Freedom of the city: Contemporary issues and policy influences on children and young people's use of public open space in England

Following a reflection of childhood experiences of public open spaces in daily life the paper moves on to a discussion about definitions of public open space. Contemporary policy related to children, young people and public open space in England are then identified. This context is addressed as policy which directly affects public open space and policy areas, drawn from other political drivers, which have an indirect influence on children and young people's use of public open space. There is some reference to evidence which has fed into some of these policy areas. Teenagers who are skateboarders are used as an example of one group of young people who experience other—legal, social and physical—controls on their use of public open space.     

After-school Hours and the Meanings of Home: Re-defining Finnish Childhood Space

School children's use of their home during the after-school hours has become a controversial question in Finnish society. The article discusses cultural conceptions and uses of home as a specific space for children by comparing two different sets of empirical data: children's accounts of their after-school spaces and media debate on the same topic. Activated public concern in media accounts is analysed as a process of re-defining the properties of ‘proper places’ for children, whereas children's accounts are interpreted as expressions of local cultures. For the children, home is an ideal place for spending after-school time, while the public debate portrays the home as empty and children as lonely and unsafe. Definitions of home in after-school time are considered as part of a broader cultural process of re-defining contemporary Finnish childhood in which control turns out to be a crucial dimension of children's ‘proper places’.     

‘That street is taking us to home’: young children’s photographs of public spaces

ABSTRACT

Children’s identities constitute and are constituted by the everyday spaces they inhabit. Though there are innumerable accounts of what adults think public spaces like subways and city streets mean to children, fewer recorded accounts exist from young children themselves (Faulkner and Zolkos 2016, “Introduction.” In Critical Childhood Studies and the Practice of Interdisciplinarity, ix–xvii. Lexington: Lanham.). In this work I explored 2- – 5-year-old children’s conceptions of public space through the photographs they took and the narratives they told in and around those images. I focused on how children imaged their spaces, how their narrative fragments added layers of story to the images’ contents, and how their photographic performances acted as ‘visual voice’ (Burke 2005, “‘Play in Focus’: Children Researching Their Own Spaces and Places for Play.” Children Youth and Environments 15 (1): 27–53.), highlighting for us how they see themselves and their positions within the larger urban environment. The young children’s photographs depicted their growing autonomy and mobility within an urban context, attunements to non-human forms of the city, and knowledge of what it means to live in their communities.     

Young women and public leisure spaces in contemporary Beijing: recreating (with) gender,tradition, and place

Feminist geographers and leisure scholars have long argued that one critical way to understand gendered norms and expectations is through examining women's access to and experiences of leisure activities. Set in the context of the rapid economic, political, and social changes that have taken place in Beijing over the past half century, this article draws on in-depth interviews and extensive participant observation to explore the role of newly available public leisure spaces in the lives and leisure of young women in Beijing, in particular by examining the way that these spaces provide an opportunity for the negotiation of new gender norms and identities. Through an analysis of the interaction of gender norms and practices with women's use of and behavior in public leisure spaces, we argue that women's behavior in public leisure spaces in contemporary Beijing remains strongly circumscribed by gendered norms. Rather than their presence itself constituting a challenge to gender expectations, in many cases their leisure behavior and experiences serve to reinforce the social norms that masculinize public leisure spaces. In spite of this, however, the findings of this research suggest that public leisure spaces may, in some cases, provide women with a place from which to challenge gender norms.     

Children's nomination of friendly places in an urban neighbourhood in Shiraz,Iran

This study investigates how children conceive of and value the outdoor environment as a child-friendly one with particular reference to an urban neighbourhood in Shiraz, Iran. It utilizes Chatterjee's (2005. “Children's Friendship with Place: A Conceptual Inquiry.” Children, Youth and Environments 15 (1): 1–26) place friendship construct to find out friendly places and their attributes from children's points of view. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 106 middle childhood children. Findings suggest that a child-friendly neighbourhood is made up of diverse places that children use to meet their different needs. However, formal and informal open spaces, private precincts, and streets in the neighbourhood afforded highest contributions to place friendship.     

Rights,participatory spaces and the daily fabric of children and young people’s voices in Switzerland

ABSTRACT

The past two decades have witnessed an unprecedented rise in public policies aimed at hearing children and young people’s voices, which typically entail creating supportive participatory spaces. While this political project is usually presented as a radical move towards a more inclusive society, it raises critical questions about whose voices are being represented, how, why, by whom and for whom. Drawing upon recent ethnographic research on childhood and youth policies in Switzerland, this article explores how children and young people’s voices are produced in concrete situations. It studies how the institutional and material characteristics of participatory spaces and situated interactions shape which voices will actually be heard. The research highlights that, despite their inclusive ambitions, participatory spaces paradoxically exclude young persons who fail to articulate, orally or in written, linguistically, morally or politically legitimate voices.     

