The Metropolitan Rhythm of Street Life

This chapter aims to present a selective review that can be used to identify some contradictions about street life; once recognized, this knowledge may be used to inform interventions and social policy initiatives. We begin by defining street children and adolescents; examining evidence of vulnerability and resilience in research on the daily lives of street-involved youth; discussing methodological and ethical challenges to advancing understanding of this population; and examining how research with street-involved youth can be used to advance local and global practice and policy. Our aim is to present literature from around the globe, but our discussion is informed by—and draws on—our long-standing program of research and practice in Brazil.

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Girls and Boys

10.1093/oso/9780199381265.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jeffrey Lane

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Street Life ◽

Feedback Effects ◽

Digital Space ◽

False Assumption ◽

Neighborhood Interaction

Chapter 2 explains that street life moves online through girls and boys and their relations to one another. This chapter shows how girls and boys use social media to manage their encounters and the value this holds for girls especially, but boys as well. The author uses several cases, including JayVon and Denelle, to illustrate the ways in which interaction moves between the physical street and the digital street. The chapter then examines the feedback effects between gender and the street code. The author finds that whereas turf lines bind boys to their home streets, girls become brokers for themselves and boys dependent upon their loyalty. This chapter argues that focus only on the physical side of neighborhood interaction has led to the false assumption that boys control the street. By considering physical and digital space together, the mobility and centrality of girls in neighborhood networks become sharply clear.

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Introduction to the Digital Street

10.1093/oso/9780199381265.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jeffrey Lane

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

The Internet ◽

Outreach Worker ◽

Digital Form ◽

Street Life ◽

Black And Latino

The first chapter introduces the concept of the digital street. The author argues that a digital form of street life plays out alongside the neighborhood on social media. The author discusses how the traditional boundaries of street life and the street code in particular have shifted as neighborhood space extends online. Black and Latino teenagers now experience their neighborhood differently from previous generations. The author explains the fieldwork this book is based upon. The author describes meeting “Pastor” and becoming an outreach worker in his peace ministry and then taking on additional roles online and offline with teenagers and concerned adults. This introductory chapter also gives background on access to smartphones and the Internet. A brief description of the contents of each chapter and the order of the chapters is provided.

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“Remember, this is Brightmoor”: Historical Violence, Neighborhood Experiences, and the Hysteresis of Street Life

Urban Affairs Review ◽

10.1177/10780874211016925 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 107808742110169

Author(s):

Sharon Cornelissen

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Public Life ◽

Drug Market ◽

Neighborhood Change ◽

Neighborhood Violence ◽

Street Life ◽

Farmers Market ◽

Life Styles ◽

Black Poor

Drawing on three years of fieldwork, this article explains the emergence and persistence of two conflicting styles of street life in Brightmoor, a depopulated, majority Black, poor Detroit neighborhood facing early gentrification. As most longtimers were inured to historical neighborhood violence, they tended to act vigilantly in public, even after recent crime declines. By contrast, White newcomers, most of whom had moved from middle-class neighborhoods, often defied vigilance such as by organizing a farmers' market across from an open-air drug market. They mobilized aspirational public life as a means for changing the neighborhood and end in itself. To explain these conflicting styles, this article theorizes the cultural mechanism of “ the hysteresis of street life.” Styles of street life, shaped by residents' unequal historical neighborhood experiences, tend to linger under conditions of gradual neighborhood change. It also shows how the hysteresis of street life may contribute to the reproduction of inequalities.

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