Children’s and young people’s cognizance of physical-symbolic reality: The production and acquisition of spatial knowledge

Abstract

In this article, we address the central topic of the call for papers, childhood educates space, from the perspective of children’s and young people’s spatial knowledge. We argue that both childhood and youth educate as much as are educated by space. To shed light on this dynamic and complex interaction, we focus on the arenas and agencies at play within the production and acquisition of spatial knowledge. The term arena refers to the spatial conditions that delineate an area of activity related to the production and acquisition of spatial knowledge, and agency denotes the crucial means, agents, and tools that are instrumental in and buttress such area of activity. To render operative the analysis, we draw on two driving themes: (i) the gradual development of a comprehensive conception of space and (ii) its accompanying (and traversing) learning processes. Moreover, to substantiate the assertion that education between childhood and youth and space is mutually constitutive, we present a selection of findings from a qualitative meta-analysis conducted to reconstruct the evolution of young people’s spatial knowledge from the 1970s onwards. All in all, we claim that the process of production and acquisition of spatial knowledge forms the basis of, on the one hand, the keenness and depth of the perception that children and young people have of the physical world and, on the other, the ways they subjectively and symbolically characterize it.

Full text

[i2] Investigación e Innovación en Arquitectura y Territorio
Ignacio Castillo Ulloa, Anna Juliane, A ngela Million y Jona Schwerer.
63
The knowledge of physical-symbolic reality of
children and youth: producing and acquiring
spatial knowledge
Vol. 12 - Núm. 1 Enero 2024, pp. 63-80. https://doi.org/10.14198/i2.25678
[i2] Investigación e Innovación en Arquitectura y Territorio. ISSN: 2341-0515
Dpto. de Expresión Gráca, Composición y Proyectos. Arquitectura. Universidad de Alicante [i2]
El conocimiento de la realidad físico-simbólica de niños y jóvenes:
producción y adquisición de conocimiento espacial.
Ignacio Castillo Ulloa
Technische Universität Berlin. Germany
i.castilloulloa@tu-berlin.de
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1382-3984
Citación: Castillo Ulloa, I., Juliane, A., Million, A., Schwerer, J. (2024) The knowledge of physical-symbolic reality of chil-
dren and youth: producing and acquiring spatial knowledge. [i2] Investigación e Innovación en Arquitectura y Territorio 12
(1), 63-80. https://doi.org/10.14198/i2.25678
Fecha de recepción: 17/08/2023
Fecha de aceptación: 04/12/2023
Financiación: la investigación de la que procede este artículo fue nanciada por la Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG, Fundación Alemana de Investigación) -Projektnummer 290045248-SFB 1265.
Conicto de intereses: los autores declaran no tener conicto de intereses.
Licencia: This work is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA
4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
© 2024 Ignacio Castillo Ulloa, Anna Juliane, Angela Million y Jona Schwerer.
Anna Juliane
Technische Universität Berlin. Germany
juliane.heinrich@isr.tu-berlin.de
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9745-6244
Angela Million
Technische Universität Berlin. Germany
a.million@tu-berlin.de
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2647-068X
Jona Schwerer
Technische Universität Berlin. Germany
schwerer@ifs.tu-darmstadt.de
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6433-9909

64
The knowledge of physical-symbolic reality of children and youth:
Producing and acquiring spatial k nowledge
Abstract.
We address the central topic of the call for papers from the perspective of children’s and young
people’s spatial knowledge: childhood educates space. We argue that both children and youth educate
space as much as they are educated by it. To shed light on this dynamic and complex interaction,
we focus on the spheres and agents at play in the process of spatial knowledge production and
acquisition. The term sphere refers to the spatial conditions that delineate an area of activity related
to the production and acquisition of spatial knowledge. For their part, agents represent the key means,
actors, and tools that contribute to enhance this sphere of activity. We drew on two driving themes
to make the analysis operative: (i) the gradual development of a comprehensive conception of space;
and (ii), its accompanying (and transversal) learning processes. Moreover, to support the statement
that childhood, youth, and space are mutually educational, we present a selection of ndings from a
qualitative meta-analysis aimed at reconstructing the evolution of young people’s spatial knowledge
from the 1970s onwards. All in all, we claim that the process of producing and acquiring spatial
knowledge forms the basis, on the one hand, of the sharpness and depth of young peoples’ perceptions
of the physical world and, on the other, of how they subjectively and symbolically characterise it.
Keywords: spatial knowledge; physical-symbolic reality; children and young people; qualitative meta-
analysis; agency; learning process
Resumen.
En este artículo, abordamos el tema central de la convocatoria desde la perspectiva del conocimiento
espacial de niños y jóvenes: la infancia educa al espacio. Sostenemos que tanto los niños como
los jóvenes educan al espacio tanto como éste les educa. Para ilustrar esta interacción dinámica
y compleja, nos centramos en las esferas y agentes que participan en el proceso de producción y
adquisición de conocimiento espacial. El término "esfera" se reere a las condiciones espaciales
que delimitan un área de actividad relacionada con la producción y adquisición de conocimiento
espacial. Por su parte, los "agentes" representan los medios, actores y herramientas que desempeñan
un papel decisivo y refuerzan esta esfera de actividad. Para hacer operativo el análisis recurrimos a
trabajar con dos temas principales: (i) el desarrollo gradual de una concepción integral del espacio;
y, (ii) la simultaneidad en sus procesos de aprendizaje (y transversales). Además, para respaldar
la armación de que la infancia, la juventud y el espacio se educan mutuamente, presentamos
una selección de hallazgos de un metaanálisis cualitativo destinado a reconstruir la evolución del
conocimiento espacial de los jóvenes desde la década de 1970 en adelante. En resumen, sostenemos
que el proceso de producción y adquisición de conocimiento espacial son la base, por un lado, del
interés y la profundidad de la percepción de los jóvenes sobre el mundo físico y, por otro lado, de
cómo lo caracterizan subjetiva y simbólicamente.
Palabras claves: conocimiento espacial; realidad físico-simbólica; niños y jóvenes; metaanálisis
cualitativo; agencia; proceso de aprendizaje

