Cette thèse vise à étudier la géographie urbaine critique en suivant trois groupes contemporains qui s'en réclament : le GESP (Grupo de Estudos sobre São Paulo) au Brésil, Kritische Geographie Berlin en Allemagne et le réseau international INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Action). Cette démarche inspirée des science studies implique de s‘intéresser autant à leurs pratiques qu’aux savoirs qu’ils produisent. Dans cette optique, les idées n’existent que parce qu’elles sont portées, mobilisées et diffusées par des collectifs. A partir des données collectées auprès de ces groupes, il est possible, par recoupements, de définir la géographie urbaine critique par sa position de seuil : au seuil du normatif et du descriptif, de la théorie et de la pratique, aux marges de l’université et des champs scientifiques. Ce travail cherche également à évaluer si les liens entre les trois groupes sont assez denses pour qu’il soit possible de parler d’un courant de pensée mondial. / The aim of this dissertation is to study critical urban geography through three contemporary groups which claim to partake in it : Brazil’s GESP (Grupo de Estudos sobre São Paulo), Germany’s Kritische Geographie Berlin, and the international network of INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Action). This method is inspired by the science studies and implies studying what is being done just as much as whatever theoretical content is being produced. In this view, ideas exist only insofar as they are borne, carried out and broadcast by these groups. From the data collected, it is possible, by crosschecking, to define critical urban geography as « on the threshold » : between the normative and the descriptive, between theory and practice, at the margins of the academic and scientific fields. This research also purports to assess whether the bonds between these groups are strong enough to allow us to talk about a global current of thought.

This dissertation documents the everyday lives and spaces of a population of youth typically constructed as out of place, and the broader urban context in which they are rendered as such. Thirty-three female and transgender street youth participated in the development of this youth-based participatory action research (YPAR) project utilizing geo-ethnographic methods, auto-photography, and archival research throughout a six-phase, eighteen-month research process in Bogotá, Colombia. This dissertation details the participatory writing process that enabled the YPAR research team to destabilize dominant representations of both street girls and urban space and the participatory mapping process that enabled the development of a youth vision of the city through cartographic images. The maps display individual and aggregate spatial data indicating trends within and making comparisons between three subgroups of the research population according to nine spatial variables. These spatial data, coupled with photographic and ethnographic data, substantiate that street girls’ mobilities and activity spaces intersect with and are altered by state-sponsored urban renewal projects and paramilitary-led social cleansing killings, both efforts to clean up Bogotá by purging the city center of deviant populations and places. Advancing an ethical approach to conducting research with excluded populations, this dissertation argues for the enactment of critical field praxis and care ethics within a YPAR framework to incorporate young people as principal research actors rather than merely voices represented in adultist academic discourse. Interjection of considerations of space, gender, and participation into the study of street youth produce new ways of envisioning the city and the role of young people in research. Instead of seeing the city from a panoptic view, Bogotá is revealed through the eyes of street youth who participated in the construction and feminist visualization of a new cartography and counter-map of the city grounded in embodied, situated praxis. This dissertation presents a socially responsible approach to conducting action-research with high-risk youth by documenting how street girls reclaim their right to the city on paper and in practice; through maps of their everyday exclusion in Bogotá followed by activism to fight against it.