Abstract
This article takes a historical geographical approach to suggest that transport modes – in particular bicycles, trains, trams and cars – have given rise to a range of shifting social practices and helped to constitute youth culture in New Zealand and elsewhere between 1880 and 1950. It examines diaries, memoirs and newspaper reports to reveal how adolescents experienced and articulated transport's importance in their own lives, sometimes in complex ways that challenged established social norms. The spaces in, on and around transport vehicles provided opportunities for youthful independence, identity performances and gendered experiences to take place. Over time these contributed to the emergence of the modern teenager as a semi-autonomous social subject.
•Explores the geographical and social development of transport in New Zealand between 1880 and 1950.•Demonstrates how transport has played a key role in the emergence of youth cultures.•Argues that modes of transport operate as culturally significant spaces.•Shows how cultural formations have responded to the specific spatialities of transport.