Youth Geographies: Young People and Public Space. An Exploratory Review of the Geographic Literature

Abstract

Geographical research is paying increasing attention to young people as actors in the use of public spaces. In this context, even though European cities have undergone significant changes due to transformations, corrosions, and privatizations, public spaces continue to be essential in their everyday geographies. These spaces provide opportunities for young people to create areas for creativity, growth, and personal development. At the same time, public spaces are also urban areas dominated by the influence of adults, who can impose the methods of use in a hegemonic way, limiting the ability of young people to act, appropriate and re-imagine these complex city spaces, characterized, in their commonly understood form, by a diversity in terms of legitimacy of use of its users, functions, duration and methods of access. The objective of this contribution – which is presented in the form of a scoping review, examining the articles published from 2000 to today in the most qualified scientific journals dealing with space studies – is to contribute to future research agendas on young people and public space, a field of research which today, in an international political framework that aspires to increasingly include new generations in the development of future societies, it is crucial to begin to systematise. In particular, the analysis aims to highlight the age groups of the participants involved by the scholars, the methods of investigation and the topics most addressed in this field of study. The picture that emerges requires critical reflection within the scientific community on the need for more explicit and critical criteria and orientations that help to more forcefully decode the complexity that investigation in this field brings with it.