Colin Ward Research Articles

Education, Childhood and Anarchism: Talking Colin Ward by Catherine Burke and Ken Jones, eds.

 2014 Children, Youth and Environments Children, Youth and Environments 24(2), 2014 Education, Childhood and Anarchism: Talking Colin Ward Catherine Burke and Ken Jones, eds. (2014). New York: Routledge, 233 pages. $145.00 USD (hardback). ISBN 978-0-415-82060-8. I was raised bare-foot and skinned-kneed on the shores of Lake Huron. A child of the seventies, my favorite clothes were hand-embroidered smocks and yellow plaid bell-bottoms with cartoon chicks hatching from eggs. I learned free-form weaving, collected shells and pine cones, and had a wild childhood at the edge of the woods. When I first read Roger Hart’s 1978 descriptions of rural Vermont children’s lives in Children’s Experience of Place, it was as if they were my own. And yet missing from his stories of children, missing from my own narrative, were the deeper meanings of that same time period of childhood. Somewhere in the world, I knew, important things were happening. Liberation. Anarchy. Civil Rights. Reading the anthology of Colin Ward, my own experience came together for me in the context of the time. What Colin Ward offers through his writings, and what this compilation brings together, are the ways children experience not only physical spaces but also the social and power relations that occur in these spaces, and how children and professionals are still striving to break down these barriers, to integrate children into city spaces and decision-making. Today we have insurgent public spaces that adults create in response to unsupportive policies or designs. These places rarely exist for children. Yet children ask to make a difference, to be part of something larger, to make their mark and to have that mark vary in time and place and season, to “create pockets of disorder” (200) in which children’s play resists an adult-driven world. This collection of essays will appeal to professionals and academics interested in the design of spaces that support and integrate children, and for those who promote the participation of children in planning and design. This volume deepens Colin Ward’s discourse in The Child in the City and Streetwork: the Exploding School (with Anthony Fyson), weaving together both historic and contemporary explorations of children in the city. The volume is carved into four sections that each assemble interdisciplinary chapters on architecture, history, urban geography, landscape design, political theory and education Several chapters are particularly helpful in informing contemporary work to create vibrant, integrated projects that promote children as active agents and actors within city space and city discourse. Pallawi Sinha and Catherine Burke’s chapter combines reflective practice from Colin Ward’s own Streetwork with contemporary explorations and methodological approaches to understanding children’s experience of New Delhi that have great relevance to practitioners and academics alike. Myrna Margulies Breitbart’s chapter explores Colin Ward’s contribution to radical pedagogy Book Review: Education, Childhood and Anarchism: Talking Colin Ward 253 through explorations of children’s rights to the city, to their own desires, and to actions for insurgent public space in city streets. Her chapter, as well as Stuart Lester’s, explore play as protest and as hopeful action, both comparing Colin Ward’s thinking with that of Henri Lefebvre, who “shared the belief that social transformation can come through small-scale experimentation” through temporary explorations and play. Lester articulates how “the act of playing involves the creation of disturbance and disorder... and in so doing generates an air of excitement” that in itself has value. Formal planning efforts dismiss the value of these processes for children (and adults) and in so doing, fail to promote the once radical, and still not mainstream, idea of citizen participation. Chapters by Rosie Parnell and Maria Patsarika and by Barry Percy-Smith develop new ways of thinking about authentic and playful participation in design and planning that support rather than discount children’s ideas of participation. Roger Hart reminds us that participation is central in cultivating citizenship, with children having opportunities to discuss issues and learn from each other as well as from adults. Contemporary literature about child-friendly cities suggests the need and imperative for the same integration of children into cities and society...

Children and Their Urban Environment: Changing Worlds by Claire Freeman and Paul Tranter

