The city from the point of view of children: social inequalities in representing and using urban public spaces

Abstract

This paper was written under the research project CRiCity: “Children and their Right to the City: Tackling urban inequity through the participatory design of child-friendly cities” developed in Lisbon and Porto and funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through national funds (PTDC/SOC-SOC/30415/2017). We focus on two case-studies developed in Porto. Our aim is to present some of the findings of the focus groups and drawing activities developed with children in two institutions. During this research, it was evident that children from middle and high classes are more subjected to institutionalization, domestication and hyper-protection processes than those from lower social classes. Also, we conclude that the phenomena of insularization and specialization contributes to aggravating restrictions on public spaces by producing forms of socio-spatial segregation depending not only on age, but also on class and social status.