Children’s agency in accessing for spaces of play in an urban high-rise community in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

This research explores children’s agency in negotiating for play spaces in Malaysia within the context of an urban high-rise community. Fieldwork was conducted with 31 children between the ages of four to 12 years old. A qualitative, child-centered approach to data collection was employed using participatory research methods. The study reveals how children gain access to play spaces and details their innovative strategies in maximizing play opportunities in a community with limited infrastructural and social support. It highlights how children claim the use of communal spaces within the housing compound, reinvent designated play spaces, resist adult rules around restricted spaces and embrace elements of global culture for meaningful play opportunities. The paper argues that children exercise agency in accessing play spaces, and by so doing, extend and expand their lived geographies which are not just spatial, temporal and social but also invented and imagined.     

Predictors of children’s satisfaction with mass housing

ABSTRACT

This article explores the predictors of children’s satisfaction with mass housing, which were built in the context of squatter housing regeneration. The results are based on a survey of 186 nine-to-twelve-year-old children living in four mass housing sites in Ankara, Turkey. They show the specific features of the dwelling and neighborhood that were critical in predicting children’s residential satisfaction: dwelling location and size; appearance of interior design elements provided by the authority; views from the windows; proximity, quality and quantity of public open spaces; quantity of greenery; building types in the mass housing estate; external appearance of buildings in the neighborhood; safety of street crossings; the continuity, width and comfort of sidewalks; the quality of municipal services; and the number of liked people in the neighborhood. These findings are important as they help planners and designers to consider and incorporate components that contribute to an improved residential satisfaction among children.     

Fox Palaces: the playful occupation of a Johannesburg city park

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the playful occupation of an inner-city park in Johannesburg, South Africa, by the Hummingbird Play Association. Playful occupation emerged as a strategy to create and demand spaces for children’s play, demonstrating through practice the possibilities for public play provision. Children’s play is read as a form of folklore, through which children’s and adult’s spatial experiences and imaginings of the city can be viewed. It considers how opportunities for play facilitated with Playwork Principles in mind can co-create safe spaces for children which could act as tools for social transformation and justice in the urban public realm.     

The spatial dimension of agency: the everyday urban practices of Filipina domestic workers in Amman,Jordan

This article examines the strategies that Filipina migrant domestic workers in Jordan have developed to create new opportunities within the restrictive Kafala migration system. Based on short-term live-in contracts, the Kafala system tends to confine migrant women to employers’ homes, thus restricting their access to urban amenities and limiting their interactions with co-ethnics. However, Filipina migrant domestic workers transform temporary migration into a longer-term experience by increasing their knowledge of the city and going from live-in workers to live-out or freelance workers. This article contributes to understandings of migrant women’s agency by considering the spatial construction of agency in urban spaces. I argue that space and agency are entwined. In order to highlight the spatial dimension of agency, I use the concept of ‘regime of visibility’ to show how migrant women make their agency visible to others by accessing public spaces. Connecting agency with regimes of visibility allows me to question the place and role of migrant women in urban public spaces. Especially, I analyze that tensions in public spaces are not merely a reaction to the presence of women, but are also intended to prevent the visibility of individual agency.     

Children and playgrounds in Mediterranean cities

This paper presents the first results of a case study on the ways in which playgrounds are constructed and experienced in children's daily lives in two medium sized Mediterranean Catalan cities. The research is based on qualitative methodology through participant observation and interviews with institutional actors. Our research suggests that playgrounds are organised around age as the central category; nevertheless, gender is important in the use and activities developed as children get older. Specific aspects from Mediterranean and medium-sized cities are raised such as a positive perception and an intense use of public space by both adults and children. Specific childhood policies in city planning and a stronger gender awareness among institutional actors would improve the social role of playgrounds as participatory, socialising and inclusive spaces.     

Safe Places in Domestic Spaces: Two-Year-Olds at Play in their Homes

This paper contributes to the growing research literature on children's ‘intimate geographies’ by focusing on two-year-old children's explorations and play within the domestic spaces of their homes. It draws on video data showing three young girls playing in selected home spaces i.e. a family grocery shop in Peru, the upstairs rooms of a house in America, and the balcony of an apartment in Italy. Through analysis of short video sequences the paper describes the way children use and invest meaning in these spaces. It is argued that the three domestic locations can be seen as ‘safe places’, in both material and personal senses; and that they enable children's sense of belonging, foster their ‘emplaced knowledge’ and build on their confidence to explore spaces further afield.     