 2014 Children, Youth and Environments Children, Youth and Environments 24(3), 2014 Children and Their Urban Environment: Changing Worlds Claire Freeman and Paul Tranter (2011). New York: Earthscan, 265 pages. $60.00 (hardcover); ISBN 978-1-84407-853-0. Children and Their Urban Environment: Changing Worlds offers an accessible and engaging introduction to current and emerging issues facing children living in cities, along with concrete solutions to address them. Freeman and Tranter argue that designers and planners have a duty to consider children and youth in all facets of practice and research. Part 1, “Changing Environments, Changing Lives,” summarizes key themes in the literature on child-friendly cities, citing founding thinkers such as Colin Ward (1978) and Roger Hart (1979),through more recent work by the likes of Louise Chawla (2002), and Brendan Gleeson and Neil Sipe (2006). Children’s lives have become more structured, more adult-dependent, and limited by geographies of fear. Simply put, the authors argue that children’s lives are increasingly being compromised by the spaces they are made to inhabit. When cities spread out and become less dense, as in suburbs, for instance, children must rely on automobiles to get them to where they need to go. They have less autonomy, and less ability to move within, and be connected to, urban centers. Traffic-heavy streets and the perceived social dangers of urban space have led to this culture of fear. Adult fears for children’s safety have led to the virtual removal of children from the street. As well, our rapid shift to an increasingly technologically connected society have led to more surveillance. Instead of quelling fears, such surveillance appears to have resulted in ever more controlled environments for children. Freeman and Tranter pinpoint tensions between formal play (e.g., highly regimented and programmed recreation activities) and free, self-directed play, tensions that have led to the perception of children as virtual outsiders in many public spaces. They advocate for an enhanced urban form for children—one that allows children to practice and actually demonstrate their autonomy in public. Children’s development and skills can easily be supported by a properly planned and designed environment, such as is offered by the Dutch 1970s woonerf (living yard or street) concept, in which pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over drivers (via traffic calming measures, low speed limits restricted to a walking pace, and shared space). In the UK, such streets are called home zones, and in the U.S., complete streets represent a similar concept. The message of the book is underscored by the idea that children’s core business is play, and Freeman and Tranter explore this throughout. They also do a good job of considering and accommodating cultural changes, such as in household Book Review: Children and Their Urban Environment: Changing Worlds 237 structure—a shift away from intergenerational living, and the rise of children commuting between two households due to divorce, to cite but two examples. Part 2, “Activity Spaces,” explores children’s activity spaces in more detail. Through exploring seven children’s activity spaces—home, school, neighborhood, city center, service space, cultural space and natural space—challenges and inspiring precedents offer promising directions for generating positive environments for children. The chapter entitled “City Centre,” advocates for the city center as an important hub of mixed (use and age) activities. After years of decay due to decentralization, some city centers have recently become the focus of dynamic urban redevelopment. Yet, Freeman and Tranter observe such development has generally not supported child-friendly initiatives. To emphasize their point, they draw on Henry Lennard’s and Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard’s (1992) idea of “de facto amputation” (95), the unwitting, or even intentional, process of removing children from all realms of city life. Instead, Freeman and Tranter highlight public art and ways of living downtown that integrate and embrace children in the urban core. This is but one example of the issue-tostrategy trajectory each chapter in Part 2 follows. The consistent format is reliable and easy to follow, and provides a wealth of information for readers to consider. Part 3 offers promising ideas and tangible solutions for the future, and a call to reimagine...

Art, Education, and Revolution: Herbert Read and the Reorientation of British Anarchism

SummaryIt is popularly believed that British anarchism underwent a ‘renaissance’ in the 1960s, as conventional revolutionary tactics were replaced by an ethos of permanent protest. Often associated with Colin Ward and his journal Anarchy, this tactical shift is said to have occurred due to growing awareness of Gustav Landauer's work. This article challenges these readings by focusing on Herbert Read's book Education through Art, a work motivated by Read's dissatisfaction with anarchism's association with political violence. Arguing that aesthetic education could remodel social relationships in a non-hierarchical fashion, Read pioneered the reassessment of revolutionary tactics in the 1940s that is associated with the 1960s generation. His role in these debates has been ignored, but the broader political context of Read's contribution to anarchist theory has also been neglected. The reading of Read's work advanced here recovers his importance to these debates, and highlights the presence of an indigenous strand of radical thought that sought novel solutions for the problems of the age.

