ARECE 2010
Let the children and young people playwhere, how, why?
Dr Mike Dee, Social Work and Human
Services, Faculty of Health, QUT
m.dee@qut.edu.au
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Queensland University of Technology
The Intro…………………………..
•
This presentation reports on current research work with children and young
people on the importance of public and private space for good health,
wellbeing, social and developmental outcomes.
•
In many urban locations in Australia and elsewhere, public space is under
attack from developers and attempts by authorities to control it (Watson 2006).
Private space in the home and garden is also under attack from development
densification and trends towards bigger houses on smaller plots of land where
gardens disappear altogether or a postage stamp remains (Gleeson and Sipe
2006).
•
At the same time public policy advocates the benefits of outdoor exercise set
alongside fears of using public space exacerbated by notions of ‘stranger
danger’ and control measures such as child and youth curfews. Tensions
frequently occur when children and young people seek to make use of a
multitude of public spaces (Loader 1996; White 1999; Valentine 2004).
•
In this increasingly complex context, it is important to discover what children
and young people value and need most in using public and private, home,
space. Using a modified Grounded Theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 1967),
children and young people are consulted to discover how they use both public
space in parks and shopping centres and home space and the issues
encountered and their proposals for improvement, to better inform policy
debate, planning and formulation (ARACY 2009).
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The Intro Continued………
•
In Australia over a number of years, various strategies have been adopted by
local councils, police and other stakeholders such as business groups, to
respond to such tensions. Rarely, if ever, are children and young people
involved in meaningful ways in the design and control of public space that
reflects their needs and aspirations (White 1999; Freeman and Riordan 2002;
Freeman 2006).
•
Deploying the prisms of urban planning and law and order to deal with
perceived public space issues impacts adversely on children and young
people, contributing to their partial or complete removal from public space
(Harris 2006; Waiton 2001).
•
A key problem exists in the capacity of modern, urban public space to
genuinely accommodate children (of all ages) and young people’s need to
experience excitement and fun in what has been termed “unprogrammed
space” (Lynch 1977:71), or simply to ‘hang out’ in unstructured social space,
with control by civic authorities a key concern (Valentine 1996, 2004, Harris,
2006, Gleeson and Sipe 2006). For many children and young people, their
experiences of attempting to use public space are sometimes marred by the
denial of everyday rights and courtesies, in youth ‘unfriendly’ spaces.
•
Using Public Space is important to the overall health and wellbeing of children
and young people in allowing them to explore their local and wider community,
meet up with friends, get some exercise and feel included in the society in
which they live.
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Some of the background……………
•
The recent rise of so called ‘McMansions’ and the domination in new developments of
houses filling the block of land with little or nothing for children and young people to use
or to call their own (Gleeson and Sipe 2006).
•
Proposals reported in the Victorian press for an army of ‘Nannies’ to give support to
‘troubled’ families talk of the most ‘feral’ needing harsher measures.
• Jones and Sumner (2009: 42) argue that the diversity
of childhood has not been well recognised and that
“…there is little recognition of childhood as a
culturally constructed phenomenon outside
childhood studies circles…and this is a politically
charged issue”.
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Child and Youth Rights
•
When advocates of child and youth rights seek support for arguments in favour
of rights to public space and participation in the planning and ownership of
spatial developments, they may reach for the 1989 United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child or the UNCROC. Questions can be posed however,
about the ongoing usefulness of this and other such instruments and whether
they are as comprehensive, inclusive and durable as they need to be, given the
dynamic, socially constructed nature of the categories of ‘child’ and ‘youth’
(Brown 1998; Mathews 2001; Franklin 2002). In order to develop the discussion
the full paper examines the UNCROC further.
•
The UNCROC, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989,
was ratified by the Australian Government in 1990 (Rayner 2002). The
background enabling the UNCROC to come into being is complex, building on
years of lobbying by supporters of child and youth rights (UNCROC 1989).
•
The 54 Articles of the UNCROC span a broad array of rights having a bearing
on the position of children and young people and includes articles setting out
rights to: non-discrimination, survival and development, protection from abuse
and neglect, social security, health, education and an adequate standard of
living (UNCROC 1989). The UNCROC can be summarized as constituting the
“three Ps”, being rights to provision, protection and participation (Franklin
2002:19).
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Issues in Child & Youth Rights
•
Key articles in the UNCROC for the purposes of this paper are Article 14 (the
right to freedom of thought), Article 15 (the right to freedom of association and
assembly) and Article 12 (the right of children to be listened to in matters which
affect them). Article 15 in particular, is the touchstone for many who work with
children and young people around public space issues towards the creation of
child & youth friendly spaces.
•
A central problem with devices like the UNCROC are that the “rights” contained
within them are not rights in the legal sense of being both claimable and
enforceable particularly as “states parties" can post reservations, thereby
emasculating key aspects of the Convention (Roche 1997:32). Similarly,
tensions exists between getting child and youth rights on the political agenda
and seen as a significant policy area, and advocating for better rights for all
humans, with coverage of these same rights to actively include children and
young people (Moss and Petrie 2002).
