Children

1
Children

• Risk
• Mobility
• Urban Space
• Professor Pia Christensen
• Institute of Education
• University of Warwick, UK
• Ideas Café 14th October 2008

2
Background

• Childrens lost mobility
• A time of heightened risk awareness
• Parental anxiety stranger-danger, violence and
  increasing traffic
• Greater complexity of childrens everyday lives
• Concern with childrens and young peoples risk-
  taking
• Childrens (and adults) risk engagement is an
  everyday activity and management a vital
  competence and resource
• Change in childrens activities - from physical
  active to sedentary inactive
• Obesity and child health
• Sustainability and environmental change
• Contemporary cities - unfriendly places for
  children - citizenship
• Later street-debut social and geographical
  incompetence

3
Children and Mobility

• Methods
• Ethnography Childrens own perspectives
• - experiences, understandings and meanings
• GPS tracking and SMS-questionnaire via
  mobile-phone
• Mapping mobility patterns in actual time
  

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Mobility patterns revealed
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(No Transcript)
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The more cars, the safer it is really!

• 
  Boy, 10 years old

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• The more people, the safer it is!

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Why do children choose the large heavily
trafficked roads?

• Fear of Strangers (adults, young people,
  dogs)
• child molester
• assailant
• kidnapper
• Social reasons - companionship
• Because my friends walk that way
• Pragmatic reasons
• Time When Im in a hurry

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Childrens Risk Lansdscapes

• Accident prevention and urban planning need to
  connect with childrens risk landscapes and
  practices

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• Childrens collective mobility
• Children seek companionship through movement
  (especially with other children) - to and from
  school and in and around the neighborhood.
• The children enjoyed the company of others and
  the (feeling of) safety that the collectivity
  provided.

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An open question for research on childrens
mobility

• A means to increase the monitoring and
• surveillance of children?
• or
• A means to create visibility of childrens
• mobility patterns and increase their
• influence on urban planning and the
• recognition of children as citizens in the
• city?