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Healthy Environments
This issue of Early Childhood in Focus draws attention to some key global challenges in providing healthy environments for young children. Section 1 recognises that multisectoral policy responses are needed to ensure adequate housing and improved water and sanitation, as well as recreational spaces. For young children, physical spaces are closely intertwined with emotional security and feelings of well-being. Section 2 explores the opportunities and challenges of living in urban environments.
Young children are especially vulnerable to the physical harm that urban environments create from pollution in the air, toxins in the ground, contaminated water and waste dumps, traffic, and unsafe housing. Their homes, as well as their neighbourhoods, may be unhealthy places to grow up in. Section 3 is about the design of environments specifically for young children, including innovative ‘democratic spaces’, and ‘child-friendly spaces’ in areas affected by disasters and emergencies
La desurbanización y el derecho a la ciudad desurbanizada
Cities are historically created as a collaborative work of different generations
and derive from the possibilities created
bylocal and climatic conditions, social
relations and culture. Today, urbanization may appear as a way of organizing
everyday hierarchical, exclusive, discriminatory and exploitative life through
industrialized mass production of temporary, privatized, homogenized, fragmented, and power-oriented spaces.
This mind-set and application generates
several social and ecological problems.
This article discusses the right to the city
concept, and links it to the deurbanization approach as a social and ecological
answer to the problems associated with
current urban development. The methodology is supported by a review of the
literature and an analysis of examples of
works created in the De-Urban Design
Studio. Results indicate that the deurbanization approach envisions creating resilient, equitable, non-hierarchical
cities composed of communities that
replace consumption via harmony with
nature, that replace individualism and
competition viacollaboration and solidarity, and that replace hegemonic relations
via an equitable distribution of powerLas ciudades se crean históricamente
como un trabajo colaborativo de diferentes generaciones y derivan de las posibilidades de las condiciones locales y
climáticas, las relaciones sociales y la
cultura. Hoy en día, la urbanización puede aparecer como una forma de organizar la vida cotidiana jerárquica, exclusiva,
discriminativa y explotadora a través de
la producción en masa industrializada de
espacios temporales, privatizados, homogeneizados, fragmentados y orientados
hacia el poder. Esta mentalidad y aplicación genera varios problemas sociales y
ecológicos. Este artículo pretende discutir
el concepto de derecho a la ciudad y vincularlo con el enfoque de desurbanización
como una respuesta social y ecológica a
los problemas de la urbanización actual.
La metodología se apoya en la revisión de
la literatura y el análisis de ejemplos de los
trabajos creados en De-UrbanDesign Studio.Los resultados indican que el enfoque
de desurbanización prevé crear ciudades
resilientes, equitativas y no jerárquicas,
compuestas por comunidades que reemplazan el consumo por la creación en armonía con la naturaleza; que reemplazan
el individualismo y la competencia por la
colaboración y la solidaridad y que reemplazan las relaciones hegemónicas por la
distribución equitativa del poder
The game jam movement:disruption, performance and artwork
This paper explores the current conventions and intentions of the game jam - contemporary events that encourage the rapid, collaborative creation of game design prototypes. Game jams are often renowned for their capacity to encourage creativity and the development of alternative, innovative game designs. However, there is a growing necessity for game jams to continue to challenge traditional development practices through evolving new formats and perspectives to maintain the game jam as a disruptive, refreshing aspect of game development culture. As in other creative jam style events, a game jam is not only a process but also, an outcome. Through a discussion of the literature this paper establishes a theoretical basis with which to analyse game jams as disruptive, performative processes that result in original creative artefacts. In support of this, case study analysis of Development Cultures: a series of workshops that centred on innovation and new forms of practice through play, chance, and experimentation, is presented. The findings indicate that game jams can be considered as processes that inspire creativity within a community and that the resulting performances can be considered as a form of creative artefact, thus parallels can be drawn between game jams and performative and interactive art
Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for
Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality
Giving voice to equitable collaboration in participatory design
An AHRC funded research project titled Experimenting with the Co-experience Environment (June 2005 – June 2006) culminated in a physical environment designed in resonance with a small group of participants. The participants emerged from different disciplines coming together as a group to share their expertise and contribute their knowledge to design. They engaged in storytelling, individual and co-thinking, creating and co-creating, sharing ideas that did not require justification, proposed designs even though most were not designers …and played. The research questioned how a physical environment designed specifically for co-experiencing might contribute to new knowledge in design? Through play and by working in action together the participants demonstrated the potential of a physical co-experience environment to function as a scaffold for inter-disciplinary design thinking,saying, doing and making (Ivey & Sanders 2006). Ultimately the research questioned how this outcome might influence our approach to engaging participants in design research and experimentation
The tourist experience of heritage urban spaces : Valletta as a case study
This article provides an understanding of how tourists experience
heritage urban spaces by investigating features that influence
tourist experiences most. It is framed within urban design
literature which refers to three elements of urban space namely
physical setting (or form), activity, and meaning. These elements
are used to explore how urban spaces are experienced by
tourists. Its findings are derived from an in-depth qualitative
analysis of interviews with tourists to Valletta, Malta. The
research suggests that the intrinsic qualities of the space are
relevant to the tourist experience but what is even more
relevant are the interactions of the tourist with different
elements within that space, namely interactions with
surroundings, interactions with others, and interactions with
self/meaning. Within this broad conceptual model, the research
identifies important sub-themes. Some of these reinforce the
findings of existing work on tourist experiences, but others are
often under-estimated or neglected.peer-reviewe
The influence of travel, residential location choice and leisure activities on well-being
Well-being has recently found acceptance in mobility studies. Travel can influence well-being in numerous ways, going from feelings experienced during travel to participation in activities facilitated by travel. However, most of these studies have emphasized on experienced feelings and moods and levels of satisfaction. This is however only one approach to well-being. Other approaches, stressing (among others) on achieving important goals in life and strengthening social bonds have only received limited attention. Besides, longer term perspectives (e.g., residential location choice and daily activity patterns) have not been included in the analyses. In sum, there is still a lot of space for future research
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