Youth in Cities: A Cross-National Perspective

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 14 No. 2 (2004) ISSN: 1546-2250 Youth in Cities: A Cross-National Perspective Tienda, Marta and Wilson, William Julius (2002). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 302 pages. $21.99. ISBN 0521005817. I would there were no age between ten and three and twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting. (William Shakespeare, The Winters Tale, Act III: Scene iii) Youth “hanging out” and the fear it evokes are not a new phenomena. Shakespeare's lament mirrors much of contemporary discourse on the idleness and deviancy of youth “out of control” in the streets. In the current “fear of crime” climate and the subsequent fragmentation of the public sphere, evidence suggests that young people are being extradited to the margins of our public spaces. LoukataitouSideris (1996) suggests the current fragmentation of the public sphere is caused by fear, suspicion, tension and conflict between social groups, and is resulting in an attempt to segregate space in terms of legitimate and illegitimate user groups. According to James, Prout and Jenks (1998) the emerging hierarchy of spatial access and restricted spatial mobility in relation to public space is a global phenomenon appearing in late modernity and is based on categories such as class, ethnicity and age. The means for segregating space in late modernity has been through the introduction of a number of regulatory technologies. These technologies are present in public space in the form of hardware such as surveillance cameras and policy such as “move-on” laws. In Australia alone anecdotal evidence suggests that a quarter of a million surveillance cameras now exist in public space (exact numbers aren't available because many are privately owned and unrecorded in any form of register). Other regulatory practices and policies aimed at 344 discouraging illegitimate use of public space by loitering youth include security guards in shopping malls, curfews, and moveon or anti-congregation legislation. Current research emerging in the late twentieth century on “young people in urban environments” has vividly documented young people being positioned as “intruders” or illegitimate users of public spaces (Chawla 2002, Malone and Hasluck 1998, Malone and Hasluck 2002, Percy-Smith 1998, Sibley 1995, Valentine 1996). According to this body of research, young people positioned as the “other” in our cities are being portrayed through media and policing campaigns as deviant and barbaric- a threat to social order (Malone and Hasluck 1998, Sibley 1995, Valentine 1996). The “public” becomes the adult world constructed for certain types of behaviors and activities. Yet rushing headlong through the life course, young people often sit uncomfortably somewhere in-between a childinnocent , pure and in need of adult covering, to being an adult- stable, autonomous and actualized into their selfhood. I was reminded of this ambiguous state of being youth very clearly some years ago when I took a group of challenging “atrisk ” young adolescents from the working-class side of town on a bus trip into the green lush streetscapes of middle suburbia. The trip was a fact-finding mission for an urban renewal project we were conducting with them. Midway through our guided tour we stopped at a park to have an “ordered” lunch break. In this particular park was a children’s adventure playground- rather a rare commodity in Australian society- and we had planned to show this to the young people as an example of a child-designed space in the city. But much to our surprise before we had even unwrapped our sandwiches, the 60-odd youth had bolted and invaded the playground. For over an hour these tough street wise kids with a whole lot of attitude were squealing with childlike delight and fervently rushing from tree house, to trampoline, to flying fox, to gokart and back again. After an hour and some time prying them from the playground equipment they brushed down their 345 oversized pants, sneaked of to the bushes for a smoke and reboarded the bus in surly silence. This state of ambiguity is very confusing for adults– who want to name and order the development of the child through adolescent to adulthood...