Book Review: Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective

Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective by Judith Suissa. PM Press, 2010. Pp. 176. $19.95 (Paperback). ISBN: 9781604861143[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2012 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]In 2010, PM Press published a new edition of Judith Suissa's 2006 work Anarchism and Education, a philosophically informed genealogy of social anarchist educationalist theories. Suissa, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at Institute of Education, University of London, has written an extensively researched, and yet rather dry and procedural, historical account of anarchist educational ideas and (PM Press, 2010). This book is useful to situate nineteenthcentury social in relationship to other (i.e. liberal) philosophies of education, as it seeks to recast them as relevant actors in educationalist debates on future of schooling. It is a fine, and at times enjoyable, introduction for an intrepid reader interested in relationship between anarchism and philosophy of education. Suissa's book raises several important questions: if anarchism seeks explicitly to abolish state and all forms of coercive social institutions, what does look like in anarchist society? How do you create a non-coercive free form of education without replicating free-market liberal logic of rational choice? Who should be educated, and how? For Suissa, answers to these questions rest on assumption that purpose of education is to assist in formation of a human being in social world and to hold society together (37). However, Suissa's socially integrative view of education, and her account of anarchist education itself, leaves much to be desired.Suissa focuses her study on work of nineteenth century social anarchists, including Kropotkin, Bakunin, and Proudhon. She also references contemporary anarchist scholars and theorists, notably Colin Ward and Noam Chomsky. Suissa claims that social-anarchists are drawn to education for two of its most vital characteristics: its for social transformation and its for cultural transmission. The social-anarchists' conception of what education should be, argues Suissa, is grounded in their belief in an underlying common human nature (25). This human nature has both an altruistic or benevolent potential (from which arises Kropotkin's theory of mutual aid) and a competitive, egotistical one. Education which, according to Suissa's reading of these thinkers, systematically promoted and emphasized cooperation, solidarity and mutual aid would have effects of both suppressing selfish side of human nature that has so far taken root in capitalist society, and reinforcing moral qualities and values of revolutionary one to come (32).Unfortunately, Suissa's advocacy of a moral education based on a concept of universal human nature often ends up reproducing same neutral subject of liberal state. Her narrow study of the anarchists does not often leave safe confines of an imagined commonality of experience in nineteenth-century Europe. When she discusses historic and contemporary American experiments in anarchist education, she neglects to mention race, class, and gender context in which these projects occurred. This omission does have consequences, particularly when applied to today's educational climate. For example, Suissa's call for an increase in vocational and integral education in public school system, while well-founded on an anarchistic theoretical basis, could be contested by experiences of poor students of color tracked into highschool vocational classes (see Rodriguez 1996:22). Such an oversight may seem understandable given Suissa's choice of theorists; however, contemporary landscape of American schools is so far removed from relative ethnic, linguistic and cultural homogeneity of Tolstoy's Yasnaya Polyana that it seems anachronistic to omit a discussion of identity-based oppression and particularity of individual communities. …

Placed-Based Education Annotated Resource List

Children, Youth and Environments 21(1), 2011 Placed-Based Education Annotated Resource List Corrie R. Colvin College of Architecture and Planning University of Colorado Citation: Colvin, Corrie R. (2011). “Place-Based Education Annotated Resource List.” Children, Youth and Environments 21(1): 332-348. This annotated resource list is intended to serve as a guide for readers and scholars looking for place-based education (PBE) references, curriculum and activity guides, theoretical and applied books, academic analyses, research, reviews, and online web resources. Whether looking for a means to help further one’s own understanding or that of one’s community, this list can serve as a starting place for building new knowledge or extending existing knowledge on place-based education and the benefits available from such an approach to lifelong learning. The list of resources began with those in the reference collections in the Children, Youth and Environments Center of the University of Colorado and was then extended through online search tools using the following keywords: “place-based education,” “children and nature,” and “place-based environmental education.” Other references were located through listserv notices provided by the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education. This resource list is not exhaustive. The books selected offer place-based education methods and their application, as well as theoretical and background information on child development and lifelong learning that provide support for place-based education. The scholarly articles and reports review and discuss place-based education programs, as well as provide additional references that may be helpful, but which are outside the scope of the resource list provided below. When possible, a link to the electronic version of each article is included. Films are included as a visual and auditory resource for placebased education case studies. The websites and Internet-based resource tools listed provide useful applied information including how-to and case studies, listservs and newsletters, educational support (e.g., webinars) and teacher tools (e.g., supportive curriculum, grant availability, school ground design). Additionally, this list is limited to resources published in English. If you have additional suggestions for information that should be included, please contact Corrie Colvin (corrie.colvin@colorado.edu).© 2011 Children, Youth and Environments Place-Based Education Annotated Resource List 333 Books and Book Chapters Adams, Eileen and Colin Ward (1982). Art and the Built Environment: A Teacher’s Approach. UK: Longman Group. Banning, Wendy and Ginny Sullivan (2011). Lens on Outdoor Learning. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press. Danks, Sharon Gamson (2010). Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation. Oakland, CA: New Village Press. Dudek, Mark (2005). Children’s Spaces. Amsterdam: Elsevier Architectural Press. Grant, Tim and Gail Littlejohn, eds. (2001). Greening School Grounds: Creating Habitats for Learning. Toronto: Green Teacher Press. Gruenewald, David and Gregory Smith, eds. (2007). Place-Based Education in the Global Age: Local Diversity. New York: Routledge. Haas, Toni and Paul Nachtigal (1998). Place Value: An Educator’s Guide to Good Literature on Rural Lifeways, Environments, and Purposes of Education. Charleston, SC: Appalachia Educational Laboratory. Hart, Roger (1997). Children’s Participation: The Theory and Practice of Involving Young Citizens in Community Development and Environmental Care. London: EarthScan. Higgins, Peter and Robbie Nicol (2002). Outdoor Education: Authentic Learning in the Context of Landscapes, Vol. 2. Kisa, Sweden: Comenius Action 2.1. http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/outdoored/research/oe_authentic_learning.pdf Jacobson, Susan K., Mallory D. McDuff and Martha C. Monroe (2006). Conservation Education and Outreach Techniques (Techniques in Ecology and Conservation). New York: Oxford University Press. Johnson, Lauri Macmillan and Kim Duffek (2008). Creating Outdoor Classrooms: Schoolyard Habitats and Gardens for the South. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Kahn, Peter and Stephen Kellert, eds. (2002). Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Keaney, Brian and Bill Lucas, eds. (1992). The Outdoor Classroom. UK: Scholastic Publications. Place-Based Education Annotated Resource List 334 Leslie, Claire Walker, John Tallmadge and Tom Wessels (1999). Into the Field: A Guide to Locally Focused Teaching. Nature Literacy Series, Vol. 3. Great Barrington, MA: The Orion Society. Littledyke, Michael, Neil Taylor and Chris Eames (2009). Education for Sustainability in the Primary Curriculum: A Guide for Teachers. Melbourne, AU: Palgrave MacMillan. Moore, Robin C. and Herbert H. Wong (1997...

