TY - JOUR
T1 - Toward a green and playful city: Understanding the social and political production of children's relational wellbeing in Barcelona
AU - Pérez del Pulgar, Carmen
AU - Anguelovski, Isabelle
AU - Connolly, James
PY - 2020/1/1
Y1 - 2020/1/1
N2 - © 2019 Elsevier Ltd This paper examines recent urban green amenities directed toward children and families and develops a novel understanding of the ways in which children's socio-natures are made/unmade through such interventions. We employ ethnographic and archival analysis in two new parks – Poble Nou and Nou Barris – in Barcelona to examine how a particular type of children's wellbeing, what we call “relational wellbeing” is shaped through the production of green-playful-child-friendly amenities. We find that planning processes and visions, urban development goals, and neighbourhood socio-material structure moderate the effect of green-playful-child-friendly amenities on relational wellbeing by directing how these spaces are used. This finding points toward the importance – for equity concerns – of accounting for the social and political processes that generate relational wellbeing. These processes are often reflective of broader economic agendas of urban transformation designed to extract value, control space, and/or legitimize speculative urban development – while sometimes eroding local socio-material conditions – to the point of producing green spaces of privilege, exclusion and control. The connection between relational wellbeing and green-playful-child-friendly interventions highlights the importance, within the urban environmental equity literature, of reconceptualising pathways of wellbeing and health beyond questions of spatial distribution of natural areas and offers a new perspective for the development of future guidelines on green-playful-child-friendly space policies.
AB - © 2019 Elsevier Ltd This paper examines recent urban green amenities directed toward children and families and develops a novel understanding of the ways in which children's socio-natures are made/unmade through such interventions. We employ ethnographic and archival analysis in two new parks – Poble Nou and Nou Barris – in Barcelona to examine how a particular type of children's wellbeing, what we call “relational wellbeing” is shaped through the production of green-playful-child-friendly amenities. We find that planning processes and visions, urban development goals, and neighbourhood socio-material structure moderate the effect of green-playful-child-friendly amenities on relational wellbeing by directing how these spaces are used. This finding points toward the importance – for equity concerns – of accounting for the social and political processes that generate relational wellbeing. These processes are often reflective of broader economic agendas of urban transformation designed to extract value, control space, and/or legitimize speculative urban development – while sometimes eroding local socio-material conditions – to the point of producing green spaces of privilege, exclusion and control. The connection between relational wellbeing and green-playful-child-friendly interventions highlights the importance, within the urban environmental equity literature, of reconceptualising pathways of wellbeing and health beyond questions of spatial distribution of natural areas and offers a new perspective for the development of future guidelines on green-playful-child-friendly space policies.
KW - Barcelona
KW - CHILDHOOD
KW - COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENT
KW - Children-nature-play
KW - ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
KW - Environmental justice
KW - GENTRIFICATION
KW - Gentrification
KW - HEALTH
KW - INNER-CITY
KW - PHYSICAL-ACTIVITY
KW - PUBLIC SPACE
KW - Relational wellbeing
KW - URBAN REGENERATION
KW - Urban environmental equity
KW - Urban political ecology
KW - YOUNG-PEOPLE
UR - https://ddd.uab.cat/record/212646
UR - http://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/toward-green-playful-city-understanding-social-political-production-childrens-relational-wellbeing-b
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102438
DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102438
M3 - Article
VL - 96
JO - Cities
JF - Cities
SN - 0264-2751
M1 - 102438
ER -