Children’s Free Play and Participation in the City


Book Description

This book presents an interplay of imaginative memoir-telling, action research data and future projection that reminds and inspires experiences academics, researchers, professionals, as well as a wider public to recognize the fundamental importance and the impellent need for more and better work in favour of true political and societal recognition of the needs and rights of children to play freely, to participate, to live fully and enjoy their neighbourhoods and cities, and to imagine and construct alternative futures, together with adults. The book's abundant spoken dialogue is, in effect, storytelling between children (and youth) on their own and with adults (especially the elderly). It conveys an appreciation of children’s special capacities to think critically about their everyday places—and the greater world around them—and to develop solutions (or ‘projects’) for the problems they identify. This book serves an effective catalyst for stimulating rich discussion of the theoretical and practical bases of the many themes, or areas of study, which are treated in the story.




The City at Eye Level


Book Description

Although rarely explored in academic literature, most inhabitants and visitors interact with an urban landscape on a day-to-day basis is on the street level. Storefronts, first floor apartments, and sidewalks are the most immediate and common experience of a city. These "plinths" are the ground floors that negotiate between inside and outside, the public and private spheres. The City at Eye Level qualitatively evaluates plinths by exploring specific examples from all over the world. Over twenty-five experts investigate the design, land use, and road and foot traffic in rigorously researched essays, case studies, and interviews. These pieces are supplemented by over two hundred beautiful color images and engage not only with issues in design, but also the concerns of urban communities. The editors have put together a comprehensive guide for anyone concerned with improving or building plinths, including planners, building owners, property and shop managers, designers, and architects.




Urban Ecology and Human Health


Book Description




Environment and Urbanization


Book Description




How Toddlers Thrive


Book Description

Klein argues that adult success is often established in the developmental preschool years. She shares advice for parents on how to promote such success-driving positive attributes as resilience, self-regulation, and empathy.




City Publics


Book Description

Some cities have grown into mega cities and some into uncontrolled sprawl; others have seen their centres decline with populations moving to the suburbs. In such times, questions of the public realm and public space in cities warrant even greater attention than previously received. Concerned with the borders and boundaries, constraints and limits on accepting, acknowledging and celebrating difference in public, Sophie Watson, through ethnographic studies, interrogates how difference is negotiated and performed. Focusing on spaces where to outside observers tension is relatively absent or invisible, Watson also reveals how the boundaries between the public and private are being negotiated and redrawn, and how public and private spaces are mutually constitutive. Through her investigation of the more ordinary and less dramatic forms of encounter and contestation in the city, Watson is able to conceive an urban public realm and urban public space that is heterogeneous and potentially progressive. With numerous photographs and drawings City Publics not only throws new light on encounters with others in public space, but also destabilizes dominant, sometimes simplistic, universalized accounts and helps us re-imagine urban public space as a site of potentiality, difference, and enchanted encounters.




Designing Cities with Children and Young People


Book Description

Designing Cities with Children and Young People focuses on promoting better outcomes in the built environment for children and young people in cities across the world. This book presents the experience of practitioners and researchers who actively advocate for and participate with children and youth in planning and designing urban environments. It aims to cultivate champions for children and young people among urban development professionals, to ensure that their rights and needs are fully acknowledged and accommodated. With international and interdisciplinary contributors, this book sets out to build bridges and provide resources for policy makers, social planners, design practitioners and students. The content moves from how we conceptualize children in the built environment, what we have discovered through research, how we frame the task and legislate for it, and how we design for and with children. Designing Cities with Children and Young People ultimately aims to bring about change to planning and design policies and practice for the benefit of children and young people in cities everywhere.




GIS in Sustainable Urban Planning and Management


Book Description

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.1201/9781315146638, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. GIS is used today to better understand and solve urban problems. GIS in Sustainable Urban Planning and Management: A Global Perspective, explores and illustrates the capacity that geo-information and GIS have to inform practitioners and other participants in the processes of the planning and management of urban regions. The first part of the book addresses the concept of sustainable urban development, its different frameworks, the many ways of measuring sustainability, and its value in the urban policy arena. The second part discusses how urban planning can shape our cities, examines various spatial configurations of cities, the spread of activities, and the demands placed on different functions to achieve strategic objective. It further focuses on the recognition that urban dwellers are increasingly under threat from natural hazards and climate change. Written by authors with expertise on the applications of geo-information in urban management, this book showcases the importance of GIS in better understanding current urban challenges and provides new insights on how to apply GIS in urban planning. It illustrates through real world cases the use of GIS in analyzing and evaluating the position of disadvantaged groups and areas in cities and provides clear examples of applied GIS in urban sustainability and urban resilience. The idea of sustainable development is still very much central in the new development agenda of the United Nations, and in that sense, it is of particular importance for students from both the Global South and Global North. Professionals, researchers, and students alike will find this book to be an invaluable resource for understanding and solving problems relating to sustainable urban planning and management.







Urban Playground


Book Description

What type of cities do we want our children to grow up in? Car-dominated, noisy, polluted and devoid of nature? Or walkable, welcoming, and green? As the climate crisis and urbanisation escalate, cities urgently need to become more inclusive and sustainable. This book reveals how seeing cities through the eyes of children strengthens the case for planning and transportation policies that work for people of all ages, and for the planet. It shows how urban designers and city planners can incorporate child friendly insights and ideas into their masterplans, public spaces and streetscapes. Healthier children mean happier families, stronger communities, greener neighbourhoods, and an economy focused on the long-term. Make cities better for everyone.