A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Toward a green and playful city: Understanding the social and political production of children's relational wellbeing in Barcelona
Abstract This paper examines recent urban green amenities directed toward children and families and develops a novel understanding of the ways in which children's socio-natures are made/unmade through such interventions. We employ ethnographic and archival analysis in two new parks – Poble Nou and Nou Barris – in Barcelona to examine how a particular type of children's wellbeing, what we call “relational wellbeing” is shaped through the production of green-playful-child-friendly amenities. We find that planning processes and visions, urban development goals, and neighbourhood socio-material structure moderate the effect of green-playful-child-friendly amenities on relational wellbeing by directing how these spaces are used. This finding points toward the importance – for equity concerns – of accounting for the social and political processes that generate relational wellbeing. These processes are often reflective of broader economic agendas of urban transformation designed to extract value, control space, and/or legitimize speculative urban development – while sometimes eroding local socio-material conditions – to the point of producing green spaces of privilege, exclusion and control. The connection between relational wellbeing and green-playful-child-friendly interventions highlights the importance, within the urban environmental equity literature, of reconceptualising pathways of wellbeing and health beyond questions of spatial distribution of natural areas and offers a new perspective for the development of future guidelines on green-playful-child-friendly space policies.
Highlights Novel understanding of how the (un)making of urban child-friendly green amenities shape urban equity and children’s wellbeing Political and social production of green-playful-child-friendly amenities and children’s wellbeing Planning visions and processes and neighbourhood socio-material structure moderate the effect of green amenities on wellbeing Importance of accounting for social relations, connections, and interactions that generate “relational wellbeing” Reconceptualization of pathways of wellbeing and health beyond questions of green space’s socio-spatial distribution
Toward a green and playful city: Understanding the social and political production of children's relational wellbeing in Barcelona
Abstract This paper examines recent urban green amenities directed toward children and families and develops a novel understanding of the ways in which children's socio-natures are made/unmade through such interventions. We employ ethnographic and archival analysis in two new parks – Poble Nou and Nou Barris – in Barcelona to examine how a particular type of children's wellbeing, what we call “relational wellbeing” is shaped through the production of green-playful-child-friendly amenities. We find that planning processes and visions, urban development goals, and neighbourhood socio-material structure moderate the effect of green-playful-child-friendly amenities on relational wellbeing by directing how these spaces are used. This finding points toward the importance – for equity concerns – of accounting for the social and political processes that generate relational wellbeing. These processes are often reflective of broader economic agendas of urban transformation designed to extract value, control space, and/or legitimize speculative urban development – while sometimes eroding local socio-material conditions – to the point of producing green spaces of privilege, exclusion and control. The connection between relational wellbeing and green-playful-child-friendly interventions highlights the importance, within the urban environmental equity literature, of reconceptualising pathways of wellbeing and health beyond questions of spatial distribution of natural areas and offers a new perspective for the development of future guidelines on green-playful-child-friendly space policies.
Highlights Novel understanding of how the (un)making of urban child-friendly green amenities shape urban equity and children’s wellbeing Political and social production of green-playful-child-friendly amenities and children’s wellbeing Planning visions and processes and neighbourhood socio-material structure moderate the effect of green amenities on wellbeing Importance of accounting for social relations, connections, and interactions that generate “relational wellbeing” Reconceptualization of pathways of wellbeing and health beyond questions of green space’s socio-spatial distribution
Toward a green and playful city: Understanding the social and political production of children's relational wellbeing in Barcelona
Pérez del Pulgar, Carmen (author) / Anguelovski, Isabelle (author) / Connolly, James (author)
Cities ; 96
2019-08-10
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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