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1. The bedrock of children’s and young people’s
acumen and internalization of physical-symbolic
reality
The central claim around which we develop this article is that children and young people1
actively educate as much as are educated by space. To substantiate this argument, we explore
diverse ways in which children and young people educationally not only shape but also are
shaped by the physical-spatial congurations of the built surroundings they have direct con-
tact with. To this end, we focus on the arenas and agencies that underpin the production and
acquisition of children’s and young people’s spatial knowledge. In broad terms, we deem an
arena to be the spatial conditions (from material to symbolic) that delimit a particular area of
either production or acquisition of spatial knowledge and agency the range of catalyzing fac-
tors – resources, agents, devices – that undergirds, and is thus integral to, it. With the aim of
narrowing down and rendering manageable the analysis of the admittedly large and tangled
array of arenas and agencies of children’s and young people’s spatial knowledge, we crafted
a twofold approach based on (i) the gradual development of a comprehensive conception of
space and (ii) its concomitant learning processes. All things considered, our ndings show
that spatial knowledge lies at the heart of the ways children and young people perceive and
ascribe meaning to the(ir) physical world.
2. Background and methodology
Our discussion here stems from a research project entitled Education: The Spatial Knowledge
of Children and Young Adults and Its Application in Planning Contexts, conducted at the Colla-
borative Research Centre 1265 Re‑Figuration of Spaces of the Technical University of Berlin.
By and large, this investigation revolved around the relationship that children and young
people establish with their spaces. Moreover, as part of the methodology used, a qualitative
meta-analysis was conducted to examine the evolution of their spatial knowledge over the
past ve decades in view of “the reguration of spaces” (Knoblauch and Löw 2017). A qualita-
tive meta-analysis, a distinctive form of synthesis research, comprises and integrates ndings
from empirical studies that have already been conducted in specic target areas and discipli-
nary elds. As such, a qualitative meta-analysis constitutes an analytical process and interpre-
tative product that allows to delve systematically and comprehensively into phenomena and
answer research questions dierent from those of the sampled studies. While our approach
to qualitative meta-analysis was inspired by the meta-ethnographic method (Noblit and Hare
1988) and suggested improvements (Doyle 2003), we still modied and adapted the method
according to the requirements of the research project (see Castillo et al. forthcoming; Castillo
and Schwerer 2021. The sample comprises 60 empirical studies that have been published as
1 Sure enough, dening the terms children, young people, childhood and youth is problematic and requires
a longer debate than the length and breadth of this article allows. Suce it to say, then, that we stick to the
view of the academic eld of children’s geographies, which rejects biological, essentialist, and universalist con-
ceptions of these terms, thereby framing them as social constructs based on the so-called new social studies
of childhood (James et al. 1998; Holloway and Valentine 2000a, 2000b; Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2011).
Moreover, rather than portraying childhood and youth as homogenized experiences, they are conceived (in
particular, for the purpose of presenting the results of the qualitative meta-analysis) as contingent categories
susceptible to the diverse (social, historical, and spatial) contexts in which the everyday lives of children and
young people take place.

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The knowledge of physical-symbolic reality of children and youth:
Producing and acquiring spatial k nowledge
books, edited books, book chapters and journal articles by various authors. These empirical
studies have looked into dierent topics that are, to a greater or lesser extent, related to the
spatial knowledge of children and young people; the fact that their ndings have been put
into another perspective to answer dissimilar research questions is what constitutes the qua-
litative meta-analysis’ kernel. Some of themes addressed in these investigations are children’s
and young people’s: agency, mobility, play practices, everyday routines, spatial perception,
spatial appropriation of public space, use of digital devices and ICTs, amid others (Castillo et
al. forthcoming: 243). Moreover, the sample covers a wide range of disciplines (geography,
anthropology, urban planning, sociology, education, amid others), geographical contexts (en-
compassing all ve world regions), research methods (participant observation, interviews,
participatory mapping, focus groups, photovoice and in some studies (e.g. Milstein 2013) re-
searched children and young people actually helped to conduct the research), age groups
(from 3 to 18 years old) and times of research (from the 1920s to the 2010s).2 The main ndings
of the qualitative meta-analysis were synthetized in the form of a monograph (see Castillo et
al. forthcoming). In what follows, we present results that were not explicitly included to dis-
cuss children’s and young people’s cognizance of physical-symbolic reality in the light of their
production and acquisition of spatial knowledge.
3. Grasping and learning (from and to alter) the
material surroundings
To put the results derived from the qualitative meta-analysis conducted into perspective, we
utilized, as previously mentioned, two thematic axes. As such, these conceptual guidelines
provide the basis for the discussion on the production and acquisition of spatial knowledge,
in the light of the ndings subsequently presented, as the catalyzer of children’s and young
people’s cognizance of physical-symbolic reality.
3.1. An objective view of the physical‑symbolic world:
The journey from sensori‑motor perception to lasting
schemata
Children and young people further their intellectual development whenever they produce or
acquire spatial knowledge, for it is linked to their cognition. Human beings develop, loosely
speaking, their cognitive capacity in two stages. Firstly, a sensori-motor perception begins to
evolve, thereby causing the separation of the self from the world. Throughout this initial
stage, the intellectual development is of a global and synthetic character and, despite the dis-
tinction of the self/world divide, “objective and subjective facts are still closely connected and
are often intertwined in the process of evaluating self and world” (Sack 1980: 122). During the
ensuing phase, given that conceptual thought emerges, humas are able to progressively both
perceive and represent themselves and their worlds separately through symbols, because, by
creating “a wedge between the subjective and the objective”, symbols “further dierentiate
2 More details about the sample are provided in Castillo et al. (forthcoming, Chapter 3) and the appendix (p.
243).

