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Reflections on Methods for Exploring Children’s Encounter with the Urban Environment
Abstract
While children have as much right to the city as other people, spatial planners tend to restrict children to child-specific places such as playgrounds. With an eye to designing cities as places for everyone, we explored together with children how they experience their city and what they think about it. In this paper we reflect on the use of research methods in our exploration. In our attempt to engage a class of 22 eight-year-olds, we used a combination of drawing, interviewing, walking and photography. Findings and feedback from the children teach us that they interpret things in their own distinctive way, highlighting the importance of involving them in research and other processes from beginning to end. Moreover, whereas participation is usually set up with an eye to future changes, our study shows the value of studying how children see and do things in its own right.
... In research with adults, drawing has been considered a novel way to explore patient experiences of care, illness and treatment (Cheung et al., 2016;Eggleton et al., 2017;Guillemin, 2004). Drawing is also employed in research with children, for example, to explore living conditions and self-image (Mitchell, 2006), care and interpersonal relationships (Eldén, 2012), or children's encounter with the urban environment (Ramioul et al., 2020). With a critical look at the supposed child-centredness of visual methods in general, and drawing specifically, Mitchell (2006) concludes that drawing methods may reveal as much about the adults/researchers as about children's drawings. ...
In qualitative research, visual methods often entail engaging with images as the subject of analysis. Yet, images may be of value also as a means of analysis. This article reflects on this analytical value in relation to drawings. To this end, the authors explore drawings made by researchers in various phases of qualitative research. Drawings made ‘in the margin’ are put centre stage to better understand their role in data analysis. They allow revisiting situations; and they supplement the audio-to-text act of transcribing. Actively drawing involves and stimulates a sensory engagement with the phenomena under study and the data. Drawings furthermore play an important role in arranging and re-arranging concepts when formulating conclusions. Examples highlight how researchers may explicitly incorporate drawing in data analysis to harness the potential of a multisensory skill set and engage with transcribing in new ways.
... Recognizing vulnerability, as it is understood in anthropology and philosophy, corresponds to a quite ordinary reality and invites us to carefully attend to and give an account of what we are unable to see, but is right before our eyes, and the ongoing work of care conceived as the maintenance, continuity, and protection of the world and form of life (Laugier, 2015). Understanding the boy's participation in practices as everyday designing brings into view not only that our world is vulnerable (in need of protection and support), but also that children actively care for the world by engaging in it in their own way (and not only are being cared for by humans and other-than-humans) (e.g., Ramioul et al., 2020;Rautio, 2013). Recognizing vulnerability as such may be about (design) researchers and children experiencing that the world finds itself in an 'uncertain' and 'undecided' state (Noens, 2017) and that, through mundane tinkering with the world, things receive (new) meaning (Mol et al., 2015). ...
Contemporary understandings of vulnerability highlight its critical, relational and enabling aspects. Through leveraging these understandings, this article contributes to conceptualizing the notion of everyday design by interweaving it with that of vulnerability. A case study brings vulnerability into view by zooming out from and in on everyday practices around an aquarium in a paediatric oncology ward. Subsequently, we unravel the notion of vulnerability as used in design research and in anthropology and philosophy: while vulnerability grounds everyday design philosophically and ethically as a form of care, everyday design challenges the tendency to situate vulnerability in (relations between) human beings. Our article thus exemplifies design anthropology understood as bringing in dialogue theory and methods from both anthropology and design.
This study builds on recent literature that calls for a renewed attention for the sensorial dimension in research. The researchers examine the potential of a sensory research approach in studying the relationship between citizens and their living environment. They illustrate this by means of their own exploratory research in an urban renewal setting. Eight local residents were invited to walk together with the researchers in their own city while ‘opening up’ their senses and sharing their lived experiences. The sensory focus allowed researchers to tap into the concrete physical aspects as well as inner processes (feelings, memories, imaginations) related to the place under research. The paper draws attention to the implications of a sensory research approach with regard to how we are accustomed to collect and analyze qualitative research materials. It concludes with a number of challenges and directions for further research.
