Children in the City: Home, Neighbourhood and Community Edited by Pia Christensen and Margaret O’Brien Children in the City Home, Neighbourhood and Community
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www.shahrsazionline.com Children in the City This timely and thought-provoking book explores children’s lives and well- being in contemporary cities. At a time of intense debate about the quality of life in cities, this book examines how they can become good places for children to live. Through contributions from childhood researchers in Europe, Australia and America, the book shows the importance of studying children’s lives in cities from a comparative and generational perspective. It also contains fascinating accounts of city living from children themselves and offers practical design solutions. The authors consider the importance of the city as a social, cultural and material place for children, and explore the connections and boundaries between home, neighbourhood, community and city. Throughout, they stress the importance of engaging with how children see their city in order to reform it within a child-sensitive framework. This book is invaluable reading for students and academics in the field of anthropology, sociology, social policy and education. It will also be of inter- est to those working in the field of architecture, urban planning and design. Pia Christensen is Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Public Health, Copenhagen, Denmark. Her previous publications include Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices, Falmer Press (2000). Margaret O’Brien is a Reader at the Centre for Research on the Child and Family in the School of Social Work and Psychosocial Studies, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. Her previous publications include Children in Families: Research and Policy, Falmer Press (1996). Future of Childhood Series Series Editor: Alan Prout Conceptualising Child–Adult Relationships Edited by Leena Alanen and Berry Mayall Children, Technology and Culture: The Impacts of Technologies in Children’s Everyday Lives Edited by Ian Hutchby and Jo Moran-Ellis Hidden Hands: International Perspectives on Children’s Work and Labour Edited by Chris Pole, Phillip Mizen and Angela Bolton Children, Home and School: Autonomy, Connection or Regulation? Edited by Rosalind Edwards Children in the City: Home, Neighbourhood and Community Edited by Pia Christensen and Margaret O’Brien Children in the City Home, neighbourhood and community Edited by Pia Christensen and Margaret O’Brien First published 2003 by RoutledgeFalmer 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeFalmer 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. RoutledgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2003 Pia Christensen and Margaret O’Brien, selection and editorial matter; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record has been requested ISBN 0-203-16723-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-26206-9 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-25925-8 (PB) ISBN 0-415-25924-X (HB) To our children of the city and the country Josefine, Tobias, Patrick and Rosie Contents List of figures ix List of tables x Contributors xi Preface xv Acknowledgements xvii 1 Children in the city: introducing new perspectives 1 PIA CHRISTENSEN AND MARGARET O’BRIEN 2 Place, space and knowledge: children in the village and the city 13 PIA CHRISTENSEN 3 Children’s views of family, home and house 29 GUNILLA HALLDÉN 4 ‘Displaced’ children? risks and opportunities in a Caribbean urban environment 46 KAREN FOG OLWIG 5 Shaping daily life in urban environments 66 HELGA ZEIHER 6 Children in the neighbourhood: the neighbourhood in the children 82 KIM RASMUSSEN AND SØREN SMIDT 7 The street as a liminal space: the barbed spaces of childhood 101 HUGH MATTHEWS viii Contents 8 Neighbourhood quality in children’s eyes 118 LOUISE CHAWLA AND KAREN MALONE 9 Regenerating children’s neighbourhoods: what do children want? 142 MARGARET O’BRIEN 10 Improving the neighbourhood for children: possibilities and limitations of ‘social capital’ discourses 162 VIRGINIA MORROW 11 Planning childhood: children’s social participation in the town of adults 184 CLAUDIO BARALDI Index 206 www.shahrsazionline.com Figures 4.1 Boy in Charlotte Amalie, 1915 47 4.2 St Thomas and St John 48 6.1 The ‘den’ 83 6.2 Thematic categories 90 6.3 Photograph by 6-year-old Kristine 92 6.4 Teis’s place 94 8.1 Young people discuss their open space design during Celebrating Streetspace 132 8.2 Young people gathering in the Frankston city centre 135 9.1 Most desired neighbourhood improvement 145 9.2 Disliked graffiti 147 9.3 At street level 148 9.4 Children’s unsafe places 150 9.5 New town underpass (taken by girl, 11 years) 150 