Owens, Patsy Eubanks. "No Teens Allowed: The Exclusion of Adolescents from Public Spaces." Landscape Journal 21.1 (2002): 156-63.
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No Teens Allowed: The Exclusion of Adolescents from Public Spaces.
By: Patsy Eubanks Owens Landscape Journal 21.1 (2002): 156-63.
The article entitled "No teens allowed: the exclusion of adolescents from public spaces" is and interpretation by Patsy Eubanks Owens on the interactions and influences of the modern day adolescences and how they interact with the spaces that they chose to utilize and why. In regards to teens today Public policies,such as curfew, skateboarding, and loitering ordinances, restrict the use of public places by teenagers and are increasingly being adopted by municipalities. In addition, although landscape architects design places for use by people, a large segment of the population, adolescents, is often overlooked or intentionally excluded when places are created. Owens addresses many of the important reasons and influences of why adolescences of today go where they go, do what they do, and why their seen the way they are.
Public spaces play an important role for adolescents. Some researchers suggest that these spaces are the only places that youth can claim for themselves. Streets are extremely valuable unprogrammed spaces for adolescents because they provide a legitimate place for them to be. however some see the presence of youth in public spaces as a form of resistance to adult power and by others as a threat to public order. Owens draws from a number of different researcher that help to explain many key points in the delema of teens in public spaces. Observations like how hanging out in public spaces is not specific to teens of particular ethnicities, but is common to teenagers in general or even though the numbers of teenagers was low in proportion to the other residents of the housing developments he studied, they were the most visible because they used places at times when others were not present.
The design of spaces is also influenced by this "teen adolescence" demographic. Small things that designers can and will do to either encourage or discourage use by young people. Things like putting benches in lines rather than groups so theirs no encouragement to socialize, or vise versa. Research has been done into how teens function to better ones design like whats popular activity of the area or time, what or how do adolescence like to site, how do teens utilizes spaces during different seasons or times.
Case Study: Adolescence has become a major catalyst in design and has become a huge factor into what and how public spaces as well as private spaces are built. Because there is so much energy surrounding this highly influential demographic we centered our case study on a small experimental skate park in New York City along the Hudson River. The park is called Riverside Park and within it lies a small couple thousand square foot skate park. now what is unique about this park is that it is entirely designed and operated by the youth in the area. now take into consideration all that was discussed in Owens article and think about how these ideas, theories, and observations lay out in a space that is designed by adolescence for adolescence. Theres no guess work into what will be used or how it'll be used because the people who created it will be the ones who use it, no formulating demographics, no guess work, and a certainty that the space will be used the way it was specifically meant to be used. And because of this the park has become a huge success and still gains popularity as time goes on.
