Children’s Geographies und räumliche Verdichtung – Der englischsprachige Diskurs zu Kindern und verdichtetem Raum und seine Anschlussstellen zum deutschsprachigen Diskurs um kinderfreundliche Siedlungsentwicklung

Abstract

In the German-speaking discourse on child-friendly residential development, spaces of children are understood as physical-material containers in which children life. Children are considered as victims of their spatial circumstances and thus exposed to urban densification as they can not participate actively in designing / shaping the spatial environment. A socio-spatial perspective, which positions the acting subject in the foreground, exposes the problem of this understanding. However, empirical data is lacking yet. It appears differently in the Anglophone discourse on the so-called “children’s geographies”, which has been lead for about 15 years but is hardly received over here.Hence, liaisons and links between the Anglophone discourse on “children’s geographies” and the German-speaking discourse on child-friendly residential development shall be worked out during the “SNF-Short International Visit” at the “Education and Social Research Institute“ at Manchester Metropolitan University. For this purpose, the prevailing understandings of children and of space as well as of participation and spatial densification underlying the discourse are to be reconstructed. Alongside the identification of respective development lines, expert interviews with important British protagonists of the discourse on “children’s geographies” are projected (approx. 5 interviews). The research project shall benefit from existing contacts between the Manchester Metropolitan University and other research institutions of British universities. Moreover, an explorative study in two settings in Manchester shall reconstruct the “geographies of children” using the instrument of subjective maps (approx.. 25 maps). The data is supposed to be interlaced with the goal of sharpening the German-speaking discourse on child-friendly residential development and thereby of breaking with the perceptions dominating at this current time.