The turn of the twentieth century was a time of explosive growth for American cities, a time of nascent hopes and apparently limitless possibilities. In Children of the City, David Nasaw re-creates this period in our social history from the vantage point of the children who grew up then. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories and unpublished—and until now unexamined—primary source materials from cities across the country, he provides us with a warm and eloquent portrait of these children, their families, their daily lives, their fears, and their dreams. Illustrated with 68 photographs from the period, many never before published, Children of the City offers a vibrant portrait of a time when our cities and our grandparents were young.

This timely and thought-provoking book explores children's lives in modern cities. At a time of intense debate about the quality of life in cities, this book examines how they can become good places for children to live in. Through contributions from childhood experts in Europe, Australia and America, the book shows the importance of studying children's lives in cities in a comparative and generational perspective. It also contains fascinating accounts of city living from children themselves, and offers practical design solutions. The authors consider the importance of the city as a social, material and cultural place for children, and explore the connections and boundaries between home, neighbourhood, community and city. Throughout, they stress the importance of engaging with how children see their city in order to reform it within a child-sensitive framework. This book is invaluable reading for students and academics in the field of anthropology, sociology, social policy and education. It will also be of interest to those working in the field of architecture, urban planning and design.

More than half of the global and around eighty per cent of the western population grow up in cities. Here, Horschelmann and van Blerk provide a vivid picture of children and youths in the city, how they make sense of it and how they appropriate it through their social actions. Considering the causes and forms of social inequalities in relation to class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, ability and geographical location, this book discusses specific issues such as poverty, homelessness and work. Each chapter draws on examples and cases from both the developed and developing world, and throughout the chapters, it: contrasts experiences of growing up in the city focuses on urban youth culture, consumption and globalization considers contemporary movements towards the role of children and youths in planning processes. Horschelmann and van Blerk argue that youths must be recognised as urban social agents in their own right. Their informative book, though dealing with complex theoretical arguments, relates key ideas to this topical subject in a clear and coherent manner, making this book an excellent resource for students of human geography, urban studies and childhood studies.

The city, born to be a place of meeting and exchange, has for several decades taken as a default model the strong citizen, man, adult and worker, thereby transforming it into a hostile space for the weakest: the elderly, the disabled, the poor and the children. The automobile, the toy of choice for the privileged citizen, is also taken to be the principal 'citizen' of the city, thus endangering the health, aesthetics and mobility of the rest of us. This book proposes a new philosophy of city governance that takes children as the default citizens, with the confidence that a city sensitive to the needs of childhood will be healthier for everybody. This work recovers elements of the 1989 Convention of the Rights of the Child that recognize the full citizenship of children to suggest two principle axioms for optimal city design: the participation of children in city governance and the restitution of their autonomy, which allows them to stay with their friends and play freely. Boys and girls, in this way, represent all those excluded from decisions and power. This book is primarily written for politicians and city managers so that they can take on board the ideas within. Yet it is also important for teachers and parents so that they can respect the rights provided in the convention. City of Children should be made available to students on teacher-training courses, and also to the children who are the book’s true protagonists. At present, more than two hundred cities in Spain, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Brazil and Costa Rica have joined this project. This book is a translation of “La città dei bambini” and was translated as part of the Bridging Language and Scholarship initiative. The English edition by Vernon Press follows previous editions of this important work in Italian and the four languages of the Spanish nation (Galego, Basque, Catalan and Castilian), French and Portuguese to make available for the first time this important work to a broader international audience.

This collection explores the significance of New York City in children’s literature, stressing literary, political, and societal influences on writing for young people from the twentieth century to the present day. Contextualized in light of contemporary critical and cultural theory, the chapters examine the varying ways in which children’s literature has engaged with New York City as a city space, both in terms of (urban) realism and as an ‘idea’, such as the fantasy of the city as a place of opportunity, or other associations. The collection visits not only dominant themes, motifs, and tropes, but also the different narrative methods employed to tell readers about the history, function, physical structure, and conceptualization of New York City, acknowledging the shared or symbiotic relationship between literature and the city: just as literature can give imaginative ‘reality’ to the city, the city has the potential to shape the literary text. This book critically engages with most of the major forms and genres for children/young adults that dialogue with New York City, and considers such authors as Margaret Wise Brown, Felice Holman, E. L. Konigsburg, Maurice Sendak, J. D. Salinger, John Donovan, Shaun Tan, Elizabeth Enright, and Patti Smith.

This book presents an interplay of imaginative memoir-telling, action research data and future projection that reminds and inspires experiences academics, researchers, professionals, as well as a wider public to recognize the fundamental importance and the impellent need for more and better work in favour of true political and societal recognition of the needs and rights of children to play freely, to participate, to live fully and enjoy their neighbourhoods and cities, and to imagine and construct alternative futures, together with adults. The book's abundant spoken dialogue is, in effect, storytelling between children (and youth) on their own and with adults (especially the elderly). It conveys an appreciation of children’s special capacities to think critically about their everyday places—and the greater world around them—and to develop solutions (or ‘projects’) for the problems they identify. This book serves an effective catalyst for stimulating rich discussion of the theoretical and practical bases of the many themes, or areas of study, which are treated in the story.