This research examines the transformations occurring in children and youth’s identity narratives as they engage dialectically with the recent public narratives of social and political inclusion. Employing children’s experiences of the favela, this thesis explores children’s ontological narratives as part of a place-based identity constructed within the public narratives of Rio de Janeiro. A range of public narratives are constituted and socially constructed by the state, media and culture industries. However, cultural, social and economic narratives from non-governmental organizations based in favelas have emerged as counter-production to the mainstream public narratives. This work captures the intersections of these narratives in children’s lives through empirical research in a favela in Rio de Janeiro using participant observation, a mini questionnaire, and photo-voice technique with children aged 10-13. It provides insight into the ways in which children face every-day boundaries enforced by relationships at the individual, the community, and the city levels. The findings show that children are caught in a web of disorder that is strongly influenced by both traffickers and the state, which contributes to their continued social exclusion from formal city space. / text

During the vastly transformative stages of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notions of the urban and definitions of childhood mutually intersected to create and define a modern Argentine landscape. The construction of new urban environments for children defined and reflected larger liberal elites’ definitions of childhood writ large. To better understand the production of this modern childhood in Argentina, this dissertation examines its other through the spatial-discourses behind constructions of childhood for the socio-economic lower classes - children who largely did not meet the expectations of the elite. I employ the use of both published and archival sources, from 1880 to 1955, providing textual analyses of the language of reformers – primarily state and municipal authorities, pedagogues, hygienists, philanthropists and urban planners – alongside spatial analyses of the built environment, including kindergartens, playgrounds, and open-air schools within the city of Buenos Aires, as well as a healthcare facility and themed park in the province of Buenos Aires. Urban intellectuals, educators and overall reformers increasingly considered play as paramount to children’s physical and psychological development, focusing on where children played, how they played and what their play meant. Childhood became a contested ideological space, constructed and negotiated alongside notions of Argentine national identity. By moving beyond textual analyses of professionals’ discourses, this dissertation not only contributes to our understanding of Argentine childhood, but also points to ways in which the built environment embodies modern notions of childhood.

This dissertation documents the everyday lives and spaces of a population of youth typically constructed as out of place, and the broader urban context in which they are rendered as such. Thirty-three female and transgender street youth participated in the development of this youth-based participatory action research (YPAR) project utilizing geo-ethnographic methods, auto-photography, and archival research throughout a six-phase, eighteen-month research process in Bogotá, Colombia. This dissertation details the participatory writing process that enabled the YPAR research team to destabilize dominant representations of both street girls and urban space and the participatory mapping process that enabled the development of a youth vision of the city through cartographic images. The maps display individual and aggregate spatial data indicating trends within and making comparisons between three subgroups of the research population according to nine spatial variables. These spatial data, coupled with photographic and ethnographic data, substantiate that street girls’ mobilities and activity spaces intersect with and are altered by state-sponsored urban renewal projects and paramilitary-led social cleansing killings, both efforts to clean up Bogotá by purging the city center of deviant populations and places. Advancing an ethical approach to conducting research with excluded populations, this dissertation argues for the enactment of critical field praxis and care ethics within a YPAR framework to incorporate young people as principal research actors rather than merely voices represented in adultist academic discourse. Interjection of considerations of space, gender, and participation into the study of street youth produce new ways of envisioning the city and the role of young people in research. Instead of seeing the city from a panoptic view, Bogotá is revealed through the eyes of street youth who participated in the construction and feminist visualization of a new cartography and counter-map of the city grounded in embodied, situated praxis. This dissertation presents a socially responsible approach to conducting action-research with high-risk youth by documenting how street girls reclaim their right to the city on paper and in practice; through maps of their everyday exclusion in Bogotá followed by activism to fight against it.

