Vacant spaces in urban landscapes are not so much 'empty' places reserved for future constructions, but rather provide arenas for social and cultural practices which transform the vacant plots into sites with multiple functions and meaning. The example of neighbourhood youth clubs in the agglomeration of Pikine/Guédiawaye, a fast growing suburban area of Dakar (Senegal), demonstrates how young people use the ever decreasing number of 'empty' spaces in the city for various purposes and in particular as soccer fields. These soccer fields serve as platforms for the construction of urban identities, conflicts and sociability where dreams and desires of urban youth are reflected. The practice of using a field can have spatial, social, and imaginative implications. The erection of simple goalposts or the construction of a whole stadium both change the spatial dimensions of the urban environment and influence the practices performed on a specific site. What is more, by using symbols and signs, the social and cultural practices of young people go even beyond the spatial limits of a site and produce not only visible, but also invisible urban landscapes.Keywords: Dakar; urban landscape; urban youth.As a consequence of the growth in population and the rural exodus after the Second World War in Senegal, the city's administration of Dakar published a new plan of urban development for the whole area of the peninsula of Cap-Verde in 1946. This plan aimed at transforming the city into a 'symbol of modernity'. It featured the restructuring of the area into different functional districts, the development of infrastructure (including the construction of the highway of Dakar), and the erection of administrative buildings, governmental complexes and tower blocks in the city centre. One of the basic elements of urban planning consisted in the setting-up of new residential areas and the urban clearance of socalled 'popular' neighbourhoods or shanty towns (Dione 1992). A by-product of this programme was the creation of the city of Pikine which was founded in 1952 on a former military camp about 13 kilometers from the centre of Dakar.

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In Senegal, neighbourhood football teams are more popular than teams in the national football league. The so-called navétanes teams were first created in the 1950s. Since the early 1970s, they have competed in local, regional and national neighbourhood championships. This article considers the history of these clubs and their championships by focusing on the city of Dakar and its fast-growing suburbs, Pikine and Guédiawaye. Research on the navétanes allows an exploration of the social and cultural history of the neighbourhoods from the actor-centred perspective of urban youth. The history of the navétanes reflects the complex interrelations between young people, the city and the state. The performative act of football – on and beyond the pitch, by players, fans and organizers – constitutes the neighbourhood as a social space in a context where the state fails to provide sufficient infrastructure and is often contested. The navétanes clubs and championships demonstrate how young people have experienced and imagined their neighbourhoods in different local-level ways, while at the same time interconnecting them with other social spaces, such as the ‘city’, the ‘nation’ and ‘the world’.