Colin Ward. Writer, social theorist and anarchist, 1924–2010

Colin Ward. Writer, social theorist and anarchist, 1924–2010

Obituary of Colin Ward

Obituary of Colin Ward

Book Reviews

MankindVolume 12, Issue 4 p. 351-379 Book Reviews First published: December 1980 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1835-9310.1980.tb01211.xCitations: 1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Book reviewed in this article: The Evolution of Human Sexuality. By Donald Symons. The Sisterhood of Man. The Impact of Women's Changing Roles on Social and Economic Life Around the World. By Kathleen Newland. Mothers and Wives: Gusii Women of East Africa. Sarah LeVine, in collaboration with Robert A. LeVine. New Women of Lusaka, By Ilsa M. Glazer Schuster. The Politics of Anthropology, edited by Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim. System, Structure and Contradiction: The Evolution of ‘Asiatic’ Social Formations. Jonathan Friedman. Toward a Cultural Theory of Education and Schooling. Edited by Frederick Gearing and Lucinda Sangree. The Public School Phenomenon 597–1977. By Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. The Religion, Spirituality, and Thought of Traditional Africa. By Dominique Zahan. Community, Self, and Identity. Edited by Bhabagrahi Misra and James Preston. Les Dieux et Les Hommes. Etude des Cultes d'un village du Tirunelveli, Inde du Sud. By Marie Louise Reiniche. Anutan Concepts of Disease: A Polynesian Study. By Richard Feinberg, with a forward by Dr Carleton Gajdusek. In the Shadow of Tlaloc: Life in a Mexican Village. By Gregory R. Reck. Protein from the Sea: Technological Change in Philippine Capture Fisheries. By Alexander Spoehr. The Ainu: The Past in the Present. By Fred C. C. Peng and Peter Geiser. From Field to Factory: Community Structure and Industrialization in West Bengal. By Morton Klass. Lightning meets the West Wind. The Malaita Massacre. By Roger M. Keesing and Peter Corris. Your Own Pigs You May Not Eat. By Paula L. Rubel and Barbara Rosman. Villagers at war: Some Papua New Guinean exyeriences in World War II. By Neville K. Robinson. Urbanization and Urban Growth in the Caribbean. By Malcolm Cross. Urbanization in Papua New Guinea: A Study of Ambivalent Townsmen. By Hal B. Levine and Marlene Wolfzahn-Levine. The Child in the City. By Colin Ward, with photographs by Ann Golzen and others. 'It's Coming Yet …' An Aboriginal Treaty Within Australia Between Australians. By Stewart Harris, for the Aboriginal Treaty Committee. The Street is Their Home: The Hobos' Manifesto. By Jim Ward. Aborigines in Colonial Victoria 1835-86, By M. F. Christie. Songs of the Pintupi. Musical Life in a Central Australian Society. By Richard M. Moyle Shuckin' and Jivin’: Folktore from Contemporary Black Americans. By Daryl Cumber Dance. The Evolution of Designs: Biological Analogy in the Architecture and the Applied Arts. By Philip Steadman A Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest and Encounter. By David Seaman. Climatic Races and Descent Groups. By Grover S. Krantz. Views of the Past. Essays in Old World Prehistory and Paleoanthropology. Edited by Leslie G. Freeman. Tools and Tillage. A Journal of the History of the Implements of Cultivation and other Agricultural Processes. Volume III:3. Edited by Grith Lerche, Alexander Fenton and Axel Steensberg Wooden Ritual Artifacts from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. The Chetro Ketl Collection. By R. Gwinn Vivian, Dulce N. Dodgen, and Gayle H. Hartman. Volcanic Activity and Human Ecology. Edited by Payson D. Sheets and Donald K. Grayson. Fossils in the Making: Vertebrate Taphonomy and Palaeoecology. Edited by Anna K. Behrensmeyer and Andrew P. Hill. Citing Literature Volume12, Issue4December 1980Pages 351-379 RelatedInformation

