Planning, Maps, and Children's Lives: A Cautionary Tale

Abstract

Planners are increasingly seeing children's maps as an appropriate consultation and participation method for enabling children's knowledge, views and experiences to be included in planning. A study was undertaken with 163 children aged nine to eleven in Dunedin, New Zealand, to understand children's relationships to their neighbourhood and the wider city. Children in the interview evidenced rich connections with their home environment and local community, but often did not produce “good” maps. Maps are useful as a tool for talking with children about their lives but, on their own, can give planners only limited insights into children's “real world” environmental cognition and community connection.

Keywords:

• Children
• mapping
• environmental and community connection
• planning consultation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the University of Otago for providing the grant funding for this project. Thanks also to the members of the research team, especially Robin Quigg and Jan Jopson who were the researchers for this project and to the other team members Matt Broad, Em Oysten and Steven Impey. Our thanks also to the children and teachers from the ten schools who so enthusiastically and willingly shared their time and knowledge.

Notes

1. Each child was only to be absent from class for around 30 minutes, hence the need to curtail some interviews if they went beyond 40 minutes.

2. Wiki planning is available at http://www.wikiplanning.org