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and separate self from the world” (Sack 1980: 122). By the time this dierentiation has beco-
me apparent, an objective view of the physical-symbolic world has been attained. In addition,
children and young people further draw the subjective-objective wedge by gradually engaging
with their surroundings, via sensorial and motoric interactions thereby rendering them mea-
ningful. Consequently, they enliven them, so to speak.
Thus, children’s and young people’s objective view of the physical-symbolic world is never
completely detached from their subjective one; in fact, they shift from one to the other with
far greater facility than adults do. As a result, children and young people set o an iterati-
ve discovering process that, at some point, as sustained by Piaget and Inhelder (1967: 375),
allows them to obtain a comprehensive conception of space as well as of a spatial system
“grounded in and derived from substance and their spatial properties and interrelationships”
(Sack 1980: 127). Given these points, we claim that children and young people produce and
acquire, throughout their intellectual development and framed by their spatial systems, embo‑
died‑experienced and mediated stocks of spatial knowledge. An embodied-experienced stock
of spatial knowledge is produced through bodily and sensory explorations of the environment
without any intermediating agency. On the other hand, mediated stocks of spatial knowledge
are acquired by way of an intermediating agency. For instance, when children and young
people acquire spatial knowledge through a mediated exposure to it and then transform the
spatial knowledge they have been exposed to into know-how and technical use of tools and
construction materials. Moreover, formal-institutional and non-formal learning processes, we
argue, play accordingly a decisive role therein.
3.2. Learning processes: Arenas and agencies of spatial
knowledge production and acquisition
Stocks of spatial knowledge, as we have hinted at, are produced and acquired by children and
young people through their ability to develop more complex mental schemata and stable spa-
tial systems. As such, the production and acquisition of spatial knowledge are learning pro-
cesses through which children and young people obtain, construct, and rene their literacy
of the natural and material surroundings. Learning can take the shape of formal‑institutional
or non‑formal processes. Whereas non-formal learning relates to bodily learning and skills
acquired and developed through the senses, formal-institutional learning is mostly based on
abstract and theoretical knowledge imparted in oral and written form. Furthermore, formal,
as opposed to non-formal, learning unfolds in institutional spatial settings – like schools and
their premises and university campuses. By comparison, non-formal learning does not con-
form to institutionalization, because it is not subject to a xed curriculum, does not certify, is
not state-led and takes place for the most part beyond spatial settings of formal-institutional
learning (Smith and Phillips 2017). However, the type or even absence of an intermediating
learning agency may well render learning processes non-formal, though they occur within
spatial settings of formal-institutional learning.
Of all the aforementioned factors that distinguish formal-institutional from non-formal lear-
ning processes, we place the emphasis on their arenas (the spatial settings that delimit them)
and agencies (the purposeful actions through which they are enacted). We have done this to
found our ndings on the innate spatial reference embedded in learning processes. As Jutta
Ecarius and Martina Löw (1997: 8; own translation) observe, “[e]ducational science often over-
looks that education always has a spatial reference [...]. The reference to space becomes clear
through its object: the work with children and young people [...]. Pedagogical practice is [thus]
spatialized by its reference to action and its spatialization”. Whereas detecting spatial referen-

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The knowledge of physical-symbolic reality of children and youth:
Producing and acquiring spatial k nowledge
ces within formal-institutional learning is a bit of a cinch, pinpointing those of non-formal
learning processes does turn out to be signicantly trickier. Thus, to avoid falling into the
trap of ascribing the status of non-formality to everything that children and young people do
outside school hours and premises and underscore the spatiality of their non-formal learning
processes, the agency at play and underpinning the learning process must be considered too.
Agency, from a general standpoint, constitutes “a person’s capacity to act towards an end”
(Thrift 2014: 62). Moreover, agency is always embodied and, therefore, not mind-related (Frie
2008, Taylor 1995). Agency also entails actions performed in the physical-material world and,
rather than behavioral, is openly purposive (Thrift 2014: 62-63). As such, agency is fundamen-
tal to constructing a comprehensive conception of space through which children and young
people develop an objective view of the physical-symbolic world. Against this backdrop, the
agency of children and young people prominently underpins the production of embodied-ex-
perienced stocks of spatial knowledge. By contrast, the agency of the person transmitting
intermediately and deliberately stocks of spatial knowledge to children and young people
largely shapes their acquisition. In the context of learning processes, the agency at issue, in
our view, varies according to the type of learning – formal-institutional or non-formal. Regar-
ding the latter, the accent is on the agency of children and young people and even of the very
physical disposition of space itself. In such case, space, seen as a third teacher, exerts its own
agency, given that, according to the so-called “Reggio Emilia approach”, knowledge is both
sensitive to and markedly inuenced by space (Gandini and Gambretti 1997, Edwards et al.
2011). Consequently, the arena and agency of the non-formal learning process happens to be
one and the same. On the other hand, the agency of formal-institutional learning processes is,
for the most part, that of the persons who, ratied by their institutional (symbolic) identity,
direct the learning process: from schoolteachers to architects and planners that give guided
excursions to students to researchers that conduct collaborative research with children and
young people.
Overall, through the twofold conceptual lens of a comprehensive conception of space and
learning processes, we explore the weight arenas and agencies have on children’s and young
people’s production and acquisition of spatial knowledge. In so doing, we gained insights
into how they develop their spatial cognizance and render sensible and meaningful the phy-
sical-symbolic reality that demarcates their everyday lives. The ndings outlined in the fo-
llowing section are framed from two main angles. For one thing, we put into perspective that
children’s and young people’s spatial knowledge develops in accordance with their dexterity
to produce an (internal‑subjective) comprehensive view of both space and spatial systems. For
the other, we see that almost exclusively non-formal learning processes substantively impact
not only such ability, but also much of how spatial knowledge is produced and acquired, for
they mediate the internalization – within children’s and young people’s intellectual develop-
ment – of environmental (external‑objective) transformations. The ndings, furthermore, are
discussed in view of the stocks of spatial knowledge and their nature – embodied‑experienced
and mediated. Afterwards, we draw some conclusions by going back to our departing thesis:
that childhood and youth and space educate one another. An important observation is that
the ndings are likely to have a historical smack, given the ultimate goal of the qualitative me-
ta-analysis from which they are derived: the reconstruction of the evolution of young people’s
spatial knowledge from 1970 onwards. It is also worthwhile mentioning that, out of the 60
studies that compose the meta-analyzed sample, only those whose contents oered valuable
material to look into arenas and agencies of spatial knowledge are quoted. In addition, and
with respect to the clarication made previously about the diculties to dene terms like
children, young people, childhood, and the like in an unequivocal manner (see note 1), when
presenting the results terms like teenagers, adolescents and youths are employed to remain
true to the term chosen by the authors of the sampled studies.