Anarchist seeds beneath the snow: left-libertarian thought and British writers from William Morris to Colin Ward

From William Morris to Oscar Wilde to George Orwell, left-libertarian thought has long been an important but neglected part of British cultural and political history. In Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow, David Goodway seeks to recover and revitalize that indigenous anarchist tradition. This book succeeds as simultaneously a cultural history of left-libertarian thought in Britain and a demonstration of the applicability of that history to current politics. Goodway argues that a recovered anarchist tradition could and should be a touchstone for contemporary political radicals. Moving seamlessly from Aldous Huxley and John Cowper Powys to the war in Iraq, this challenging volume will energize leftist movements throughout Britain and the rest of the world.

David Goodway. Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow: Left Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007. Pp. 401. $35.00 (paperback).

David Goodway. Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow: Left Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007. Pp. 401. $35.00 (paperback).

Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward

Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward

Utopianism and anarchism

This article challenges the assumption that utopian traditions of social and political thought have ceased to have any relevance, or make any contribution to, contemporary thinking. Key utopian ideas, specifically the importance of a focus on transforming the circumstances and environments of the present, are transmitted to the modern context by writers working in the anarchist tradition, who maintain anarchism's close links with utopianism, and continue to draw on, develop, and deploy utopian themes. Utopian themes are central to the anarchist writing of late 20th-century thinkers Paul Goodman and Colin Ward. These anarchists have developed the utopian themes of contingency, immanence and prefiguration. Their contact with utopian approaches to social change has also supported two unique deployments of these utopian themes. These are, firstly, a particular agency-centred vision of freedom as developed by the action and choices of individuals in the present, and, secondly, a specific portrayal of that active immediacy as pragmatic and piecemeal engagement with the immediate organisation of proximate material environments.

Making anarchism respectable? The social philosophy of Colin Ward

Anarchism suffers from a respectability deficit, a problem of achieving a threshold level of credibility in the eyes of non-anarchists. One anarchist thinker who has grappled persistently with this problem over 60 years of activism is the influential post-war British anarchist, Colin Ward. Responding directly to the respectability deficit, Ward helped to develop a ‘pragmatist’ anarchism characterized by direct engagement with urgent social problems. The paper explains the nature of this pragmatist anarchism, and places it in its historical intellectual context. It discusses how far Ward has indeed succeeded in producing a social philosophy that is at once genuinely anarchist and ‘intellectually respectable’. My theme in this symposium … is ‘are we respectable enough?’, and in asking this question I am not concerned about the way we dress, or whether our private lives conform to a statistical norm, or how we earn our living, but with the quality of our anarchist ideas: are our ideas worthy of respect? (Colin Ward, Anarchism and Respectability, 1961)

