Distinguishing first the different forms of urban space (streets, alleys, etc.) according to their historical and current uses, and then the different experience of public space at different times of life (childhood and adulthood), the author posits the hypothesis that our modern urbanism no longer enables the adolescent to make the passage between a child’s experience of the street (characterized by inner reverie) and an adult experience (characterized by differentiation and naming). Adolescents then try to replay the this passage between private and public, but find no response in the anonymized places of modernity, except that of stigmatization in answer to a frantic quest for recognition.