Moving in the City: Urban Youth Mobilities in Naples

Mobility has been a sociological topic for a long time, but it is currently acquiring new meaning. In the following article, mobility will always be referred to in the sense of movement within and between spaces. Today more than half of the world’s population lives in highly densified urban areas and this share is due to increase. More and more people are born in the city, grow there and face the discovery of different parts of the city as a crucial path to their entry into adult life. They firstly get acquainted with their neighbourhood and thereafter with new places, streets, squares and environments previously outside of their mobility range.Belonging is a dynamic emotional attachment that relates individuals to the material and social worlds that they inhabit and experience. Similarly, belonging is as much about feeling “at home” and “secure” as it is about being recognised and understood as well. Discovering the city and moving around it requires a pivotal series of subjective and collective mobility practices that allow individuals to extend the territories of their belonging. In western societies, people begin discovering the city and its variegated public places as teenagers, with their peer groups and local friends. At this age young people further establish their own identity through opinions, values, consumption styles, dress codes and leisure activities. This has a direct consequence on teenagers’ social group choices and the way in which they spend their leisure time. Spatial mobility for the adolescent and young groups examined here is to be seen not in terms of commuting, but in terms of discovering. Over the last two decades there has been developing research interest in young people and their relationships with the urban environment. Activities of young people who hang around their local neighbourhood area have been identified as being significantly different from the ones undertaken in other and unfamiliar areas of the urban texture. Inner-city areas where young people converge may allow for a much higher potential for social interaction and associated activities because of their power of attraction based on consumerism, leisure and commercial entertainment or, alternatively, because they may offer autonomous spots where youngsters gradually generate their own subcultural dynamic territorialisation.Nonetheless, through nightlife activities, socialising meeting points and distinctive choices, young people may even colonise peripheral anonymous urban zones: during their daily movements, unfamiliar city locations can be elected due to factors other than consumption, such as social interaction.Much of the literature on the issue has been focused on the economic fabric of the city and mostly in the retail decline many cities have experienced (in part due to the development of several malls out of town), without considering the key role the mobility of young people may play in shaping inner-city urban spaces. Little attention has been paid to the multiple dynamics young people use to enact when moving across the inner-city life, contributing to the lighting up and the fading of specific city places.8 Young people’s choice of hanging around the city is not only connected to the demand and supply of leisure: it, rather, concerns youth involvement in discovering the city when the coming-of-age leads to new practical and symbolical opportunities to become familiar with the whole city. An analysis of local youth groups’ processes of mobility across the city of Naples is proposed in this chapter. The analysis is based on historical, intergenerational and sociological research carried out through in-depth narrative interviews. It is intended to grasp topical elements of youth urban mobility,