Event Date: Friday, November 9, 2018
Children as Users and Co-Producers of City Environments
Christina Ergler
The University of Otago, New Zealand
Date: Friday, November 9th, 2018
Time: 2:30-3:30pm
Location: 1004 SSC
The presentation will draw on two participatory projects conducted in Auckland and Dunedin, New Zealand to showcase how primary and preschool children experience, use and co-produce their city environments as well as how local practices and norms contribute to feeling well in cities. The first part of the talk explores why ‘play’ resonates differently across localities and seasons in Auckland, a city with a moderate climate. I argue that the empathy participating parents and primary school-age children revealed towards outdoor play reflects locally constituted beliefs about what is seasonally ‘appropriate’ children’s activity. I argue that cities need to become de facto adventure playgrounds in which independent outdoor play is ‘appropriate’ and desirable all-year-round. The second part of the presentation focuses on young children’s experiential urban landscapes. I will argue that pre-schoolers are knowledgeable meaning-makers of place, and walking with them is a key step to understanding their life worlds and recognising them properly as citizens.
Christina Ergler is a lecturer in Social Geography at The University of Otago, New Zealand. Her research interests are at the intersection of geography, sociology and public health and centre on how physical, social and symbolic environments shape and are shaped by the way people play, live, age fall ill and recover in particular places. She has published more than 30 theoretical and methodological pieces to alert stakeholders and communities to the socio-spatial, structural and experiential dimensions of people’s health and wellbeing in transforming urban environments.Christina is a member of the editorial team forthe journal ‘Geography Compass’ and serves as New Zealand representative for the Young Commission on Health and Environment as part of the International Geographical Union Commission on Health and Environment (IGU CHE).