After World War II, the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck developed hundreds of playgrounds in the city of Amsterdam. These public playgrounds were located in parks, squares, and derelict sites, and consisted of minimalistic aesthetic play equipment that was supposed to stimulate the creativity of children. Over the last decades, these playgrounds have been studied by sociologists, theorists of art and architecture, and psychologists. Adopting an ecological approach to the human environment, it is argued that the abstract forms of van Eyck’s play sculptures indeed stimulate the creativity of the child. Whereas a slide or a swing almost dictates what a child is supposed to do, van Eyck’s play equipment invites the child to actively explore the numerous affordances (action possibilities) it provided. However, it is argued that the standardization (e.g., equal distances between blocks or bars) that tends to characterize van Eyck’ play equipment has negative effects on the playability. This standardization, which was arguably the result of the aesthetic motives of the designer, might be appealing to children when simply looking at the equipment, but it is not of overriding importance to them when playing in it. Indeed, a recent study indicates that the affordances provided by messy structures appear to have a greater appeal to playing children.
This study investigated the effect of different organizations of landmark-location pairings as fine-space information on wayfinding behavior and spatial knowledge on a total of 90 participants: 30 second graders, 30 sixth graders, and 30 adults. All participants had to find their way to a goal in a virtual environment with either randomized or categorical landmarks, or without any landmarks. Thereafter, they had to find the shortest way from the start position to the goal in two consecutive trials (wayfinding performance), and they had to solve a number of spatial knowledge tasks. The results showed that independent of their categorical function, the existence of landmarks influenced the way-finding performance of adults and children in the same way. Whereas the presence of landmarks had no effect on spatial survey knowledge, landmark knowledge itself was influenced by the categorical function of the landmarks presented. Moreover, second graders showed limited achievement compared to adults independent of the existence of landmarks. The main results implicate firstly that children at school age indeed are able to use landmark-location pairings as fine-space information like adults during learning an unknown environmental space, and secondly that a dissociation between wayfinding behavior and spatial knowledge might exist.
Children have as much “right” to the city as adult citizens, yet they lose out in the urban spatial justice stakes. Built environments prioritizing motor vehicles, a default urban planning position that sees children as belonging in child-designated areas, and safety discourses, combine to restrict children’s presence and opportunities for play, rendering them out of place in public space. In this context, children’s everyday appropriations of public spaces for their “playful imaginings” can be seen as a reclamation of their democratic right to the city: a prefigurative politics of play enacted by citizen kids. In this article, we draw on data collected with 265 children in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, to consider how children’s playful practices challenge adult hegemony of the public domain and prefigure the possibilities of a more equal, child-friendly, and playful city.
A major challenge of the twenty-fi rst century is ensuring the social sustainability of our cities. This requires 'child-friendly' cities, which take into account the rights and needs of the children who live in them to play and explore to ensure their presentday wellbeing and longer-term healthy development; and their rights, as citizens, to feel safe and welcome in public spaces and to participate in urban planning decisions aff ecting their use of the public realm. While there has been increasing acknowledgement of these rights following the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and the subsequent UNICEF Child Friendly Cities Initiative, children continue to lose out in the urban justice stakes. They are largely confi ned (by design or decree) to child-specifi c sett ings within adult-centric cities; and while their views may be sought on the provision of child-specifi c facilities and programmes, their meaningful participation in urban design and planning is rare. This paper reports on a 'fi rst' for Auckland Council in Aotearoa/New Zealand: children's participation (co-facilitated by the authors and council staff in 2015) in the design and redevelopment of a central city square. We refl ect on its signifi cance in terms of children's 'right to the city' and their meaningful participation in urban design and planning - part of a progression towards greater urban justice for children and socially sustainable cities.
Visual methods are often seen as a helpful way of eliciting children’s voices (Clark and Moss, 2011; Greene and Hogan, 2005; Prosser and Burke, 2008; Thomson, 2008). Using visual research methods, it is argued, can provide the potential for children and young people to record aspects of their lives and to generate multi-layered data (Piper and Frankham, 2007). It is suggested that these methods are not only accessible to children, but can also help to address the power imbalance between adults and children in research. For example, Prosser and Burke (2008) state that research using visual methods can be empowering as images are central to children’s culture and everyday lives. They argue that ‘words are the domain of adult researchers and therefore can be disempowering to the young. Images and their mode of production, on the other hand, are central to children’s culture from a very early age and are therefore empowering’ (Prosser and Burke, 2008, p. 407). Whilst we recognise that relating research approaches to children’s everyday experiences and the way they express themselves can provide opportunities for children to participate in the research process in meaningful ways and on their own terms (Greene and Hill, 2005), we also aim to critically orientate ourselves within the literature on visual research with children by examining the relationships between power and meaning making through the research process.
