ABSTRACT
UK towns and cities, let alone the countryside. Moreover, teenagers commonly want to participate in adult activities rather than be corralled with young children in specialist environments. Public space is therefore an important arena for young people wanting to escape adult surveillance and define their own identities and ways of being. However, efforts to revitalise or ‘aestheticise’ public space as part of attempts to revive (symbolically and economically) cities . . . are increasingly resulting in the replacement of ‘public’ spaces with surrogate ‘private’ spaces such as shopping malls and festival market places. The development of these new privatised spaces of consumption, and broader processes of gentrification, are serving to homogenise and domesticate public spaces by reducing and controlling diversity in order to make these environments safe for the middle classes. . . . Among the undesirable ‘others’ being priced out, or driven out, of these commercial social, retail and leisure complexes by the private security industries (including guards and closed circuit television – CCTV – surveillance) are teenagers. . . . Such processes hide the extent to which the public realm is being privatised and commodified and reinforce the importance of the street for contemporary young people.
