Creating Better Cities with Children and Youth: A Manual for Participation

THIS IS THE companion volume to Growing up in an Urbanizing World, which was reviewed in the April 2002 issue of Environment&Urbanization. Both books come out of the international Growing Up in Cities Project, which has worked with groups of children from a number of cities worldwide, exploring their relationship with their neighbourhoods and drawing on their insights and involvement to improve their local environment. The project has been a revival and an extension of the 1970s research by Kevin Lynch, which investigated the neighbourhood qualities that contribute to children's development and self- realization.

Fundamental to the more recent incarnation of this project has been a shift towards a more action-oriented approach – something Lynch envisioned but never actually realized. In the intervening years, and especially with the broad acceptance of the Convention on the Rights of the Child since 1989, there has been a growing recognition of children's right to have a voice, and a growing interest in their capacity to contribute in practical ways to the development of their communities. As Driskell points out, skepticism about the value of children's participation is increasingly being replaced by a pragmatic desire for advice on effective methods for tapping this proven resource. This handbook provides that kind of advice, drawing on a range of field-tested methods that have been developed by this international team of researchers and used with children in low-income communities around the world. The numerous sites in which these approaches have been used and refined is testimony to their flexibility. Although the core methods here are broadly applicable, they have also shown themselves to be readily adaptable to local needs.

This is a comprehensive volume. It includes not only an array of tools to use in working with children, but also offers advice on the less central areas of concern that can make or break a project – such as staff selection and training, the initial planning for a project, funding concerns, and practical ways to store and manage data. A significant component is the initial conceptual overview, which offers, among other things, a very clear table listing all the reasons why participation for children is generally opposed or dismissed, and why these don't hold up under scrutiny. The core of the book considers four basic areas: the start-up of a project (including meetings with various stakeholders, the creation of a project coordinating team and the selection of children); the evaluation of the local area with children through a range of methods; the analysis of results; and the implementation of a community action plan.

The most detailed attention is given to the methods for neighbourhood evaluation. These range from informal observation of the local scene, to structured approaches such as behaviour mapping and surveys, to community workshops and events that have the dual function of generating information and raising awareness. Each method is clearly presented – its purpose, the materials required, the time it will take and tips for maximizing children's involvement. For each method there is a process guide – brief in some cases (for instance, not much is needed for informal observation) but extremely detailed in others. The section on interviewing, for example, includes guidelines on developing an interview instrument, a sample set of questions, tips for being an effective interviewer and instructions on using a tape recorder.

The follow-up to data collection is less detailed, reflecting to some extent the fact that action in response to local evaluation can take so many forms. General guidelines and pointers are possible but it would not have been realistic to go into much depth here.
The clean, simple layout of the book is a real plus. It is not unusual for books of this kind to be so cluttered with boxes and examples that it can be difficult on any given page to know where to sta