Barnkonventionen blev lag i Sverige den första januari år 2020. Ett sätt att integrera barnkonvention i fysisk planering är säkerställa alla barns rätt till en god utomhusmiljö. Tidigare forskning visar att tillgång till naturen har flera positiva fördelar, såsom fysisk och psykisk hälsa. Barns möjlighet till detta kan variera beroende på olika bakgrundsförhållanden och ett sätt att jämna ut ojämlikheten är att arbeta med skolgårdens utformning och planering.  Utifrån ovanstående resonemang är syftet för den här kandidatuppsatsen att belysa skolgårdens nutida utformning och utvecklingsmöjligheter baserat på visioner och teorier om barns utemiljöer. För att uppfylla syftet har ett inventeringsprojekt av skolgårdar i samarbete med Karlskoga kommun genomförts våren 2021. Projektet ska utmynna i en nulägesbeskrivning och analys för stödja kommunens planering och prioritering av skolgårdar. Följande frågeställningar har formulerats för att uppfylla uppsatsens syfte: Vilka målsättningar och visioner för skolgården och barns utomhusmiljöer har Karlskoga kommun?  Hur är skolgårdarna i Karlskoga kommun rumsligt utformade i förhållande till visionen?  Studiens resultat har analyserats med hjälp av en teori som utgår från Grahns och Berggren-Bärrings (1995) åtta karaktärer hos parken som är betydelsefulla för människor. Teorin har anpassats och kompletterats med hjälp av andra studier om kvalitéer i barns utemiljöer. Karlskoga har en policy gällande för- och grundskolans skolgårdsmiljöer samt en översiktsplan från år 2011, som med hjälp av en dokumentanalys undersökts utifrån teorin. Teorin har med stöd av dokumentanalysen utvecklats till ett observationsschema för att möjliggöra för en inventering och analys av skolgårdarna i Karlskoga kommun. Resultatet har även analyserats med hjälp av kulturgeografiska och rumsliga perspektiv samt barns geografier för att få en djupare förståelse om skolgården som plats. Slutsatsen baserad på resultatsanalysen visar att de undersökta skolgårdarna till stor del lever upp till Karlskogas vision om barns utemiljöer. Den naturrika miljön är en genomgående utgångspunkt i analysen av empirin och förespråkas både av tidigare studier samt kommunens styrdokument. Den naturrika miljön har en så kallad polymorf egenskap som innebär att den kan ha olika användningsområden och egenskaper. Exempel på dessa egenskaper är återhämtning, kultur och artrikhet, lekvärde samt möjlighet för barn att forma sin egen plats. Däremot finns det en paradox när det gäller tillgänglighet och trygghet. Den naturrika miljön kan ge upphov till tillgänglighet då den har flera användningsområden, men kan också  hindra elever med fysisk funktionsnedsättning samt undanskymma konflikter. Därför är utformningen av den naturrika miljön betydande för att skapa en tillgänglig utomhusmiljö. De skolgårdar som bedömdes uppfylla flest kriterier enligt observationsschemat var de som hade god tillgång till vegetation och skogsliknande miljöer. / The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child became law in Sweden on the first of January in 2020. One way to integrate the Convention on the Rights of the Child into physical planning is to ensure that all children have the right to a good outdoor environment. Previous research shows that access to nature has several positive benefits, such as physical and mental health. Children's possibility to this can vary depending on different background conditions and a way to approach and even out the inequality is to work with the schoolyard's design and planning. Based on the above reasoning, the purpose of this bachelor thesis is to shed light on the schoolyard's current design and development opportunities based on visions and theories about children's outdoor environments. To fulfill the purpose, an inventory project of schoolyards in collaboration with Karlskoga municipality took place in the spring of 2021. The project will result in a current situation description and analysis to support the municipality's planning and prioritization of schoolyards. The following questions have been formulated to fulfill the purpose of the essay: What goals and visions for the schoolyard and children's outdoor environments does Karlskoga municipality have? How are the schoolyards in Karlskoga municipality spatially designed in relation to the vision? The results of the study have been analyzed with the help of a theory based on Grahn's and Berggren-Bärring's (1995) eight characteristics of the park that are important to humans. The theory has been adapted and supplemented with the help of other studies regarding qualities in children's outdoor environments. Karlskoga municipality has a policy regarding schoolyards environments as well as their long-term planning document regarding guidance on how water, land and built environment is going to be used, developed and preserved from 2011, which with the help of a document analysis was examined based on the thesis theory. With the support of the document analysis, the theory has been developed into an observation scheme to enable an inventory and analysis of the schoolyards in Karlskoga municipality. The results have also been analyzed with the help of spatial perspectives as well as children's geographies to gain a deeper understanding of the schoolyard as a place. The conclusion based on the results analysis shows that the surveyed schoolyards overall live up to Karlskoga's vision of children's outdoor environments. The natural environment is a consistent starting point in the analysis of the empirical data and is advocated both by previous studies and the municipality's governing documents. The natural environment has a so-called polymorphic quality, which means that it can have different uses and properties. Examples of these characteristics are recovery, culture, species richness, play value and the opportunity for children to shape their own place. However, there is a paradox when it comes to accessibility and safety. The natural environment can give rise to accessibility as it has several uses, but can also prevent students with physical disabilities and obscure conflicts. Therefore, the design of the natural environment is significant for creating an accessible outdoor environment. The schoolyards that were considered to meet the most criteria according to the observation schedule, were those that had good access to vegetation and forest-like environments.

Where do beginner readers read in the English, mainstream primary school and where could they read? Emma Jane Dyer This thesis explores design for the beginner reader in Year One by evaluating existing spaces in the English primary school and imagining new ones. Three significant gaps identified in the literature of reading, the teaching of reading and school design are addressed: the impact of reading pedagogies, practices and routines on spatial arrangements for beginner readers inside and beyond the classroom; a theoretical understanding of the physical, bodily and sensory experience of the beginner reader; and the design of reading spaces by teaching staff. The study uses a design-oriented research methodology and framework proposed by Fällman. A designed artefact is a required outcome of the research: in this case, a child-sized, semi-enclosed book corner known as a nook. The research was organized in three phases. First, an initial design for the nook was created, based on multi-disciplinary, theoretical research about reading, school design and architecture. Secondly, empirical research using observation, pupil-led tours and interviews was undertaken in seven primary schools to determine the types of spaces where readers read: spaces that were often unsuitable for their needs. Thirdly, as a response to the findings of phases one and two, the nook was reconceived to offer a practical solution to poorly-designed furniture for reading in schools and to provoke further research about the ideal qualities of spaces for the beginner reader. The study demonstrates how the experience of the individual reader is affected by choices made about the national curriculum; by the size of schools and the spaces within them where readers can learn; by the design of classrooms by teachers; and by regulatory standards for teaching and non-teaching spaces. In developing a methodology that can stimulate and facilitate communication between architects, educators, policy-makers and readers, this thesis offers a valuable contribution to the ongoing challenge of improving school design for practitioners and pupils.