A Place in Public. Spatial Dynamics of Youth Participation in Eight European Cities

This report aims to analyse young people's participation in connection to local urban spaces of the eight PARTISPACE cities. Analysing spatial aspects of youth participation according to a relational understanding of space first of all shifts the focus to the (co-)production of spaces of youth participation. It thus investigates both how young people influence urban spaces and how their participation in the city is influenced by urban spaces. While youth participation spaces in some instances of the PARTISPACE research process have been conceived predominantly as discursive or social, this report focuses on physical (material and touchable) spaces. However, this includes the discursive production of spaces and reflections on why some material spaces are thought of as youth (participation) spaces while others are not. This invites the question of how youth participation becomes visible, audible or is experienced with other senses in specific sites or places of the urban space. A spatial analysis of youth participation can thus extend the understanding of youth participation not only by showing the interrelation and relational configuration of various aspects of participation practices (discourses, materialities, doings) on different scales but also by pointing out the importance of spatial orderings that orient practices and relevancies, especially through boundary work that includes and excludes people, topics and forms of participation.