The study was based on three major themes: the
street as a social arena; the street and social and environmental fears; and the street and
social responsibility. Concentrating upon these three themes, the findings from both the
questionnaire survey (1087 respondents aged 9 to 16 years) and the semi-structured
interviews with young people ‘hanging out’ on streets, revealed that more than a third of
the sample used local streets on a daily basis to 'hang around with friends' during
summer, of whom forty-five per cent were girls, a finding which shows that the street is not
a male-dominated terrain as the media tries to imply (Matthews, Limb and Taylor 1999).
The vast majority of the respondents (82%) claimed that they preferred being out and
about than staying in. The same study also showed that, for teenagers, places become
imbued with cultural values and meanings, affording not only a sense of difference and of
being special. The street corners, indoor shopping centres and vacant places of local
areas may be seen as places whereby teenagers can meet and create their own identities.
In their attempts to reclaim some of these everyday public spaces, teenagers leave their
own territorial markers (i.e. graffiti) as symbolic gestures of their distancing from the world
of adults. According to the researchers (Matthews, Limb and Percy-Smith 1998), young
people create their own ‘microgeographies’ within their local environment, trying to gain
spatial autonomy from adults’ control.
“Through their developing environmental transactions, young teenagers frequently
come into contact with places in ways not envisaged by adults. For example,
children's play areas became convenient places where groups could hang out during
the evening away from the adult gaze; the local shops became a social venue where
teenagers from one group could come into contact with other groups and show off
their latest clothes and hairstyles, and wait for things to happen; and alleyways and
back passages provided spaces for exciting mountain bike races. […] Because these
teenagers were developing their own and alternative patterns of land use, places
were used in ways not anticipated by adults and this led to frequent clashes”
(Matthews, Limb and Percy-Smith 1998: 195).
Unfortunately, young people’s independent mobility and spatial autonomy appears to be
decreasing alarmingly as adults’ spatial control is becoming stronger. This argument is
demonstrated in another project, funded by ESRC’s Research Programme on Children 5 –
16, which compares the survey data gathered during the study in London and Hatfield with
Mayer Hillman’s classic studies of the 1970s and 1990s (Hillman, Adams and Whitelegg
1990; Greenfield et al. 2000). The comparison between the two data revealed the
Teenagers and Public Space
Literature Review: OPENspace Research Centre, Edinburgh College of Art/Heriot Watt University 9
decrease in independent use of public space for younger teenagers with little change for
the older group. The study showed that this happens because of the increase of parental
anxiety over children’s safety in public space. The study has also found uneven patterns
of access to public space in relation to locality, gender and ethnicity, where girls and
teenagers from minority ethnic groups appeared to be more restricted in their use of public
urban space (Greenfield et al. 2000).
Besides being marginalised and excluded from adults’ public space, young people have to
confront, as well, the hostility of other teenage groups who want to control the local areas
where they ‘hang out’ (Matthews, Limb and Percy-Smith 1997; Woolley et al. 1999; Nairn,
McCormack and Liepins 2000; Percy-Smith and Matthews 2001). In their study, Matthews,
Limb and Percy-Smith (1999: 196) discovered that:
“‘hassle’ from other, often older ‘kids’ and fear of assault among the girls and fear of
attack and fear of fights among the boys, kept these teenagers to tightly defined
areas, where they felt ‘safe’ and free to do what they wanted.”
The research pointed out that the main reason why young people fear being in their local
areas while other teenage groups are present is bullying (Percy-Smith and Matthews
2001). From the sample, 46% of the respondents from the inner area and 17% of those
from the suburban area reported experiences of bullying. A further 11% of them from the
inner area and 15% from those from the suburban area had changed their environmental
behaviour by developing strategies of spatial and social avoidance as a result of bullies in
their neighbourhood.
The researchers approach neighbourhood bullying as an expression of young people’s
contesting microgeographies, drawing from McLaughlin’s (1993) and James’ (1986)
insights on how:
“…Different groups use particular places, such as the neighbourhood, to play out
identity struggles between self and others […] in terms of shared interests,
behaviours and circumstances which often give rise to multilayered
mictrogeographies co-existing in the same location” (Percy-Smith and Matthews
2001: 52-53).
Inevitably, the outcome of these struggles influences young people’s spatial behaviour.