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4. Arenas and agencies of children’s and young
people’s spatial knowledge: Learning to decode
and situate oneself in the material-symbolic world
The core of this section is the relationship between arenas and agencies in and by which spa-
tial knowledge is either in an experiential and bodily fashion produced or mediately gained
by children and young people. This relationship between arenas and agencies in turn makes
apparent whether children and young people possess or lack the capacity to be aware of and
grasp stocks of spatial knowledge. Amid a myriad of arenas, those deemed by children and
young people as protected and safe – such as shopping malls, which are ostensibly overriding
traditional public spaces (like squares, plazas, parks) as children’s and young people’s sphere
of social intercourse – stand out. Throughout the collection of meta-analyzed studies, we have
identied that children and young people have a rich tapestry of actions whereby they uidly
and savvily produce and acquire stocks of spatial knowledge. They encompass, for instance,
decoding restrictive elements of spatial arrangements; developing tactics and strategies of re-
sistance or even transgression; and adapting to adult-tailored built environments. Moreover,
our ndings show that children and young people cultivate such spatial practices, in order to
cope with ambivalent and simultaneous dynamics of exclusion-inclusion, couple specic in-
terests to corresponding spaces and, more broadly, nd a place of their own. Overall, children
and young people usually align their spatial cognizance and performance seeking to grasp
and seize opportunities to intervene, symbolically and/or materially, space by connoting and
anchoring therewith themselves to it.
4.1. The search for safe‑enabling personal territories
Among the arenas of spatial knowledge’s production and/or acquisition, the shopping center
has gained prominence as a frequented space by children and young people due to, amid
other reasons, the safety and room for maneuver it oers them. Moreover, these spaces of
consumption have been progressively superseding – though have not completely displaced –
traditional public spaces such as streets, squares and parks as children’s and young people’s
preferred spaces. A case in point are children who lived in various neighborhoods of Los
Angeles during the mid-1990s and where “privatized consumer nodes are […] often the only
‘havens’ for children” for their
[c]arefully controlled, predictable commercial environments oer more protection
and security than many of the children’s neighborhoods, and certainly more than the
unpredictable, poorly maintained parks and public places in urban LA. Even though
these enterprises promote passive consumption rather than more engaging activity,
the children say […] they oer opportunities for recreational pleasure not found in the
larger urban landscape. […] They now oer music, events, programs and other ‘public’
community activities such as Halloween ‘trick or treating’ on their premises (Buss 1995:
349).
Such positive sentiment is echoed by young Britons who, at the turn of the twenty-rst cen-
tury, visited regularly ve malls located in the East-Midlands and regarded them as safe and
adventurous milieus for their socialization. As some interviewee assessed it: “we hang around
a lot here [...] a group of us, usually three or four of us [...] it’s cool [...] there’s always something
[...] there’s a buzz when we stand here. (Girl aged 13, Grosvenor Centre)” (Matthews et al. 2000:

