Caring Temporalities: The Role of Urban Space for the Liveability of Fluidly Housed Youth

Abstract

The article explores the role public space plays in providing care for fluidly housed youth. These young adults are experiencing fluctuating conditions of homelessness, moving between couch‐surfing, staying in overcrowded or informally occupied spaces, and sometimes experiencing periods of rooflessness. Using an adapted typology of homelessness and building on fundamental human needs and the process of homemaking in public, the article identifies three overarching socio‐spatial needs of fluidly housed youth. Through a mixed‐methods approach, the article uncovers three spatial potentials that enable fluidly housed youth to activate and adapt urban space through processes of radical care, and identifies urban spaces suitable for building infrastructures of care that meet needs along a gradient of privacy. This way, it links socio‐spatial needs, socio‐spatial affordances, and the processes of care that connect both. Understanding this logic provides examples of careful planning that create urban space affordances that activate and adapt to shifting needs. While this article does not claim to solve the housing crisis, it offers a starting point for how we can centre the everyday practices of fluidly housed youth and create infrastructures of care that better meet shifting needs in urban space.