A qualitative research on examining emerging adult subjective well-being in the contexts of youth centers and neighborhood spaces

Date

2025-6-16

Author

Akit, Mert

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The extent to which contemporary neighborhood spaces accommodate the evolving needs of emerging adults, driven by their dynamic lifestyles, remains a subject of debate. Corresponding to these needs, it is observed that a significant number of young individuals regularly utilize youth centers during their leisure time. This thesis aims to examine the subjective well-being (SWB) of young people and analyze the role of youth centers and neighborhood spaces in this process by understanding their spatial attributes that foster affordances and identifying facilitators, barriers and stressors while using public spaces. The thesis provides narratives of emerging adults to outline a framework for youth-related urban policies that could contribute to community planning with solutions and suggestions to local governments and central decision-makers regarding programming for overall well-being. In order to understand neighborhood and youth center affordances for emerging adults of various socio-economic backgrounds, semi-structured interviews were applied in four youth centers. The main hypothesis that youth centers positively contribute to SWB of emerging adults has been examined in three overarching themes of major life domains categorized in the Quality-of-Life Model (being-belonging-becoming) corresponding to the fulfillment of basic human needs—physical, emotional, social, and cognitive. The data strongly suggests that many neighborhoods often fall short in providing the necessary affordances for emerging youth while youth centers significantly contribute to their SWB, and can ultimately help restore the community level, by contributing to the formation of neighborhood culture, which is on the verge of disappearing in a socio-spatial sense.

Subject Keywords

Subjective well-being, Youth centers, Emerging youth, Urban quality of life, Spatial affordances

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/115506

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis