental lives. In order to explore young people's understanding of their neighbourhood, their experiences in it, and their construction of self, I have developed the concept of 'street literacy'. Street literacy is a conceptual framework that describes the dynamic processes of experiential knowledge production and self-construction in a specified context, public urban space. This paper, theorizes how the environment, and in particular, the street, is a significant context for learning. The discussion will report on findings from work with junior high school students and their final collaborative research enterprise, the 'Streetwise Guide to the Lower East Side by Teenagers for Teenagers'. Analysis will focus on the contradictory nature of teenagers' 'Rules to the Neighbourhood' and consider the social and psychological repercussions for street literate young people, who have mastered the skills of survival.