Street child spaces: belonging,conflict and resistance in the city of Durban through the eyes of street youth

ABSTRACT

This article is concerned with the everyday ‘spatial tactics’ deployed by children in a street situation in order to deal with notions of public space that define them as ‘out of place’, marginal and deviant. Using photovoice, we reconstruct former street children’s definitions of and feelings about their spaces in the city, bringing into view a complex set of social problems, attitudes and strategies that moves beyond the traditional binary notion of street children as either deviants or victims. This work points to the importance of finding ways to ensure the voices of marginalized and disadvantaged children are heard and presents the narratives that are important to our understanding of their worlds. Analyzing their spatiality in contexts of conflict, belonging and resistance, we found that children and youth in a street situation are mainly concerned with empowering themselves and resisting dominant labels and police repression.     

Building heteronormativity: the social and material reconstruction of men's public toilets as spaces of heterosexuality

This paper concerns changes in the spatial structure of British public toilets for men over the last ten years from secluded, indistinctly public/private spaces towards open, largely public structures. It examines a number of past and present toilet spaces in the British city of Manchester using spatial syntax analysis to consider how spaces have been adapted and policed differently in order to reduce opportunities for sex between men. It considers how these changes relate to shifts in the legislative context and in planning and policing initiatives away from explicit homophobia towards policies of inclusion of certain sexual minorities. The paper concludes that the way in which inclusion and a post-homophobic context have been expressed through legislative changes and planning and policing initiatives in relation to public toilets has led to a more explicit heteronormalisation of public spaces. The discussion relates to current debates in cultural geography about the consequences of greater participation of sexual minorities in public and issues of surveillance, control and privacy in public spaces.     

On the Contours of Public Space: A Tale of Three Women

This article explores the changing contours of the relationship between gender and the distinction between public and private spaces in western cities. Our account returns to the emergence of a modern understanding of public and private spaces to highlight its class and gender connotations. Then, focusing on middle-class women's experiences of public spaces, we use examples from the mid-nineteenth century and the late-twentieth century to illustrate continuities and changes. We emphasize persistent but evolving exclusions from the category "public," which have been sustained in part by changing delineations of "public space" associated with consumer activities. In developing our argument, we question representations of public spaces invoked in arguments about its decline and argue for a politics sensitive to different experiences of such spaces.     

‘People don't do odd,do they?’ mothers making sense of the reactions of others towards their learning disabled children in public places

This paper will demonstrate how a focus upon the practices and interactions in and of the everyday lives of mothers of learning disabled children can provide rich insights into the position of a group of children who may not be able to conform to appropriate ways of behaving and using space. This focus will illustrate how the spatial practices and experiences of the mothers and their children are shaped by the reactions of others present and the mothers' interpretations of, and responses to, those reactions. It will, moreover, raise questions about the position of older learning disabled children whose unconventional behaviour in public spaces can threaten disorder.     

The Taliban,Public Space,and Terror in Pakistan

Two UK-based specialists on terrorism in Pakistan use empirical evidence to document and analyze the Pakistani Taliban's (Tehrik-e-Taliban) practice of targeting spaces of public interaction for terrorism intended to suppress expressions of public unity and restrict venues for open discussion. In tracing the rise of the Taliban in Pakistan, the authors review the country's history of state and civil society formation, its relations with Afghanistan, and U.S. and Western policy in the region. The authors present timely information and insights that enhance understanding of the recent surge in terrorist attacks on civilians in Pakistan and its ties to the eastward spread of conflict from neighboring Afghanistan.     

It's safe: food as a way of expression for children in Warsaw

ABSTRACT

The role of food in family relations is often discussed with a focus on discipline and control. This paper shows how food can also be used to create children’s safe spaces, defined as the social conditions that allow relatively independent expression of opinions, emotions and practices. Based on ethnographic research conducted with families in Warsaw in 2012–2013, I discuss different ways in which food is used to create and express such safe spaces. Firstly, I look at how children use food to create their own, personal and hidden safe space, in opposition to parental rule. Secondly, I analyse how food is used to build a safe space between adults and children. I argue that within often antagonistic family food relations there is in fact a space for children’s expression. Thirdly, I discuss the role of food in creating safe spaces for children during the research process. This paper takes a relational approach to the concept of safe space, and considers what kind of social relations and processes enable children’s autonomous expression with the means of food.     

Spatial extensions of childhood: from toy worlds to online communities

Digital technologies offer children opportunities to expand their everyday worlds and manipulate their spatial surroundings in real time. This article draws from ethnographic research in Helsinki focusing on children's sociality and technology encounters. Particular attention is given to techno-toys and online networking communities. Connections between companies developing digital technologies and children's everyday spaces give rise to new generational involvements. Adult-designed technologies support and exploit children's mutual relations, create opportunities for these relations, and are aimed at directing their course. Consequently, the fascination with commercial spaces is not surprising: they appeal to children by supporting their aims. The article suggests that in order to understand emerging techno-worlds that arrange, extend, and transform children's everyday doings, childhood scholars need to learn to ask questions that go beyond either/or stands. Only through a detailed understanding of the ways in which corporate offerings participate in, and promote, the production of everyday spaces for children can adults efficiently guide the very complex ways in which such spaces influence children.