Engaging youth in post-disaster research: Lessons learned from a creative methods approach

Children and youth often demonstrate resilience and capacity in the face of disasters. Yet, they are typically not given the opportunities to engage in youth-driven research and lack access to official channels through which to contribute their perspectives to policy and practice during the recovery process. To begin to fill this void in research and action, this multi-site research project engaged youth from disaster-affected communities in Canada and the United States. This article presents a flexible youth-centric workshop methodology that uses participatory and arts-based methods to elicit and explore youth’s disaster and recovery experiences. The opportunities and challenges associated with initiating and maintaining partnerships, reciprocity and youth-adult power differentials using arts-based methods, and sustaining engagement in post-disaster settings, are discussed. Ultimately, this work contributes to further understanding of the methods being used to conduct research for, with, and about youth.Keywords: youth, disaster recovery, engagement, resilience, arts-based methods, participatory researc

Rethinking place-making: aligning placeness factors with perceived urban design qualities (PUDQs) to improve the built environment in historical district

Understanding the concept of place is critically important for urban design and place-making practice, and this research attempted to investigate the pathways by which perceived urban design qualities (PUDQs) influence placeness factors in the Chinese context. Twelve hypotheses were developed and combined in a structural equation model for validation. The Tanhualin historical district in Wuhan, China was selected for the analysis. As a result, place attachment was verified as a critical bridge factor that mediated the influence of PUDQs on place satisfaction. Among the five selected PUDQs, walkability and space quality were revealed as the most influential factors associated with place attachment and place satisfaction. Accessibility was actually indirectly beneficial to place-making via the mediation of walkability. Corresponding implications and strategies were discussed to maintain the sense of place for historic districts

Temporal pessimism and spatial optimism in environmental assessments: An 18-nation study

The personal assessments of the current and expected future state of the environment by 3130 community respondents in 18 nations were investigated at the local, national, and global spatial levels. These assessments were compared to a ranking of each country’s environmental quality by an expert panel. Temporal pessimism (‘‘things will get worse’’) was found in the assessments at all three spatial levels. Spatial optimism bias (‘‘things are better here than there’’) was found in the assessments of current environmental conditions in 15 of 18 countries, but not in the assessments of the future. All countries except one exhibited temporal pessimism, but significant differences between them were common. Evaluations of current environmental conditions also differed by country. Citizens’ assessments of current conditions, and the degree of comparative optimism, were strongly correlated with the expert panel’s assessments of national environmental quality. Aside from the value of understanding global trends in environmental assessments, the results have important implications for environmental policy and risk management strategies

Renaturing science : the role of childhoodnature in science for the anthropocene

This chapter proposes that there is a need to examine childhoodnature experiences and the way in which these might be influential in shaping an agenda for science and science education in the Anthropocene. A renaturing of science places a much greater emphasis on, and recognition of, the interdependency and relational nature of the natural world in which humans are inextricably embedded and suggests the need for the development of a strong ecological identity (Thomashow, Ecological identity: Becoming a reflective environmentalist. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996). This suggests that there is a need for increased availability of childhoodnature experiences and a focus on the quality of those experiences, as well as the need to explore further lifelong opportunities for developing innate biophilic (Wilson, Biophilia. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1984) tendencies. The chapter examines the childhoodnature experiences of beginning undergraduate university students and how these influence their current relationship to the natural world. Literature suggests that the strength of a person’s nature relatedness can have an impact on the way they view the natural world and can, subsequently, influence the actions they take toward that natural world. This chapter describes a mixed-methods approach used to examine beginning university students’ childhoodnature experiences and how those experiences may have influenced their sense of nature connectedness. Data gathered indicates that there are statistically significant correlations between childhoodnature experiences and current sense of nature connectedness, although the qualitative data suggests that the form of those experiences may be of critical importance. Evidence from the study presented here suggests that exposure to childhoodnature, while necessary, is not sufficient in itself, and further research is required into the nature and quality of childhoodnature experiences. This concurs with previous studies, e.g., Vadala, Bixler, and James (J Environ Educ 39:3–18, 2007), which found that it was the particular qualities of the childhoodnature experience that appeared to play a significant part in shaping future interests, attitudes, and values