Maria Prats Ferret

Children and playgrounds in Mediterranean cities

Abstract This paper presents the first results of a case study on the ways in which playgrounds are constructed and experienced in childrens daily lives in two medium sized Mediterranean Catalan cities. The research is based on qualitative methodology through participant observation and interviews with institutional actors. Our research suggests that playgrounds are organised around age as the central category; nevertheless, gender is important in the use and activities developed as children get older. Specific aspects from Mediterranean and medium-sized cities are raised such as a positive perception and an intense use of public space by both adults and children. Specific childhood policies in city planning and a stronger gender awareness among institutional actors would improve the social role of playgrounds as participatory, socialising and inclusive spaces.

The Second International Conference on Geographies of Children, Youth and Families, Barcelona 2009: a report

The Second International Conference on Geographies of Children, Youth and Families, organised by the Group of Geography and Gender Studies, of the Department of Geography of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, took place from 16 to 18 July 2009. The Conference was the second bi-annual International Conference series on Geographies of Children, Youth and Families and came after the first conference, held at the University of Reading in 2007 with the support of the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Study Group of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). Both had the precedent of an international conference celebrated at the University of Northampton in 2006 under the title of New Directions in Children’s Geographies (described in Norton et al. 2008). This conference series provides a collaborative attempt to enhance geographical conceptualisations of childhood and youth by more fully establishing children and young people in their diverse socio-spatial contexts and focusing on, and exploring, diversity among children, youth and families. At the same time, the conferences provide a forum to begin to collectively address some of the critiques recently levelled at geographies of children and youth, drawing upon stimulating current research. The aim of the Second International Conference was to provide a forum for the exchange of different knowledge, ideas and experiences from researchers and practitioners working in a variety of international contexts and disciplinary fields, but who were all interested in exploring and advancing any aspect of geographies of children, youth and families. The unifying conference theme was ‘Diverse childhoods in international contexts: gender and other social and cultural differences’ with the intention to build upon and enhance dialogue between feminists and other scholars of social difference and researchers of geographies of children, youth and families working within a range of international contexts. The organisers invited researchers to present papers on any of the issues suggested for discussion and to incorporate gender and other categories of social differentiation in an explicit or implicit way. The issues for consideration were: Children’s Geographies Vol. 8, No. 4, November 2010, 437–440

Kορίτσια, Bambini, Meninos, Niñas: a view of children's geographies in southern Europe

Different geographic contexts produce different academic contexts. Traditions, academic programs, funding sources, research agendas, approaches, and methodologies are quite different between some European countries and others, specifically between Northern and Southern Europe, and therefore it is worthwhile to take a close look at what occurs in a particular European region so we can visualise a panorama that often becomes diluted in the most innovative international debates. We reflect here on the role and development of children’s geographies in four European countries that seem to us representative of what occurs in some countries of Southern Europe: Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Without attempting an exhaustive analysis, we present some examples of what has been done in these countries in this field, almost always within social and cultural geographies. In Greece, there is almost no human geography research that focuses on children and youth. This is not surprising if we take into account the late arrival of institutionalised geography. In 1950 the first human geography courses were offered in economics, statistics, and architecture, but it was not until 1994 that the first Geography Department was created in a Greek university. The evolution of the discipline in Greece is focused more on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) than cultural and social geography (Vaiou 2005). Nonetheless, veteran researchers who had studied other disciplines, but became geographers through postgraduate studies, have formed a very open academic community, with a strong international vocation that is close to a cultural geography perspective. Specifically, from the urban planning side, studies of the city have been developed that take a social, cultural, and feminist perspective, focussing on the daily life of urban environments. Even though these studies have dealt with gender, ethnicity, and social class, they have not yet addressed the topic of age, which could include children and young people in the urban context. From the cartography perspective, some engineers have taken children into consideration. In this sense the work of Filippakopoulou, Nakos and Michaelidou on cartography and childhood stands out, in which they address children’s cartographic perception and understanding, their production of maps, their ability to work with categories and symbols, the interaction between the teaching of cartography and of geography, etc., applying Children’s Geographies Vol. 9, Nos. 3–4, August–November 2011, 477–481