UK to produce a qualitative record of children’s experiences and explorations in the urban
environment through education and play. His radical study advocated children’s rights in
participation in urban planning and design and suggested that they should be included in
the public participation process through strategies based on the recognition of their
independent capacity to hold and exercise rights.
The above studies proved to be very influential in inspiring future research on young
people and their local environment – both urban and rural - worldwide. A new era of social
science research, environmental planning and design dawned in the late seventies with
these researchers. Most studies have focused on young people’s perceptions and
experiences of their local environment and their participatory role in planning and decisionmaking
of environmental projects. However, since the mid-nineties, researchers have
shifted their interest towards more radical studies questioning governmental policies and
strategies which lead to the exclusion of young people from public space through the
criminalisation of certain activities (i.e. skateboarding, graffiti) and policing of their
movement (i.e. juvenile curfews). The following sections in the literature review present
the most important of these studies and critically discuss their findings.
Index
1.2 Young People’s Perceptions of their Local Environment
1.2.1 Growing Up in Cities (GUIC) Project
Undoubtedly, the most prominent study on young people’s perception and experience of
their local environment is Kevin Lynch’s (1977) project Growing Up in Cities which opened
the way for numerous similar studies around the world. Nonetheless, this study remains
unique, mainly due to its longitudinal and cross-continental character. As mentioned
above in the introduction, Lynch carried out research in four different cities. His main
intention was to conduct research with children in urban areas characterised by rapid
change, which is why his approach is also known as ‘action research’ (Lynch 1977;
Chawla 2001). To gather information on initiatives that would improve the life of urban
children and youth, he recommended an approach with multiple methods, such as:
• the collection of census demographics and maps showing the local socioenvironmental
features;
• the collection of material related to the local culture of childhood;
• the observation of children’s use of the community;
• individual interviews with small groups of children and youth;