70
The knowledge of physical-symbolic reality of children and youth:
Producing and acquiring spatial k nowledge
286). Further, these young Britons found in malls suitable conditions to meet with friends;
circumvent boredom (largely associated with spaces outside malls for they lack excitement);
interact with other peers; become a member of, or even create their own, groups; and evolve
in their social prestige, provided that “in their accounts there was a strong sense that hanging
around with friends in a shopping mall confers a certain social credibility” (Matthews et al.
2000: 287).
Both US-American children and British youths were attracted to malls, because they appre-
ciated the sense of security they got while hanging out there. For instance, in the latter case,
“the implicit nature of the mall, with its eect of panoptic surveillance, denes a ‘safeness’
that is seldom experienced elsewhere when young people are out and about” (Matthews et
al. 2000: 282). What is more, interviewees very much perceived and cherished such safeness
and thus deemed malls to be a secure setting with valuable aordances, which enabled them
to “develop their identity, individuality and even promulgate acts of rebellion, without real
danger” (Matthews et al. 2000: 291). US-American children, similarly, claimed to not only feel
safe from potential harms within “these protected enclaves”, but also assessed to “experience
a ‘freedom’ and mobility which is developmentally appropriate for their age, but which they
do not enjoy in the ‘naturalistic’ settings around their homes or school” (Buss 1995: 349).
Interestingly, malls’ captivating power does not exclusively reside in the safety they project
onto children and young people. Contrariwise, contravening the ever-present surveillance and
house rules of shopping centers may well be the enticing factor, as teenagers’ transgressive,
gender-specic and class-bound spatial appropriation of malls in Barcelona shows (Ortiz et
al. 2014). When researched adolescents visited the shopping center of their preference, an
appropriation process unfolded based on the disobedience to its spatial arrangement, whose
purpose is to trigger consumerism by adults. Hence, the behavior of these Spanish youths in
the mall was initially
Similar to that of adults, but to locate their bodies in these spaces, which have been
conceived and created for grownups, represents a physical exploration, a representation
of their identity, and a way of transgressing a space essentially meant for the adult
public (trying on clothes without the intention of buying it, putting on makeup in the
stores, among other explorations; occasionally, the misbehavior could go a bit further,
for instance, by attempting to sneak into the movie theaters) (Ortiz et al. 2014: 47; own
translation).
Such waywardness, as aforesaid, has bearings on teenagers’ identity formation, since these
spaces of consumerism – as the previously referred to studies (Buss 1995, Matthews et al.
2000) also demonstrate – have been identied as sites where, particularly, young people have
social intercourse and express their own identities. In short, they manage to further a spatial
identity-belonging. However, there are nuances worthwhile underscoring. Whereas US-Ame-
rican children and British youths sought the security of the mall and, in so doing, blended
into the shopping centers’ spatial pedagogization (that is, intended uses embedded in its ma-
terial arrangements; see Castillo et al. 2021: 297. and forthcoming: Chapter VII), Spanish
teenagers, through their transgressive spatial appropriation of the mall, carved their identities
according to gender-based preferences as well as socioeconomic status. Given their
inherent classist character, for children and young people with limited (or non-existent) pur-
chasing power, shopping centers are often contradictory spaces, for they represent spaces for
the consumption of desired goods that they will likely be never able to buy. This exclusion
becomes even more blatant and straightforward when it is overtly bound to poverty. In that
regard, young residents of the Canaansland squatter camp in Johannesburg, beguiled by the
unusual oers they could nd in a nearby shopping mall (from window shopping to rides on
escalators to video games), were constantly admonished (even though they had been granted
permission by their parents) whenever they dared to set foot therein. Adults, who were also
from the squatter camp, believed these young South Africans were merely shirking chores,

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scolded them and told them to go back home (Swart-Kruger 2002). Accordingly, their spatial
identity-belonging followed a sort of inverse logic – they were not only constantly reminded
that they had no place there, but also could not transgress adults’ commands and the mall’s
spatial pedagogization. To put it dierently, the gure of the shopping mall impacted the
identity formation of these young South Africans as they were reminded that they do not and
may not ever belong there. By and large, we take this kind of harsh experiences that children
and young people have to endure to be a fundamental part of their eorts to nd their place
in a remarkably adult-centric world; that is to say, their quest for a safe-enabling personal
territory where to feel at ease.
4.2. To see a world in a grain of sand: Children’s and
young people’s adaptations of adult‑tailored built
environments
It comes as no surprise that built environments are predominantly responsive, and thus bes-
poken, to adults needs and preferences. In this regard, a tricky situation are the child‑ and
youth‑dedicated spaces that, though attend to their penchants, also enable varying degrees
of control and spatial pedagogization. Shopping centers, as we have discussed above, may
well be seen as an example of the ambivalence that permeates these spaces. For instance, the
researched Britons from the East-Midlands evince to have had a paradoxical perception about
adults’ surveillance in malls, in the extent that it was viewed simultaneously connected to the
feeling of being excluded from the public and providing a much-appreciated safety (Matthews
et al. 2000). Thus, we sustain that the role of adults, especially, parents, although not all that
explicit in the studies we have hitherto addressed, is decisive within children’s and young
people’s decoding of restrictions and developing of either adaptation or resistance tactics
and strategies in shopping malls – and beyond. Moreover, children and young people deploy
this tactical and strategical set to carve out identity strongholds in somewhat adverse built
environments, at times, all by themselves and, at others, with the aid of adults. The previously
mentioned children from Los Angeles, for example,
display an ability to respond actively to adversity. The[ir] […] photos and journals show
how they adapt to a built environment created by adults, and how they are manipulating
and changing that environment to meet their own needs better. With words and
pictures, the children tell […] how they resist spatial domination, and engage in creative
activities within the urban setting. They show how they claim spaces as their own, and
how they establish a small degree of spatial hegemony within the larger materiality of
the city […]. They describe feelings of belonging and emotional attachment to pieces of
public art or landmarks which give them a sense of comfort and control over the spaces
they occupy and navigate (Buss 1995: 350).
While these US-American children undertook their adaptations of their built environment
on their own, young Ethiopians, who resided rst in a refugee camp in Sudan and were later
relocated to Ada Bai, a settlement for returnees in their home country, had, contrastingly, the
active support of, and counted on, their parents (Hammond 2003). The spatial-material arran-
gement of refugee camps and settlements oered these researched youths little to no chances
for their antics and practices through which to trigger a home-making process. However,
parents, as the study makes manifest, tried to support their children’s emplacement process
by teaching them, and thus furthering strong associations with, spatial and socio-cultural
factors in a long-term process. These young Ethiopians were therefore taught songs and tra-
ditions typical of Ada Bai, to accompany their process of situating themselves in the midst of

