Growing Up in Cities Update

Children, Youth and Environments Vol 13, No.2 (2003) ISSN 1546-2250 Growing Up in Cities Update Louise Chawla Kentucky State University Citation: Chawla, Louise. “Growing Up in Cities Update.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(2), 2003. Since the publication of Growing Up in an Urbanising Worldand Creating Better Cities with Children and Youth, the Growing Up in Cities project has spread beyond the original eight countries that are the bases for these books, primarily through training workshops and the establishment of new action-research sites. New sites with a formal affiliation with UNESCO have been created in Sweden, Lebanon, Jordan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands, and networks of new sites are on the drawing board in Canada, Jordan and the Philippines. The project has taken a variety of innovative forms in South Africa and Australia, including coordinated samples of research sites commissioned by the city councils of Johannesburg, South Africa and Frankston, Australia, with special attention to the effect of urban crime and violence on children's lives in these locations. In Melbourne and in the Yarra Ranges in Victoria, Australia, the project is being extended by involving young people in documenting and evaluating their environment through the use of the arts and digital imagery. In response to interest in the Middle East, an Arabic version of Creating Better Cities with Children and Youth is now available from UNESCO. Reports of the project have also appeared in numerous other publications, including two additional books: Growing Up in Canaansland, co-published by UNESCO and the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, and Barn og Omgivelser ( Children and Environments ) published by the Oslo School of Architecture. The project 187 inspired a special issue of PLA Notes 42 (Participatory Learning and Action) on "Children's Participation-Evaluating Effectiveness" (October 2001) and a special issue of Local Environment on "Children, Youth and Sustainable Cities" (Volume 6(1), February 2001). All of these publications have been addressed to adults who seek to work directly with children in communities or establish more child-friendly policies at the municipal level. Children's right to participation, however, implies a right and need for information. Therefore the Growing Up in Cities project is also addressing the question: How can the results of actionresearch with children and youth be communicated to young people themselves? In response, a book series, "By Children for Children," is in the process of being designed in South Africa. Each book in the series will involve a child in telling his or her story for other children, with a dual language text in English and isiZulu or English and SeSotho. In Australia, material is being gathered for a collection of stories and artwork by children. Opportunities to connect young people at different project sites through video making are being explored with One World TV of London. A video in which South African children present their lives in a squatter camp, The Children of Thula Mntwana, is already available through UNESCO Publications. For more information about Growing Up in Cities, visit the project website at http://www.unesco.org/most/guic. Louise Chawla holds degrees in developmental psychology and environmental psychology, and is the international coordinator of UNESCO's Growing Up in Cities project. She is a professor at Whitney Young College, an interdisciplinary honors program at Kentucky State University. Dr. Chawla also serves as an adjunct professor in the doctoral program in Environmental Studies at Antioch New England Graduate School in New Hampshire. ...

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