ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the structures that define the newly shaped city as decentered, deindustrialized, and globalized. It considers the classic street-corner literature to show how street and non-street youth differ in capacities to meet modern-day demands for autonomy and identity. The chapter presents the voices of youth as they may relate to a suburban street culture. A postindustrial, digitally attuned society has created less space for face-to-face street-corner life. Suburbia is more relevant today than in an earlier era when industrialization led large segments of the population to flee rural villages for the city. An industrial form of modernity was the basis for late 19th century sociology. Suburban street cultures provide the means for escaping the boredom and routines of a life that seems at times too regulated and too close to a straight and narrow path. Impoverished inner-city youth are as fortunate.