72
The knowledge of physical-symbolic reality of children and youth:
Producing and acquiring spatial k nowledge
unknown surroundings. Interestingly enough, a dual sentiment towards the notion of home
seems to have arisen, for interviewees’ answers to the question which place they considered as
home indicated “a sort of bilateral construction of a home, with Ada Bai occupying the role of
‘everyday home’ and the highlands that of ‘family home’” (Hammond 2003: 92). This twofold
construction of home, moreover, has a quite pragmatic bedrock, provided that interviewed
young Ethiopians stated to have “started their lives over so many times that the concept of
‘going back’ to a life that had once known was so unpractical as to be unthinkable. […]. Life
before was better because we were in our homes. But this is a new life, and we must try to
make it as complete as possible” (Hammond 2003: 91).
The fact that children and young people can establish direct connections with their immedia-
te environments, determines the degree to which they can grasp and seize opportunities to
intervene it symbolically and/or materially. In other words, they develop a spatial performan‑
ce that harnesses either an artifact-based language of appropriation (Buss 1995) or a spatial
knowledge transmission from parents (Hammond 2003). Regarding the latter, our ndings
show that another mechanism whereby parents propel children’s and young people’s spatial
cognizance of the built environment is by meaningfully and vocally annotating spaces during
everyday journeys. The spatial cognizance of some young US-Americans, who grew up in the
small town of Inavale, New England, during the late 1970s-early 1980s, was boosted while
daily moving around with their parents and by switching from a passive to an active “invol-
vement in navigation (i.e., directional decision-making)” (Hart 1981: 222-223). In addition to
that, “the eect of meaningful verbal annotations to places during travel” (Hart 1981: 222-223)
turned out to be essential for these researched young US-Americans to produce specic stocks
of spatial knowledge from their built environment, for they were able to recall specic spaces
through meaningful vocalization – as opposed to mechanical memorization.
To be sure, it is for neither children nor young people easy to modify adult-tailored built
environments. They are confronted with ambivalence (such as the Britons in the East-Mid-
lands shopping malls) or a remarkably unresponsive and meagre urban landscape (as that of
the neighborhoods of Los Angeles during the mid-1990s). Yet, parents lend young people a
helping hand to have them settle in after being (repeatedly) displaced (Hammond 2003) and
develop an annotating articulating system to confer signicance to spaces embedded in their
surroundings (Hart 1981). This subsection, in brief, is about how children and young people
construct their imaginations and visions, appreciate the big picture from a detail, connect (or
not) to what it is important to them and, recalling William Blakes’ Auguries of Innocence, “see
a world in a grain of sand”.
4.3. An accordion‑like interplay of arenas and agencies
of children’s and young people’s spatial knowledge
The multifarious physical-symbolic worlds that children and young people see in sand grains,
our ndings suggest, are to a large extent driven by the relationship between roaming options,
roaming range and spatial structure. This interaction, moreover, reects a coupling of inte-
rests (varying according to gender and class) and specic spaces (e.g., cyber cafés, shopping
malls, music clubs). How much leeway children and young people have to freely roam, rather
unsurprisingly, is markedly determined by parents’ mindsets and aspirational prospects they
have for their children. The divide between working- and middle-class children, who grew up
in Tapei, Taiwan, during the late 1960s-early 1970s, evinces such condition (Schak 1972). Whe-
reas working-class families had a village-type outlook, which included a strong relationship
with neighbors, middle-class families performed a home-centered lifestyle with rare, if any,
interaction with neighbors. Consequently, working-class children spent their leisure time fre-
ely wandering around their neighborhood, while middle-class children, save when they went

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Ignacio Castillo Ulloa, Anna Juliane, A ngela Million y Jona Schwerer.
73
to school, were kept at home (Schak 1972). Such accentuated dierences of roaming leeway
(whether unhindered or allowed), in conjunction with the type of mobility (walking, bus ri-
ding, being driven), also shape children’s and young people’s spatial perception and structu-
ring of their immediate surroundings.
The previously referred to young US-Americans in suburban New England, around the same
time as their Taiwanese peers, expanded their roaming range in accordance with parental per-
mission. As a result, these US-Americans went as far as where they managed to walk and felt
safe insofar as they and, above all, their parents were acquainted with the spaces they could
reach (Hart 1981). A mapping exercise made this aspect manifest:
Margaret was able to locate precisely the important places around her home […]. Most
of these places lie within her ‘free range’. (Free range refers to the area a child may visit
without asking permission or telling an adult each time; it describes the primary area of
play). […] There are a number of families living across the street whom Margaret is also
allowed to visit with her brother with permission – her mother knowing full well that
the adults in those three homes will watch out for her daughter. (Hart 1981: 209-210).
Even though it is not explicitly stated in the study, boys presumably dared (and perhaps were
granted permission) to venture beyond their parent-sanctioned range. Be that as it may, a gen-
der divide is more palpable in the spatial structures of young Indians who, by the end of the
1990s, were living in the marginalized outskirts of Bangalore, India (Bannerjee and Driskell
2002).
Similar to the cases of the Taiwanese children and young US-Americans, the issue of security
was also determinant for these young Indians to enjoy a lesser or greater freedom to ramble.
Hence, their spatial structures were characterized by a relatively ample freedom of movement
fostered by a widespread sentiment of safety – though as long as they remained within the
physical boundaries of Sathyanagar, the self-built settlement they lived in. Because most of
them had practically spent all their lives there and even had various relatives close by, they
claimed to feel permanently at ease all over the settlement. Also, they knew very well where
they were not supposed to go and what they were to stay away from, given the exhibited “high
level of awareness about the people and places to be avoided” (Bannerjee and Driskell 2002:
145). Beyond the settlement’s border, the spatial structure of these researched youths signals,
as aforesaid, blatant gender dierences. While boys “move very condently even to conti-
guous settlements, such as Naganapalya, Byapanahalli and Seva Nagar, a couple of kilometres
away”; girls, though “familiar with most parts inside Sathyanagar, […] are not very familiar
with what lies beyond its boundaries” (Bannerjee and Driskell 2002: 145). The causes for this
range from mothers’ anxiety – because their daughters are not home – to potential teasing
or even sexual abuse. As some of the interviewed girls explain: “‘Father says don’t go too far
from home. When I ask what is the reason, he says, “Just do as I tell you to”’ (Valli, age 13) /
‘The menfolk are very bad in Byapanahalli [an adjacent settlement]. They use indecent langua-
ge...and tease young girls’ (Maia, age 12)” (Bannerjee and Driskell 2002: 145).
Parental permission, largely based on safety preoccupations, as it has been underscored, is a
determinant of children’s and young people’s roaming range, which in turn shapes their abili-
ty to produce and acquire spatial knowledge. For example, girls, as opposed to boys, are likely
to produce less varied embodied-experienced stocks of spatial knowledge, for their everyday
trajectories are limited to repetitive arenas of spatial knowledge production: predominantly
their homes and adjacent spaces. Their agency, moreover, is signicantly reduced as well.
Similarly, children’s and young people’s mobility is, to varying degrees, a key factor therein.
In that regard, it is conspicuous that, in none of the abovementioned studies, an autonomous
mobility is being purposely encouraged; much to the contrary, and particularly for girls, it is

