/// utopics

Utopics are a type of spatial play whereby a utopian outlook on society and the moral order that it wishes to project are translated into spatial practice through the attachment of ideas about the good society onto representations of particular places. Martin's best illustrations of this utopics can be found in his reading of Disneyland (1984) and America (1992). 

The history of youth culture, whether that be spectacular sub-cultures or more ordinary and conformist practices, has always had an element of making space for oneself, of creating a turf and finding one's place, often on the margins of society (Trasher, 1927; Becker, 1946). Finding one's place has sometimes meant going elsewhere into a supposedly free space, a space percieved as more authentic (E. Cohen 1973, 1979) or more one's own, where issues of inclusion and exclusion can be determined by establishing categories of belonging and group identification. At other times, it has meant staying put and trying to change one's situation there. In either case, certain places come to be seen differently from the representation they have within society, they come to be invested with meaning that express values or beliefs just as important to those youth cultures as their identification with certain types of music or styles of dress.

- Hetherington, Kevin. Vanloads of Uproarious Humanity: New Age Travellers and the utopics of the countryside. in Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Subcultures, Ed. Tracey Skelton, Gill Valentine. 328-329. 1998. Routledge: London. 

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