9.6 Dark stairwell 151 9.7 Making the neighbourhood a safer place 152 9.8 Children’s liked buildings 156 9.9 The Galleria 157 9.10 Fence surrounding a London park (taken by boy, 11 years) 158 9.11 Child-friendly neighbourhood improvements 159 10.1 I play football here 170 10.2 No Ball Games 171 11.1 Fano – a town model by children 189 11.2 Fano – a town model by children 189 11.3 Fano – a town model by children 190 Tables 4.1 The household status of St Johnians 0–15 years old living without their parents in St Thomas 51 7.1 Most popular activities carried out on the street 105 7.2 Making use of the street as a place to meet friends 105 7.3 Experience of fear when out alone, all boys and girls aged 9–16 107 7.4 Experience of fear when out alone, by sex and age group 107 8.1 Indicators of community quality from children’s perspectives 122 Contributors Editors Pia Christensen is Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Public Health, Copenhagen, Denmark, and was formerly Co-director of Centre for the Social Study of Childhood, University of Hull. Her main research inter- ests are in the anthropology of children, medical anthropology, and rural and urban families. She has published widely on children and health, schooling and the family. These publications include Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices, co-edited with A. James (Falmer Press, 2000). Her recent research includes studies of children’s use and understanding of time (part of the ESRC Research Programme on Children 5–16: Growing into the 21st Century (UK) and the Danish Research Council’s ‘Children’s Living Conditions and Welfare’ programme). She is currently carrying out research on children, young people and food. Margaret O’Brien is a Reader at the Centre for Research on the Child and Family in the Department of Social Work and Psychosocial Studies at the University of East Anglia. Her research interests are in the social relations and community context of family life and childhood and in the position of fathers in families. She is an empirical social science researcher and clinical psycho- logist. She has published widely, including Children in Families: Research and Policy, co-edited with Julia Brannen (Falmer, 1996); and Muslim Families in Europe: Social Existence and Social Care, co-authored with Fatima Husain (EU DGV, 1999). Recent research projects include: Childhood, Urban Space and Citizenship: Child-sensitive Urban Regeneration, which is part of the ESRC Research Programme on Children 5–16: Growing into the 21st Century, and Muslim Families in Europe (EU-funded). Contributors Claudio Baraldi is Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Culture Sciences at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and scientific secretary of LIA (Childhood and Adolescence Research Centre) in the Depart- ment of Sociology at the University of Urbino. His studies and research xii Contributors concern cultures of childhood, children’s cultures and forms of communication between children and adults, primarily in interventions promoting children’s education and social participation. Recently he has edited I diritti di bambini e degli adolescenti (Donzelli, 2001), Il bambino salta il muro ( Junior, 2001), Una città con i bambini, with Guido Maggioni (Donzelli, 2000). Louise Chawla is an Associate Professor at Whitney Young College, Ken- tucky State University and Associate Faculty in the Environmental Studies Program at Antioch New England Graduate School in New Hampshire. She is a developmental and environmental psychologist whose research and pub- lications focus on children’s environmental experience and the development of environmental values and behaviours. She also serves as international co- ordinator of Growing Up in Cities for the MOST Programme of UNESCO. Her latest publication is Growing Up in an Urbanising World (UNESCO/ Earthscan, 2001). Karen Fog Olwig is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and Professor at the University in Trondheim. She is currently using life-story interviews to research dispersed Caribbean family networks and the socio-cultural meaning of place for family relations. She is also co- editing a volume on children and place as seen from different cross-cultural perspectives. Her publications include Global Culture, Island Identity (Harwood, 1993), Siting Culture, co-edited with Kirsten Hastrup (Routledge, 1997) and Migration and Work, co-edited with Ninna Nyberg Sørensen (Routledge, 2002). Gunilla Halldén is Professor at the Department of Child Studies, Linköping University. She has carried out research on parental ideas and common-sense psychology and on children’s ideas about family life. Her work deals with the construction of childhood and of the ‘good parent’ in relation to gender issues.