"Transformative Youth Public Spaces in Hanoi Mexico Montreal and Paris" is a collaborative research project that will comparatively examine how youth use physical and digital public spaces and the consequences on regulation and governance. Most specifically, we will focus on understanding what is considered “transgressive”, as well as how and who attempts to control such transgressions. The team is made up of interdisciplinary researchers and students, multimedia artists, social workers, city professionals and young people from Hanoi, Mexico City, Paris and Montreal.

There are three main thematic objectives:

1. Transgressing: to analyse what youths and authorities in each city consider to be transgressive in both digital and physical public spaces and why.
2. Regulating: to analyse how transgressive practices are controlled and/or legitimized in public spaces (policies, rules, design, informal arrangements, etc.).
3. Intervening: to strengthen channels for collaborative research between youths, researchers, policy-makers, authority figures (police, security guards, etc...) and artists for the purposes of mobilizing knowledge activities

We will have a better understanding of what ties transgressive youth to state institutions, and how this (often informal) relation may generate institutional change and the development of specific regimes of regulation in public spaces.