"It Seems Like No One Cares": Participatory Photo Mapping to Understand Youth Perspectives on Property Vacancy

This article presents findings from a Participatory Photo Mapping (PPM) project designed to understand young people’s perceptions of the neighborhood environment. PPM is an approach that integrates photography, community mapping, and walk-along interviews to learn about people’s lived experience in a spatial context. Ten participants aged 14 to 17 years were recruited from a youth program in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Participants designed neighborhood tours and through their analysis, identified vacant properties as a key concern. They reported that vacant properties affect them personally by facilitating illicit drug activity and perpetuating the sense that "people don’t care" about their neighborhood. Furthermore, they described their own role in changing their neighborhood to improve environmental conditions. These findings add qualitative support to the notion that teenagers’ own perceptions of neighborhood features may have an impact on outcomes such as anxiety and hopelessness and suggest implications for engaging youth in assessing and intervening in their neighborhood environment.
Source: Journal of Adolescent Research - Category: Child Development Authors: Tags: Articles Source Type: research