Children Living in Sustainable Built Environments: New Urbanisms, New Citizens by Pia Christensen Sophie Hadfield-Hill John Horton Peter Kraftl (review)

Abstract

Book Review: Children Living in Sustainable Built Environments: New Urbanisms… 165 Children Living in Sustainable Built Environments: New Urbanisms, New Citizens Pia Christensen, Sophie Hadfield-Hill, John Horton and Peter Kraftl (2018) New York: Routledge, 230 pages $86.71 (hardback); ISBN: 978-1138809390 This book is perhaps one of the first of its type: the authors have undertaken a broad, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the daily life, activities, and inclusion of children (aged 9-16) in sustainable communities. The authorssuccessfully employ mixed-methods research, integrating quantitative methods such as GPS device mapping with qualitative tools such as photographs, observations, interviews, and community-building workshops. The goal for the research is to investigate the multiple ways children’s lives are (and are not) recursively produced in, through, and with the everyday lives of sustainable urbanism. The book draws its primary inference from a study of 250 people, primarily children (part of the research project called New Urbanisms, New Citizens) and youth in four newly built sustainable communities in the United Kingdom. The research resonates with the contemporary approach to childhood studies, in which children are treated as interconnected social actors and, sometimes, participants and co-researchers who have the power to bring change to their community—and through cultural and societal processes, change within themselves as well. The book has a well-defined, three-part structure: investigating experiences of youth and children, implications of their participation in community building, and finding empirical data to facilitate the building of sustainable communities, especially from the perspective of children. In setting the context, there is no reference to the communities in the broader geographic context. This keeps the location of the study area obscured from readers. The theoretical framework of the book emerges out of Prout’s (2005) seminal work that emphasizes the heterogeneity of childhood processes. This, as the authors rightly point out, is in direct contradiction with Piaget’s theory that children’s development is homogeneous based on age. A thorough literature review in the introductory section of the book establishes the authors’ formidable knowledge of the subject. The contemporaneity of the book is revealed through the perspectives of intersectionality and intergenerationality with respect to nonhuman materialities. The authors endeavor to comprehensively present principles and visions of sustainable development from across the globe, including the United Kingdom, North America, and India. This produces a noteworthy cross-fertilization of ideas regarding the context of sustainability and the physical and social dimensions of sustainable communities. The sustainable community under research uses diverse eco-technologies that the authors find are entangled in the daily lives of the users. The authors’ approach of digging deeper into household members’, including children’s, interactions and daily lived experiences with technology seems to be relatively uncommon. The novel Book Review: Children Living in Sustainable Built Environments: New Urbanisms… 166 approach rewarded the authors through findings such as a “taken-for-grantedness” of sustainable technologies among child and adult members of the society; while it is common for the children to be curious about, for example, solar panels, in contrast, the adults easily get frustrated with and even opposed to sustainable technologies. The authors cover only the walkability aspect of children’s mobility. The book can be appreciated for laying out a brief historical background of the concept of shared streets, including examples of Dutch woonerfs and English home zones. The study finds the children to be very mobile but within boundaries, mostly specified by their parents. Contrary to the popular belief that shared streets are commonly used by children for play, the authors argue that children do not prefer shared streets unless those spaces have some kind of enclosure. In analyzing the perception of safety in shared streets, the authors point out that lack of signage in shared streets creates a state of confusion for both motorists and children. While this finding may be novel for sustainable communities of the global north, its veracity is debatable for children living in the cities of the global south where there is limited or no signage except on arterial roads. The study finds significant insights while exploring the roles and experiences of the children as participants in community-making. Interviews with children...