Making a home in the city: how young people take part in the urban space

The aim of this chapter is to discuss spatial aspects of young people’s participation through a closer look at spatial appropriation practices. Specifically, we look at public or semi-public places in the city that young people appropriate as their homes. This means that we focus on processes that, within the home and urban studies debates, are commonly defined as domestication of public space as a specific way by which young people turn spaces into meaningful and familiar places. Looking at how young people make their ‘home’ in the urban space, is also a way to look, from a micro perspective, at the transformations occurring in the whole city, transformations oriented or ‘pushed’ by political and economic actors but also produced and reproduced everyday by citizens – in our case young people – through their daily routines and experiences of participation. In short, in this chapter, we inquire into what it means for young people to feel at home – or not at home – in the city and how they take part in city life by making ‘homes’ in public places.