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Street life: youth,
culture and
competing uses of
public space.
SUMMARY: This paper examines city streets and public space as a domain in
which social values are asserted and contested. The definitions of spatial boundaries
and of acceptable and non-acceptable uses and users are, at the same time, expres-
sions of intolerance and difference within society. The paper focuses in particular
on the ways in which suspicion, intolerance and moral censure limit the spatial
world of young people in Australia, where various regulatory practices such as
curfews are common. The author reflects on the failures of the two main strategies
that have been used in Australia to control the presence of young people, and
concludes with some thoughts about the construction of streets and public spaces
as diverse and democratic places.
“Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets.”(1)
STREETS, AS JANE JACOBS reminds us, have always held a particular
fascination for those interested in the contested domain of cities. Streets
are the terrain of social encounters and political protest, sites of domina-
tion and resistance, places of pleasure and anxiety.(2) Many community
members are uncomfortable with difference, uncertainty, the “uncon-
forming other” in the streets of the cities. Politicians and the media play
a key role in exploiting our sensitivities in this regard, often demonizing
events and people and encouraging containment and regulation of those
at risk of hurting themselves or others. The “fear of crime” in the streets
has made the city dweller nervous of those exhibiting behaviours seen as
different from the mainstream. Because of the visibility of youth in the
streets, they are constantly under barrage of these regulatory practices.(3)
Excluded, positioned as intruders, young people’s use of streets as a space
for expressing their own culture is misunderstood by many adults. To
protect them from harm, curfews, detention and move-on laws are now
becoming commonplace in high-income cities around the globe.(4)
In this paper, I argue that along with other marginal groups, including
gay and lesbians, and indigenous people and refugees, youth have differ-
ent cultural values, understandings and needs – differences that should be
supported and valued as significant contributions to the social capital of
cities and towns. The focus of attention here will be on the visible use of
public space, particularly the street, as the site for constructing youth culture.