74
The knowledge of physical-symbolic reality of children and youth:
Producing and acquiring spatial k nowledge
visibly restricted. However, the case of Bolivian children, who had to attend school in down-
town La Paz during the rst half of the 2010s, indicates somewhat otherwise, for they moved
autonomously around – yet, not precisely out of choice. Interviewed children, at an already
fairly short age, rode the bus or walked by themselves and were exposed to undesired circum-
stances. This, far from being their preference and decision, responds, sometimes, to ultimate
necessity. For instance, when their family composition changed, children’s daily routines un-
derwent pronounced changes. As one study participant explains: “‘my dad used to escort me
[to school], but now it is my mom who does it, my dad is gone […]. Sometimes, when there’s
not much trac, I am allowed to walk here on my own’ (José 10 years old […])” (Serrano 2015:
11; own translation). On such account, this child’s mobility was subject to the itinerary of the
parent who remained in charge of the household, the mother. Hence, autonomy and indepen-
dence, rather than being the outcome of an incremental process (like running, increasingly,
errands on their own), may be fairly enforced upon children and young people. Consequently,
key aspects – safety, proper age, condence – were put aside for these Bolivian children. As a
result, they had to learn how to move around on the way. As a young girl put it:
‘…I was once left behind there, at home, and I was already late to come here [, the
school]. “Just get o [the bus] by yourself”, I’ve been told. [Who?]. My grandpa; and I’ve
gotten o by myself, I didn’t know exactly where [I had to go] and then I saw Riosiño
square, I got o and came here. [On your own you’ve learnt to come here, haven’t you?].
Yes’ (Evelyn 10 years old […]) (Serrano 2015: 11; own translation).
Alongside parents’ direct and perspicuous inuence, children and young people expand their
roaming range and therewith calibrate their spatial structures according to their personal
interests and necessities. Even these Bolivian children, as extreme as their situation was, ma-
naged to align their roaming leeway with obligations they were assigned. Constant journeys
between their two referential anchoring spaces – the home and the school – eventually turned
into a meaning-ascribing and meaning-allocation mechanism through which self-care strate-
gies were developed. Such a meaning-ascribing process allowed these children to construct
precise routes; though not necessarily because they have roamed freely enough throughout
their barrios. But rather because they had to optimize their time to cope with errands and
other family responsibilities they were entrusted with. As an interviewee explains:
‘...coming down from my house, there is a big market [...] it has two doors, one to go
directly to the [bus] terminal and the other to go to a park, it’s just a park [...] sometimes
[my mom] sends me alone to take my sister for a walk [your little sister?] yes [...] because
sometimes my mother trusts me, I go to buy vegetables by myself [how long has it been
so?] since I was 7 years old…’ (Boris 11 years old […]) (Serrano 2015: 11; own translation).
Due to specic socioeconomic conditions, these researched children’s roaming range within
their neighborhoods started progressively to change, the more they were allowed to go outsi-
de by themselves. Thus, it was “their experiences, when they are accompanied or when they
start to go out alone what allows the streets, the shop, the park, the sidewalk, the corner or
the routes to become familiar places and start to acquire meaning” (Serrano 2015: 11; own
translation).
Transcending material as well as symbolic boundaries, as the case of Bolivian children makes
it apparent, is essential for children and young people to amplify their roaming freedom.
While Bolivian children were somehow forced to by their own parents (whose behavior was
triggered by dire socio-economic conditions), expatriate German teenagers, encaged in gated
communities in Shanghai, surpassed their material limits propelled by a desire to enjoy urban
nightlife or simply nd a hangout – and, more importantly, escape the controlling gaze of