Anarchy Is Order

Anarchy Is Order

Response to Review of Machi-Work: Education for Participation

Children, Youth and Environments. Vol 14, No.1 (2004) ISSN 1546-2250 Response to Review of Machi-Work: Education for Participation Isami Kinoshita Faculty of Horticulture Chiba University, Japan Citation: Kinoshita, Isami. (2004). “Response to Review of Machi-Work: Education for Participation.” Children, Youth and Environments 14(1). This book was published after the cross cultural collaboration of professionals in the UK and Japan concerning children’s involvement in environmental education and community design. This collaboration started from the meeting Eileen Adams and Reiko Ogiwara at a conference in Venice in 1994. At the conference, Reiko presented the projects in which my colleagues and I had been engaging in the Taishido neighborhood in Tokyo: making the play maps of three generations1 . We had been encouraged by the British urban study movement, and organized a new group, “Machi Work,” from professionals of different fields, especially from environmental design and education. As you may know, the name “Machi Work” was influenced by the enthusiastic British urban study activities called “Street Work” conducted by Colin Ward. The first project of Machi Work was to invite Eileen to work with us. Fortunately, I was the first person whom Eileen met when she landed at the Narita Airport. (But that was not the reason why I became the co-editor of this book.) While we talked on the train from the airport to Tokyo, we found we were in a small world by the fact that we both knew Roger (Hart) well. Eileen’s lectures in Tokyo and Yokohama were successful and she encouraged us to extend the activities of Machi Work. The British Council and the Sasakawa Foundation had been supporting our cross-cultural study. A number of Japanese members of “Machi Work” took part in a UK study tour 373 arranged by Eileen, and in turn the other professionals of the Built Environmental Education in the UK visited and lectured in Japan. Through these cross-cultural interactive communications, Eileen got an idea and proposed that we make a book to share both experiences and information. We agreed with her idea and I began engaging as a coordinator to find a publisher, get support from The British Council and Sasakawa Foundation, and begin editing the Japanese papers. The most difficult editing work for me was the coordination of the Japanese authors. Japanese like to write about concrete cases because we prefer to form our own rationale by reading between the lines which describe real cases rather than read abstract theory. Thus, some of the Japanese authors who were supposed to be presenting theory had instead written narrative text introducing concrete cases. As a consequence, Eileen had to work hard to rewrite several texts and mix them together. For the Japanese text, we translated her English text and arranged it for Japanese readers to understand more easily by attaching concrete information. This is the reason why Hart’s Ladder of Participation appears only on the Japanese page, a fact noted by the reviewer. The editing work was difficult and brought many conflicts, but it enabled us to gain the most important product of this cultural exchange: to learn the different cultural contexts by encouraging both activities to go forward in the same direction. After the publication of Machi-Work, the network of the children’s participation movement has been further expanded in Japan by the publication of Roger Hart’s influential Children’s Participation in Japanese. For instance, Roger’s book encouraged a new organization in Nara by to engage in children’s participation, and last year they invited Eileen to visit. The world might be small but this network clearly can be expanded. Endnotes 1. See Isami Kinoshita and Taishido Study Group (1984/85). 374 “Three Generations of Play in Taishido.” Children’s Environments Quarterly 1(4):19-28. Isami Kinoshita received his Doctor of Engineering (Architecture) degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Chiba University. His research interests include community design with children's participation, children's play environment and urban open space design. His recent publications include Ecology of Play and Machi (urban neighborhood environment) published by Maruzen, 1996...