This article discusses theory and methods of researching the everyday experiences of children in the city environment combined with the question of giving a voice to children. The article is organised into three parts. Part one provides a conceptual background, theorising the relational as well as intergenerational character of the concept of environment. The cultural-geographical theory and the concept of Thirdspace are used. Part two illustrates the theoretical and methodological themes with reference to my study with children. I explored the encounter between children and the urban environment. I applied ethnographic tours around a city block with children and the children's spontaneous chat and actions are the data which provide the basis for reflecting on how children's lived places arise in everyday action. The third part of this article discusses the construction of children's lived places and urban childhood.
This article engages with the current debate in childhood research on children’s voices and representation in the research process. In this discussion, the frequent use of drawing techniques in childhood research is often highlighted as especially problematic. While agreeing that there is a need to critically examine the concept of ‘children’s voices’ and the production of ‘voices’ in research, the author argues for the possibility of and need for reflexive and creative research enabling the ‘voicing’ of others – such as children – and the possibilities of a sociological analysis of drawing methods. The argument is elaborated with a presentation and discussion of a current research project on children and care in Sweden. The author discusses two of the methods used in interviews with children – a draw-your-day exercise and concentric circles of closeness – which together help the child and the researcher narrativize practices and relationships of care that would otherwise be obscured. While the narratives that emerge cannot be viewed as providing ‘authentic’ insights into the caring situation of the child, they can be regarded as contributing to a more complex and multi-layered picture of care, which is a valuable contribution to the research field of family and interpersonal relationships.
Neighborhoods are important places of aging and meaningful contexts of life for many older people. The overall aim of this study was to explore the public life of older people aging in place in order to understand neighborhoods as the material places where public life occurs, networks as the social places of public life, and to examine how these neighborhoods and networks influence the experience of aging and wellbeing. Adopting a friendly visiting methodology, data was collected over an 8-month period using participant observation, visual methods and an innovative interview technique called the “go along method”. Data were analyzed using grounded theory and a coding strategy that integrated textual, visual, and auditory data. Results provide insights into the micro-territorial functioning of neighborhoods and highlight third places and transitory zones as significant sites for older residents. Embedded within these places is a natural neighborhood network — a web of informal relationships and interactions that enhance well being and shape the everyday social world of older adults aging in place.
This article draws on the experience of three research projects where photography was used with children as a data collection method and presentation tool. It was used as a way of trying to enhance opportunities for adults to hear about topics from the perspective of children. The projects were not designed to investigate the use of cameras as a research methodology; the article is a synthesis of incidentally observed outcomes and issues raised by the use of cameras within these projects. Watching young children has told us a lot about how they engage with their environment and how to help them fit into the adult agendas we call ‘education’, ‘growing up’ and ‘life’, but how much does it tell us about how children really experience their worlds?
List of Illustrations. Acknowledgements. Introduction/Itinerary/Overture. Part I: Discovering Thirdspace: . 1. The Extraordinary Voyages of Henri Lefebvre. 2. The Trialectics of Spatiality. 3. Exploring the Spaces that Difference Makes: Notes on the Margins. 4. Increasing the Openness of Thirdspace. 5. Heterotopologies: Foucault and the Geohistory of Otherness. 6. Re--Presenting the Spatial Critique of Historicism. Part II: Inside and Outside Los Angeles: . 7. Remembrances: A Heterotopology of the Citadel--LA. 8. Inside Exopolis: Everyday Life in the Postmodern World. 9. The Stimulus of a Little Confusion: A Contemporary Comparison of Amsterdam and Los Angeles. Select Bibliography. Name Index. Subject Index.
This review catalogs approaches to involving children in local agency land use planning processes. Four approaches are defined: scholarly, practice, educational, and rights-based. There is only a weak link between any of these approaches and actual local agency land use planning. However, the rightsbased approach is the most holistic of the four. Examining these approaches raised questions. These questions are discussed and lead into the formulation of a new approach that synthesizes components from all of the studied approaches.
The Great Good Place argues that "third places" - where people can gather, put aside the concerns of work and home, and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation - are the heart of a community's social vitality and the grassroots of democracy.
Children’s drawings have gained renewed interest as anthropologists and other researchers search for methods that align with the current conceptualization of children as social agents and cultural producers. In this article, based upon fieldwork in the Central Philippines, I critically examine the claim that drawing is a “child-centered” research technique. In particular, I discuss adult–child power relationships and ethical issues that arise when asking children and youth to draw, assumptions about using children’s drawings as a means of understanding their perspectives, and the use of drawings as a tool of child and youth empowerment.
Een sensorische onderzoeksmethodologie
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