Atmospheric youth practices. Attunement, thickness, and urban affective geographies

This article explores the affective and relational ways in which young people engage with urban space through bodily practices such as skateboarding, parkour and street dance. Drawing on the conceptual lenses of atmospheric practices, attunement, and thickness, the study investigates how these activities modulate or challenge the affective texture of public space. Based on a secondary analysis of thirty interviews collected in Turin, Italy, the paper examines how atmospheres are not simply inhabited but co-produced through gestures, rhythms, and relational dynamics. The analysis highlights three key elements: the interplay between attunement and affective thickness; the experience of normative friction and the tactics of atmospheric negotiation it elicits; and moments of collective resonance that temporarily reshape the shared quality of place. The article argues that these youth practices constitute subtle forms of spatial intervention and affective agency, revealing a situated politics of presence that often escapes dominant frameworks of planning, regulation, and resistance. In doing so, it contributes to a growing body of work on the atmospheric and affective geographies of everyday urban life.