Children, Nature and Cities

Rethinking the Connections

Claire Freeman, Yolanda van Heezik

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367589431
• eBook ISBN: 9781317375159
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

That children need nature for health and well-being is widely accepted, but what type of nature? Specifically, what type of nature is not only necessary but realistically available in the complex and rapidly changing worlds that children currently live in?

This book examines child-nature definitions through two related concepts: the need for connecting to nature and the processes by which opportunities for such contact can be enhanced. It analyses the available nature from a scientific perspective of habitats, species and environments, together with the role of planning, to identify how children in cities can and do connect with nature. This book challenges the notion of a universal child and childhood by recognizing children's diverse life worlds and experiences which guide them into different and complex ways of interacting with the natural world.

Unfortunately not all children have the freedom to access the nature that is present in the cities where they live. This book addresses the challenge of designing biodiverse cities in which nature is readily accessible to children.

Part I
Children and nature – approaches to nature

1
Conceptions of nature, contested definitions and approaches

What type of nature is needed and why?

That children need nature for health and well-being is widely accepted but what type of nature? Specifically, what type of nature is not only necessary but also realistically available in the complex and rapidly changing urban worlds within which children currently live? Much recent interest in children’s connection with nature has come about because of growing concern around children’s perceived lack of nature connection. In this book, we explore children’s experiences and connection to nature. We examine different ways to approach and analyse the nature relationship, different ways of experiencing nature and of supporting and enhancing nature in the city. Our particular focus is on the relationship children have with nature and natural places in the city. In addition, we also adopt an ecological perspective when examining the biodiversity that both is and could be present in the urban environment and explore what this tells us about the potential for better engagement with nature.

In this book we examine child-nature definitions, conceptions and relationships. We recognise that these relationships can be ‘messy’, contradictory, complex and energising in real world experiential contexts. This approach is preferred over the more usual reference to romanticised notions of untouched or unpeopled nature and rural idylls. We explore two related concepts, ways of connecting to nature and the processes by which opportunities for such contact can be enhanced. We adopt a positive and optimistic view in that we have, as our core theme, a belief that connections with nature for children today are not only desirable but are possible in nearly all urban contexts. This is not to deny the importance of experiencing the wild and pristine but rather to emphasise and celebrate the common, the accessible and the interactive. In cities, if the opportunity is there, nature will use it to colonise the available space, and if nature is present, children can seek it out.

One example of a coloniser is the common mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), a duck that even though it has always been widely distributed throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Europe, Asia and North Africa has continued to spread its wings. It is now the commonest duck in our home town of Dunedin. Like many urban residents, it adapts well to a variety of living conditions. It can live in quite large population groups and is not too fussy about what it eats or with whom or even with what other type of ducks it mates, leading sometimes to a quite ‘crossbred’ urban population.¹ Just as these ducks have sought out human environments, children seek out ducks. Wherever ducks gather, so too will children for whom ducks provide one of the most enduring of nature interactions: enduring because these children will in turn bring their own grandchildren for the time-honoured ritual of ‘feeding the ducks’. Yet, this common and almost universal practice, which is central to connecting people and nature, goes unrecognised by most nature advocates.

Why is it that so little weight tends to be given to those common and often ‘fun’ interactions, such as duck feeding, messing around in the mud, tree climbing, fishing with a net or rolling on the grass? Is it because these and other childhood activities are seen as ordinary, everyday and not worthy of serious scientific attention? Whatever the reason, we argue that the everyday does matter and the ways in which nature makes its presence felt in childhood matters, as it is here in childhood that, we hope, the seeds of a lifelong relationship with nature are sown.

There is no universal child. Children live in and experience different life worlds, which, in turn, guide them into different and complex ways of interacting or not interacting with the natural world. Geographic location, culture, societal characteristics, race and ethnicity, religion, age, socio-economic status, education and a host of other influences determine these life worlds. These influences can be present at a macro level and expressed in a socio-cultural attitude to nature as in a predominantly Buddhist society or at the very micro level, where the poor physical health of a parent may limit the family’s access to walks in the natural spaces present in their neighbourhood. While some experiences may be generally available and characteristic of children in a particular place or cohort, individual characteristics, such as a disability, can and do create differential access to nature connection experiences. These differences mean that in any nature-enhancement initiative, professionals need to be fully informed of the factors in society that act at the general and the individual child level to enable or frustrate nature connection.