Machi-Work: Education for Participation

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 14 No. 1 (2004) ISSN: 1546-2250 Machi-Work: Education for Participation Adams, Eileen and Kinoshita, Isami (2000). Tokyo: Fudosha; 114 pages. $24.95. ISBN 1858562333. This book is the result of a collaboration from 1994 to 1999 between two international leaders in child environment research and design– Eileen Adams from the United Kingdom and Isami Kinoshita from Japan. Through their previous research, design work and writing, each has separately contributed a large body of knowledge about the role of education in design and planning. Machi-Work combines their extensive experience to present a unique international perspective on the role of education in involving children in the making of places. It is an engaging and accessible volume that should enjoy a wide audience among designers and educators as well as the general public. Machi-Work balances descriptive narrative with critical evaluation to examine environmental education. While rich in examples and case studies, the voices of the authors about the limits of children’s participation and education are evident throughout. Too many recent books only applaud the benefits of environmental education and pass over the limitations of children’s participation in design and education. Adams and Kinoshita, however, are honest about the limits of the culture of childhood today and see children and youth as full partners in the design and planning process. According to the authors, “machi means town, but in the sense of the community and well-being, as well as a physical settlement” (64). “Machizukuri conveys the concepts of town planning, community design and development all in one word” (64). They effectively argue that these terms need to be brought into the English language just as the French term milieu and Scandinavian term miljø combine people and the environment as an inseparable concept. 367 The book is divided into three parts: a brief discussion of the theoretical background underlying the authors’ work, an informative section of case studies from the UK and Japan, and a final section on techniques and strategies. I found Part Three to be the most originals it presents concepts that are useful in any situation where adults and children work together to transform their local environment. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is the comparative nature of the text and illustrations and the opportunity it provides to view methods and concepts in different cultural contexts. Published in both English and Japanese, the book reflects the international flavor of the work. Included are well-chosen photographs and plans of projects the authors have done with children in both countries. One minor drawback of the book is that some of the material presented in Japanese, such as Hart’s adaptation of Arnstein’s ladder of participation, is not presented in the English text. Another limit is that the nature of the collaboration between Adams and Kinoshita is not clearly described. These, however, do not diminish from the power of the work as model for future of child/youthenvironment research where case studies are conducted across diverse settings. Machi-Work is an excellent example of how children’s participation has matured from its romantic period to a more realistic and effective period of proactive practice. It should join classics such as Colin Ward’s Child in the City (1978), Roger Hart’s Children’s Experience of Place (1978) and Robin Moore’s Childhood’s Domain (1978) on the bookshelves of anyone concerned with children and youth environments. Reviewer Information Francis, Mark Center for Design Research University of California at Davis 368 Mark Francis, FASLA, is a professor of landscape architecture and the director of the Center for Design Research at the University of California at Davis. His work is concerned with the theory and design of urban and community landscapes. Trained in landscape architecture and urban design at Harvard and Berkeley, he is also a practicing landscape architect. He has received numerous awards for his research and design projects and is also an associate editor of the Journal of Architectural and Planning Research. ...

Response to Review of Machi-Work: Education for Participation

Children, Youth and Environments. Vol 14, No.1 (2004) ISSN 1546-2250 Response to Review of Machi-Work: Education for Participation Isami Kinoshita Faculty of Horticulture Chiba University, Japan Citation: Kinoshita, Isami. (2004). “Response to Review of Machi-Work: Education for Participation.” Children, Youth and Environments 14(1). This book was published after the cross cultural collaboration of professionals in the UK and Japan concerning children’s involvement in environmental education and community design. This collaboration started from the meeting Eileen Adams and Reiko Ogiwara at a conference in Venice in 1994. At the conference, Reiko presented the projects in which my colleagues and I had been engaging in the Taishido neighborhood in Tokyo: making the play maps of three generations1 . We had been encouraged by the British urban study movement, and organized a new group, “Machi Work,” from professionals of different fields, especially from environmental design and education. As you may know, the name “Machi Work” was influenced by the enthusiastic British urban study activities called “Street Work” conducted by Colin Ward. The first project of Machi Work was to invite Eileen to work with us. Fortunately, I was the first person whom Eileen met when she landed at the Narita Airport. (But that was not the reason why I became the co-editor of this book.) While we talked on the train from the airport to Tokyo, we found we were in a small world by the fact that we both knew Roger (Hart) well. Eileen’s lectures in Tokyo and Yokohama were successful and she encouraged us to extend the activities of Machi Work. The British Council and the Sasakawa Foundation had been supporting our cross-cultural study. A number of Japanese members of “Machi Work” took part in a UK study tour arranged by Eileen, and in turn the other professionals of the Built Environmental Education in the 297 UK visited and lectured in Japan. Through these cross-cultural interactive communications, Eileen got an idea and proposed that we make a book to share both experiences and information. We agreed with her idea and I began engaging as a coordinator to find a publisher, get support from The British Council and Sasakawa Foundation, and begin editing the Japanese papers. The most difficult editing work for me was the coordination of the Japanese authors. Japanese like to write about concrete cases because we prefer to form our own rationale by reading between the lines which describe real cases rather than read abstract theory. Thus, some of the Japanese authors who were supposed to be presenting theory had instead written narrative text introducing concrete cases. As a consequence, Eileen had to work hard to rewrite several texts and mix them together. For the Japanese text, we translated her English text and arranged it for Japanese readers to understand more easily by attaching concrete information. This is the reason why Hart’s Ladder of Participation appears only on the Japanese page, a fact noted by the reviewer. The editing work was difficult and brought many conflicts, but it enabled us to gain the most important product of this cultural exchange: to learn the different cultural contexts by encouraging both activities to go forward in the same direction. After the publication of Machi-Work, the network of the children’s participation movement has been further expanded in Japan by the publication of Roger Hart’s influential Children’s Participation in Japanese. For instance, Roger’s book encouraged a new organization in Nara by to engage in children’s participation, and last year they invited Eileen to visit. The world might be small but this network clearly can be expanded. Endnotes 1. See Isami Kinoshita and Taishido Study Group (1984/85). “Three Generations of Play in Taishido.” Children’s Environments Quarterly 1(4):19-28. Isami Kinoshita received his Doctor of Engineering (Architecture) degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is currently an 298 Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Chiba University. His research interests include community design with children's participation, children's play environment and urban open space design. His recent publications include Ecology of Play and Machi (urban neighborhood environment) published by Maruzen, 1996...