•
Further problems occur with age specific rights as opposed to rights applying
to all human beings, regardless of age. For example, the description of “every
human being” aged under 18 as a child, as not yet adult, ignores both the
diversity and complexity of being under 18 and assumes all childhoods
everywhere, to be broadly the same (UNICEF 1989; Franklin 2002). The
allocation of rights according to age is inherently flawed as a wide range of
anomalies in the gaining of responsibilities and accretion of rights suggests
(Jones 1996). Also, few aged 15-17 think of themselves as children and in some
legislatures they may be legally entitled to marry and serve in the armed forces,
but not to vote at elections or to drink alcohol (Brown 1998).
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The Following Tables…..
• Child and Youth Friendly spaces have
important features as outlined in the 3
studies contained in Table 1.
• Table 2 charts the range of factors in the
gaining of rights to public space.
• Table 3 represents the gaining of rights as a
dynamic process.
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Table 1: Key factors in youth friendly public spaces:
Wooden (1997) in
Melton City, Victoria
Chawla (2002) in
an 8 country
research project
Dee (2008) in
Brisbane and Logan
Environment
Acceptance
Friendly people
Good entertainment
No violence
Sense of safety
No drugs or alcohol
Affordability
Support and help
Under 18 places
No adults or police
Safety
Free
movement
Places to meet
Cheap
transport
Open politics
No violence
Spaces/places to hang
out
Other users about in
public space
Affordable transport
Good environment
Safety
Affordability
No violence
No drugs
Acceptance and
belonging in the
community
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Discussion of Table 1
•
Wooden’s (1997) research for Melton City Council (near Melbourne) involved a
survey of 167 young people to gauge their idea of youth friendliness and
suggestions for places to audit. Seventy local businesses and services were
also surveyed to give them an opportunity to indicate what they understood to
be friendly about their business or service (White 1998:36).
•
The project involved giving a youth friendly rating to 25 places in Melton,
including both private and public space and shops. The kinds of places chosen
for the audit included youth outreach services, health services, bowling alley,
cinemas, entertainment arcade, parks, retail outlets, library, music shop, fast
food shop, skate park and leisure centre (White 1998:38).
•
Chawla’s (2002) work on the Growing Up in Cities project draws on research
undertaken in urban and rural case studies in Argentina, Australia, the U.K.,
India, Norway, Poland, South Africa and the U.S.A. The characteristics of youth
friendly space indicated in Table 1.0 share a wide range of commonalities
despite considerable cultural, political, social and economic differences
between the contexts.
•
As Chawla (2002:220) notes, “The agreement among these young people as to
what constitutes engaging or alienating places, across different nations
suggests that the project has uncovered enduring and widely shared views”.
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Table 2: Child and youth rights in public space: a model in progress:
Catalysts for
change
Social
citizenship
Physical
factors
Opportunities
for change
Threats to beneficial change
Children and
young people
are valued more
by society.
Civil, social and
political rights
need to be
extended to
include health,
education, work,
housing, public
space and
economic rights
more generally.
Public space
should be
maintained and
improved, taking
the needs of
children and
young people
into account and
responding to
ideas.
Policing of public space can easily become
more coercive, where risk management
frames dominate all other considerations- (e.g.
technical advances in CCTV can lead to more
and more intrusive surveillance).
Child and youth
friendly spaces
are more readily
available.
Citizenship at
the maximal
rather than
minimal levelrecognising the
affective
dimensions of
young people’s
sense of
belonging as a
key part of social
rights.
Rights,
standards,
protections and
expectations of
all users of
public space to
be articulated.
There is an
opportunity to
involve children
and young
people in
negotiating new
relationships with
institutions,
spaces and the
community
across
generations.
Key references:
France(1997),
Valentine (2004),
White & Wyn
(2004),
Skelton (2007).
Key references:
Marshall (1950),
Jacobs (1965),
Tonkiss (2005),
White & Wyn
(2004).
Key references:
Chawla (2002),
Malone (2006).
The UNCROC is
revised to be
more inclusive of
different youth
and childhoods.
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Research
demonstrates
they have the
capacity and
interest and that
a sense of
belonging is key
to their frame of
citizenship.
Key references:
Chawla (2002),
Heywood & Crane
(1998), Dee (2008),
White & Wyn
(2004).
The ‘new economy’ pushes young people to
engage in ‘approved’ of leisure time tied to
consumption, rather than ‘hanging out’.
The impact of the Global Financial Crisis leads
to greater impoverishment and control
measures to maintain urban law and order.
Anti-terrorism laws alongside Child Protection
Legislation can be used as a platform for
further control measures in public space and
the exclusion of both ‘threatening’ and
‘vulnerable’ individuals and groups.
Key references:
Mitchell (2003), Watson (2006), Harris (2006).