This book derives in part from the Natural Neighbourhoods for City Children study, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund (Freeman et al., 2015). Where appropriate, we include and reflect on findings from this study. The study was undertaken with 187 children in nine neighbourhoods in three different cities and included children from diverse socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. The interactions we had with the children and their teachers acted as the catalyst for this book, encouraging us to think more widely on the role of nature in city children’s lives. By most standards, New Zealand cities are green and biodiverse, although much of the flora and fauna in cities is not of New Zealand origin but made up of introduced exotic species that do not always sit well within native ecosystems. Rats, possums, hedgehogs, house sparrows, roses, loquats, lawns, bumblebees and the mallard are part of a seemingly endless list of introduced species resident in the cities in which children live. There are native species too but not always as prevalent or recognised. This complex exotic, indigenous biodiverse mix and the values and experiences associated with it also form part of this book as we consider what nature means in this increasingly globalised ‘natural’ world in which children grow up.

In our Natural Neighbourhoods for City Children study, we were intrigued by the absence of a value-laden approach of our children to nature. They liked or disliked nature, for example, the ubiquitous rat or trees in the street, on their own merits, rather than according to wider societal or scientific views on whether the species is native or alien or the aesthetic values placed on particular species. Our children were almost universally positive in their views on the nature present in their cities. This was a view present regardless of whether they lived in state-provided apartments, in low- or high-income housing estates or in inner-city or suburban housing. They all relished the opportunity to talk about the nature that they saw and encountered in their everyday lives. There were differences: lower-income children generally had less access to the more biodiverse environments (mainly private gardens) in their neighbourhoods compared to children in higher-income neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, even there, they showed an appreciation for what was there and did not see themselves or the places they lived as nature-deficient. We take our cue for this book from these children and attempt to focus on the positive opportunities present in our cities. Rather than being doom-and-gloom proponents, we look to how cities can and do work for children and to see if children can be supported in accessing the nature that is and could be there.

We traverse a wide global terrain for the book but recognise the focus is mostly on children and nature in western cities. In places, we use examples and case studies from New Zealand to illustrate the book. We recognise that the New Zealand experience is particular to these islands, but many of the challenges that New Zealand cities and New Zealand children face have resonance for wider global thinking on children’s experiences. In some respects, the New Zealand experience is unusually insightful, and, in this, we look to the experiences of New Zealand’s indigenous Māori people and New Zealand’s position as part of the Pacific realm. Children’s nature connection is informed by the specific geographical, historic and cultural contexts that shape their natural lives and by the globally challenging environmental context that will increasingly determine their future. We next turn our attention to this challenging context.

The environmental/nature challenge; cities and children under stress

In writing this book, we recognise and respond to a number of environmental challenges as they relate to urban living. These are threefold: the challenges nature itself faces globally that impact on cities at the macro level (e.g., population growth, climate change), the challenges that nature faces in the urban environment (e.g., habitat loss, fragmentation, species introductions), and the challenges children face in connecting to nature in these changing environments. These challenges occur at different geographic and temporal scales, but there is reasonable uniformity of agreement on what the global challenges are and the significant role of urban environments in these challenges. The United Kingdom’s (UK’s) Nature Conservancy (2016) identifies five key global challenges:

1. Protecting water
2. Action on climate change
3. Saving oceans
4. Conserving land
5. Transforming cities

The five problems, though presented as a list of five separate items, are deeply interconnected. For example, cities are impacted on by climat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• About the authors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• PART I Children and nature – approaches to nature
• PART II Understanding urban biodiversity in a changing environment
• PART III Children and nature interactions
• PART IV Creating connections, making it happen – biodiverse environments for all children
• Index