Machi-Work: Education for Participation

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 14 No. 1 (2004) ISSN: 1546-2250 Machi-Work: Education for Participation Adams, Eileen and Kinoshita, Isami (2000). Tokyo: Fudosha; 114 pages. $24.95. ISBN 1858562333. This book is the result of a collaboration from 1994 to 1999 between two international leaders in child environment research and design– Eileen Adams from the United Kingdom and Isami Kinoshita from Japan. Through their previous research, design work and writing, each has separately contributed a large body of knowledge about the role of education in design and planning. Machi-Workcombines their extensive experience to present a unique international perspective on the role of education in involving children in the making of places. It is an engaging and accessible volume that should enjoy a wide audience among designers and educators as well as the general public. Machi-Work balances descriptive narrative with critical evaluation to examine environmental education. While rich in examples and case studies, the voices of the authors about the limits of children’s participation and education are evident throughout. Too many recent books only applaud the benefits of environmental education and pass over the limitations of children’s participation in design and education. Adams and Kinoshita, however, are honest about the limits of the culture of childhood today and see children and youth as full partners in the design and planning process. According to the authors, “machi means town, but in the sense of the community and well-being, as well as a physical settlement” (64). “Machizukuri conveys the concepts of town planning, community design and developmentall in one word” (64). They effectively argue that these terms need to be brought into the English language just as the French term milieu and Scandinavian term miljø combine people and the environment as an inseparable concept. 291 The book is divided into three parts: a brief discussion of the theoretical background underlying the authors’ work, an informative section of case studies from the UK and Japan, and a final section on techniques and strategies. I found Part Three to be the most original as it presents concepts that are useful in any situation where adults and children work together to transform their local environment. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is the comparative nature of the text and illustrations and the opportunity it provides to view methods and concepts in different cultural contexts. Published in both English and Japanese, the book reflects the international flavor of the work. Included are well-chosen photographs and plans of projects the authors have done with children in both countries. One minor drawback of the book is that some of the material presented in Japanese, such as Hart’s adaptation of Arnstein’s ladder of participation, is not presented in the English text. Another limit is that the nature of the collaboration between Adams and Kinoshita is not clearly described. These, however, do not diminish from the power of the work as model for future of child/youth-environment research where case studies are conducted across diverse settings. Machi-Work is an excellent example of how children’s participation has matured from its romantic period to a more realistic and effective period of proactive practice. It should join classics such as Colin Ward’s Child in the City(1978), Roger Hart’s Children’s Experience of Place (1978) and Robin Moore’s Childhood’s Domain (1978) on the bookshelves of anyone concerned with children and youth environments. Reviewer Information Francis, Mark Center for Design Research University of California at Davis Mark Francis, FASLA, is a professor of landscape architecture and the director of the Center for Design Research at the University of 292 California at Davis. His work is concerned with the theory and design of urban and community landscapes. Trained in landscape architecture and urban design at Harvard and Berkeley, he is also a practicing landscape architect. He has received numerous awards for his research and design projects and is also an associate editor of the Journal of Architectural and Planning Research. ...

Peter Hall and Colin Ward, Sociable Cities: The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard. Chichester: John Wiley, 1998. x + 229pp. 53 figures. Bibliography. £15.99 pbk.

Peter Hall and Colin Ward, <i>Sociable Cities: The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard</i>. Chichester: John Wiley, 1998. x + 229pp. 53 figures. Bibliography. £15.99 pbk.

L'Anarchisme au XXIe siècle

Colin Ward, Anarchism in the Twenty-first Century The anarchist tradition favors reflection even though historical experience has not tended to verify ideological expectations. It is clear that the overwhelming irresponsible power of market forces during the last decades of the twentieth century will penalize the first decades of the twenty-first century. Present conditions will push human beings towards a desperate effort to obtain recognition of their dignity as human beings. It is for this reason alone that anarchism will emerge in the twenty-first century in the midst of many local struggles of the oppressed and disfavored.