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Discussion of Table 2
•
Table 2 indicates the range of approaches and concomitant issues discernable
in much of the literature relating to children, young people and their use of
public space. A broadly based human rights based approach lodged in
conceptions of social citizenship, provides an important way of (re) configuring
debates about public space.
•
The strategy adopted by Copeland (2004) is an interesting starting point, in
looking at the application of common law and anti-discrimination legislation
around the age based exclusion of young people from shopping malls.
Copeland’s project identifies the legal vagaries of what constitutes ‘private’
space and also the discriminatory practices of security personnel and others,
in excluding some children and young people from malls and shopping centres
(Copeland 2004). The general allure of the mall for children and young people
of in terms of a meeting place, entertainment, food, cinemas, etc. is strong,
with contextual niceties like heating in northern hemisphere locations, where
the mall may be the warmest, most brightly lit place to go on a dark winter day
(Dee 1995). For young people in Australia, the mall may literally be the coolest
place to go on a hot and humid day (Harris 2006).
•
Copeland’s approach, while specific to the quasi-private space of the mall,
seeks to promote the clarification of broadly based human rights declarations
around freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association. These
declarations, contained in the UNCROC connect with efforts to articulate social
citizenship based rights for children and young people, to be in public and
hybrid-public-private forms of space as article 15 declares (UNCROC 1989).
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Child and youth rights to public space:
possible stages in progress
•
Table 3:
Public space is
more child and
youth friendly
Optimal sociospatial
conditions
Citizenship has
more meaning
for children and
young people as
a greater sense
of positive
recognition,
belonging and
optimism is
experienced
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The nature of
institutional
relationships
changes
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Discussion of Table 3
•
Table 3 describes a dynamic process reliant on a number of catalytic factors
that could promote rights to public space for children and young people. Of
key importance is the suggestion by Skelton (2007) that the UNCROC requires
review and updating to take account of the changing nature of childhood and
the diversity of childhood(s) around the world. Additionally, the valuing of
children and young people is necessary to underpin developments in public
space.
•
Bolzan’s report for the National Youth Affairs Research Scheme (NYARS)
entitled Kids are like that! Community attitudes to young people (2003), found
that a complex array of views and negative stereotypes about young people
exist. The maintenance and amplification of stereotypes is unfortunate as these
kinds of issues matter greatly to young people. Many of my survey responses
on citizenship coalesced into a description of how respondents feel they
belong (or would like to belong) within a community and local area. The
overriding message from the data is that feeling wanted and identifying with a
locality is crucially and developmentally important to young people. This is
consistent with the view that such belonging helps children and young people
form their sense of identity and social citizenship at the local and wider
societal level (Chawla 2002, Stanley, Richardson and Prior 2005, Gleeson and
Sipe 2006).
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Children and Young People Using Public
Space: Closing Points
•
In adopting an approach based on key social, civil and political rights, including the right to
a sense of belonging, rather than the presumed wrongs of children and young people, their
aspirations and potential come to prominence, requiring a policy response that is more
sophisticated and genuinely engaging than may be the case currently (Gleeson and Sipe
2006; Franklin 2002; White and Wyn 2008).
•
In a multitude of ways in many locations worldwide, public spaces are under attack from
developments and control measures seeking to exclude children, young people and others
(Watson 2006). In this climate of rapid sometimes violent, change within the nature of
public space, it is becoming increasingly and highly contested.
•
Perhaps there really cannot be too many rights which support the active use and
enjoyment of all forms of public space, by children and young people. Gleeson (2006)
suggests that viewing public space issues through the lens of social citizenship alongside
the connected elements of civil and political citizenship, can revitalize and restore public
space, something that ever increasing attempts at control, policing, camera surveillance
and more stringent exclusion of ‘undesirables’, cannot achieve.
•
In promoting greater understanding and tolerance of the rights and needs of all users of
public space, the spirit of Jacob’s (1965) hope for the generations to mix together, sharing
community infrastructure and yet maintaining personal safety and dignity, might become a
reality for more children and young people around the world.
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More Closing Points………………….
•
The real valuing of children and young people is most critical to this process, as noted
in the previous century, in this observation by O’Connor (1991):
•
“Youth and children are non-people. They have been objectified, theorized and
explained away and denied a legitimate voice. Our views of non-adult life
(childhood and youth) reflect an idealized view of adult and child relations. This
is because their actual treatment is harsh and punitive, but the attitude to them
is clouded in paternalism and protectionism. Society dehumanizes the young
and the economically vulnerable” (p.7)
•
Clearly this is a dated commentary and much has changed over the years, but if we
consider rather more recent evidence on this topic, then O’Connor’s views may well
still be accurate. The Institute for Public Policy research (IPPR) in the U.K. recently
published a report indicating that substantial numbers of people living in British cities
express varying degrees of fear about and dislike towards, some children and young
people (Margo and Dixon 2006). The authors note that while their study is about
British young people, Australian young people “were not that different” and that there
were major “cultural and social similarities” (Margo and Dixon 2006:9).
•
(Contact author for details of references cited or see full paper).
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