Teens seeking to socialize together in public this summer are discovering that their presence is often treated as a problem. Why it matters: The decline of malls, cheap hangout spots and welcoming public spaces has left teenagers with few places to gather without money or access to a car, urban designers and youth researchers say.

State of play: With few options, teens have organized large gatherings in cities nationwide, which local officials have dubbed "teen takeovers."

Some cities have responded with curfews aimed at keeping minors from gathering in public, although research shows they aren't effective. Others enforce "no unaccompanied minors" policies, which teen advocates say punish all young people for the actions of a few.

What they're saying: Ayan Chowdhary, a rising high school senior in North Carolina, tells Axios that he's never been to a teen takeover, but he spends a lot of time at his local pickleball courts.

He says adults often stare when he and his friends play. They sometimes go to the mall for a sweet treat, but that gets old.
"There's only so much you can do. It ended up being the same food places, and most of the time we end up window shopping as opposed to buying anything. At that point, it's like, what are you going to the mall to do?"

Between the lines: Many public spaces were not designed for teens — and some were built to discourage them.

Patsy Eubanks Owens, a landscape architecture expert, tells Axios that when she began studying adolescents outdoors in the mid-1980s, little research existed. So she began collecting it herself by surveying design professionals.
"The response was overwhelming," she says. "It was, 'actually, I've been asked to design them out of places. It's a problem that's been going on for a long time."

Vague anti-loitering laws can also give police an "open invitation" to "investigate teenagers for being teenagers," says Jeffrey Butts, a criminal justice professor.

Standing around with friends can be interpreted very differently depending on who is doing it, Butts says.
"It's America. There will always be racial disparities because the government and systems designed to protect public safety … are racially tinged."

Zoom out: Teens are increasingly asking why they lack third places — locations to hang out that are not work, school or home — that earlier generations took for granted.

"We've been getting a lot of media inquiries about third places over the past year, and I would say the majority of those inquiries are student newspapers," Nate Storring, co-executive director of the Project for Public Spaces, tells Axios.
"[Teens] know that they're feeling lonely. They do their own research and find out what a third place is, and then they're like, 'man, why don't I have one of those in my community?' So they're investigating."

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Case in point: Storring's group worked with young people to design The Pass in San Antonio, a renovated underpass with basketball courts, charging stations and seating.

The key to making the space vibrant was letting teens evaluate it, recommend changes, and implement them, Storring says.

The bottom line: "Stop treating teenagers like it's us and them," Storring says.

"Treat them like people who have their own ideas... listen to them and talk to them in good faith about how to move forward, because they can be part of the solution."

Go deeper: Teen loneliness machine