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75
adults. An illustrative example is a frequented convenience store to which these youths were
drawn to listen to
their music, play pool or simply hang out and discuss the songs, exams and homework
issues, weekend plans or problems they have with classmates, teachers or parents. A
few male teenagers even come here to hangout after school or in the evenings to drink
beer, smoke and chat (Sander 2016: 242).
An interviewee, captivatingly, drew translocal parallels between how youth in Germany and
Shanghai discern spaces where to pursue their interests, by assessing that the store in ques-
tion is a space “where teenagers can just go […] [it is to us what] a park or what a bus stop or
a playground is for youths in Germany”; that is, a space without any “problems with distur-
bance or breach of the peace” (Sander 2016: 242). The store, as such, became an identity stron-
ghold where youths performed their spatial identity‑belonging. Moreover, these expatriate
German teens mirrored adult behavior, gendered their identities and related to Shanghai’s
cosmopolitan lifestyle, provided that
[l]eaving the compound is often linked to activities that are seen as liberating, like
hanging out at ‘the shop’, or as crucial for urban cosmopolitan consumer culture:
shopping, eating out or clubbing with an international community. Claim for these
spaces is vital for [these] expatriate youths in establishing an emotional connection
to their environment and in activating value of Shanghai for their own narratives of
belonging. The suburban housing estates fail to oer such spaces of negotiation or
connection (Sander 2016: 243).
Gender, more distinctively in some studies than others, comes to the fore in the various ways
children and young people further their leeway to roam and adapt accordingly their spatial
structures – which, again, has direct bearings on their spatial knowledge production and ac-
quisition. Thus, boys and girls relate certain spaces with specic interests distinctively. We
assume that expats boys and girls, when they went clubbing in Shanghai, took over space and
expressed their identities dierently, because they were, in the end, pursuing dissimilar
interests. In an akin manner, but exhibiting a much clearer gap, the way Spanish boys and
girls from the Barcelonese barrio Bésos-Maresme structured their everyday spaces were poles
apart. More specically, the wedge between them was driven by the uses of media and con-
comitant spaces. Interests of interviewed boys revolved starkly around playing videogames
and, along with playing football, dominated their activity logs. Girls, on the other hand, “like
going for a walk, window shopping or simply talking” (Ortiz et al. 2014: 47; own translation).
Furthermore, among the adolescents who partook in the study, such gender divide, regarding
the uses (and spaces) of media, was accentually clear: “‘To the cybercafé only boys go, because
we play strategic games, those of army […] and they [, the girls,] don’t like that’ (José)” (Ortiz et
al. 2014: 47; own translation).
On the whole, children and young people, for the most part, harmonize their spatial cognizan‑
ce and performance with their (steady) exploration for opportunities to enter new domains,
thereby breaking free from imposed constraints (notably, by parents). Hence, children’s and
young people’s roaming range, far from being gradual and broaden in accordance with age,
resembles an accordion-like pattern – as much as it can expand, it can also contract. Conse-
quently, the production and acquisition of stocks of spatial knowledge, rather than happening
incrementally and coordinately, is shaken by the dynamical interplay between the numerous
arenas (shopping malls, cyber cafés, convenience stores, ways to school) and the diverse forms
in which children, young people and adults (sometimes even antagonistically) perform their
respective agencies therein. Moreover, while we have presented our ndings without directly
and explicitly addressing the notion of learning process, it is easily inferable that non-formal

76
The knowledge of physical-symbolic reality of children and youth:
Producing and acquiring spatial k nowledge
learning, as it was already hinted at, traverses the discussion on embodied‑experienced exa-
minations of and attempts at altering the built environment as well as buttress children’s
and young people’s quest for safe-enabling personal territories. Likewise, and as pointed out
in the theoretical framework, the production and acquisition of spatial knowledge are, in
and of themselves, learning processes, which, seen through the presented ndings, are pre-
dominantly non-formal. With all these observations in mind, we now go back to our central
claim – childhood and youth educate and are educated by space – to provide a few general
conclusions.
5. Conclusion: Attempting to see the world
through children’s and young people’s eyes
The previously outlined ndings show the diverse ways in which children and young people,
by way of their comprehensive conception of space, progressively accommodate the various
arenas of their spatial knowledge production and acquisition – the shopping mall, the ways
to school and even the cities they live in – within more durable spatial schemata. We contend
that such a process, is a learning process for the most part of a non-formal character. In other
words, children and young people, by setting their agency in motion, explore in a sensory
manner their adult-oriented environments and, in so doing, they become aware that they and
the world are not one and the same. Furthermore, despite palpable sentiments of alienation
and exclusion, children and young people – at times on their own, at others with the aid of
their parents – manage to situate themselves in the world and bridge the subjective-objective
gap that shapes their perception and internalization thereof. That is how they obtain and re-
ne their cognizance of physical-symbolic reality.
Moreover, through their cognitive spatial development, children and young people ascribe
meaning to the built environment and seek to carve a place of their own – to feel at ease at a
shopping mall, to settle in a refugee camp or to turn a convenience store into a hangout.
Children and young people, when denoting their physical reality, exert a powerful imagina-
tion that allows them, for instance, to overcome harsh material circumstances shaping their
lives like those permeating self-built settlements and squatter camps. At the same time, as our
ndings show, the material arrangements, and varying according to gender, class and parental
restriction, visibly determine children’s and young people’s spatial structures, roaming leeway
and roaming range – and, by extension, the way spatial knowledge is produced and acquired.
In short, space acting as third teacher of children’s and young people’s spatial literacy. A case
in point is the way the production and acquisition of spatial knowledge of young Indian boys
and girls in the self-built settlement of Sathyanagar is markedly inuenced by its physical
conditions (boundaries, state of houses and roads, availability of services) and contingent on
gender (with boys enjoying greater leeway to wander around and beyond the settlement –
thus daringly disobeying the teacher).
Returning to our initial claim, it is both the various ways children and young people produ-
ce embodied‑experienced and acquire intermediated stocks of spatial knowledge – deemed
a non-formal learning process – and their arenas and agencies what makes apparent that
childhood and youth educate as much as are educated by space. To substantiate this assertion,
the methodological-analytical approach of qualitative meta-analysis must be underscored: it
made possible to put into perspective the manifold dimensions that traverse as well as the
factors that inuence children’s and young people’s spatial knowledge, for it constitutes a
suitable way to deal with the unavoidable analytical complexity caused by the diverse – and
sometimes even diametrically opposed – understandings of space, childhood, youth and lear-

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77
ning; seen as operational concepts rather than theoretical constructs. Hence, we were able
to, as consistently as feasible, illuminate children’s and young people’s cognizance of physi-
cal-symbolic reality – and, in so doing, attempted to imagine, and thus portray, what we belie-
ve the world looks likes through their eyes.
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Acknowledgements
The research from which this articles comes was Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research
Foundation)—Projektnummer 290045248—SFB 1265.

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The knowledge of physical-symbolic reality of children and youth:
Producing and acquiring spatial k nowledge