The youth are the citizens of tomorrows urban areas. Therefore the Copenhagen Municipality is increasing their focus on involving the youth in urban redevelopment. Area-based renewal programs have been implemented to mobilize young people to take an interest in their local area.
One area which has an area-based renewal program is Sundby located at Amager in Copenhagen. The area has been chosen for a renewal program due to its social and physical challenges. It is an area that consists of residential fields with a high level of young people who don’t get a secondary education after primary school. One of these residential fields is Urbanplanen located in Sundby. Urbanplanen is an area which has a high level of young residents compared to the rest of Copenhagen.
The aim of this study is to examine how groups of young people between the age 13-18 use public areas in their everyday life, and how physical, social and rhythmical conditions have an impact on their use of urban areas. To answer this question the thesis has implied at mixed methods approach. The methodological approach consists of mapping, which have shown which streets in Sundby the young people use in their everyday life. The mapping has led us to a specific park in Sundby; Englandsparken. Here we have completed a rhytmanalysis to investigate how young people use the park. The rhrytmanalysis has been the basis of the focusgroupinterviews with young people who spend their everyday life in Urbanplanen.
The study uses Henri Lefebvres theory on everyday life to investigate how they use urban spaces as a part of their daily routine. Lefebvres theory will be supplemented with Hugh Matthews, Melanie Limb and Mark Taylor whose theory focuses on how young people use the street as a third space. Owain Jones’ theory on spaces will be used to investigate how young people use disordered spaces.
The study shows that the different groups of young people use urban spaces differently in their everyday life. They all use the street as a hybrid space for the transition between childhood and adulthood where they develop their identity in groups. The group of older teenagers in the age bracket 16-18 years, use disordered places where they can be without any adult supervision. The group that consist of younger teenagers in the age bracket 13-15 years prefer spaces with a clear function, which can be categorized as arranged spaces. For the older group, the social aspect outweighs the physical aspect of the space. For the younger group, the physical aspect has a large impact on where and how they use public spaces. The rhythmical aspect has contributed to the understanding that public spaces can change from spaces to disordered spaces at different times during the day.