Children, Nature, Cities

Abstract

Book and Film Reviews 129 Children, Nature, Cities Ann Marie F. Murnaghan, and Laura J. Shillington, Editors (2016) Routledge, New York and London: Routledge, 240 pages $118.10 (hardcover); ISBN 978-1472453174 What are the relationships of today’s children to urban environments and urban nature and how might these relationships inform urban design and planning to better meet young people’s developmental needs? The editors of Children, Nature, Cities, Ann Marie F. Murnaghan and Laura J. Shillington, both at Canadian universities, assembled this series of research studies done in five countries regarding urban youth and their interactions with nature in modern urban environments. Murnaghan and Shillington co-wrote the introduction, the conclusion and a chapter examining sand as an element and place of play. They include 18 other authors’ studies from Japan, China, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. to inform the answers to—and prompt more questions about—the very complex questions raised by examining children’s relationship to urban environments and the nature within them. Some studies in the book involve youth as co-researchers and designers of their environments, some are theoretical in their inquiries, and all offer insight for researchers and practitioners in diverse fields: geography, urban planning, landscape architecture, architecture, education, and environmental psychology. The book could serve well as a complementary text in a class in any of these disciplines. The editors “seek to shed light on the actually existing urban natures that children live with in order to shift attention towards this important part of their lives, and improve future planning for children and nature alike” (p. 1). The book is divided into three parts: 1. Placing Normal Natures: The Moral Geographies of Young People’s Environments, 2. Negotiating Natures: Youth, Politics, and Environmental Change, and 3. Learning and Growing: Planning for Urban Natures. Eight chapters relate research done with children and adolescents in relation to their specific urban and natural environments. The book includes diverse geographies and cultural environments. From England, there is a study of the challenges that developmentally delayed children face in recreating in public parks. The U.S.-based studies reflect several unique American cultural environments. The study in Georgia utilizes theater and art with girls ages 7 to 15 to analyze a park’s affordances and develop site plans for a three-block public housing neighborhood. A study with teens attending school in downtown Tacoma, Washington reveals how they navigate and negotiate the city center to find spaces where they feel at ease with nature as they perceive it. An analysis of a Los Angeles surfing program designed to get inner-city Hispanic children and youth out onto the ocean at Manhattan Beach reveals the cultural disconnections Latino youth experience crossing the boundaries of rich and poor, Hispanic and white, asphalt and sand, in their city. A study with New York City youth in Harlem on a project oriented towards civic engagement and environmental stewardship demonstrates the empowerment youth can experience when they have the Book and Film Reviews 130 opportunity to express their ideas for improving their own community with redesigned park access. A Japanese study describes a 12-year collaborative design process with an elementary school’s pupils to create not only a nature-based play area for the children, but a biotope to create natural habitat for local plant, animal and insect species. The study from Spain examines playground and park use by parents and children in two Catalan cities and the use of a beach in Barcelona by area adolescents. The researchers analyze the users’ behaviors in these spaces and their attitudes towards access to nature and how it needs to be cared for in their cities. The research presented from China examines the rapid changes in an area that was traditionally rural and now sees much migration to the city for work. How the city migration and past rural traditions influence people’s perceptions and feelings, and the challenges the community faces to maintain the natural habitat and its inhabitants, including the animals, is the study’s focus. Children, Nature, Cities provides a rich resource of diverse approaches to research with youth in relation to nature and urban settings. The...