Growing up in Cities

This is a former Childwatch Project. This Unesco-sponsered project still exists and was the first major international effort to document the quality of life of urban children in minority and majority Worlds. The Growing Up in Cities project was a replication of the original study by urban planner Kevin Lynch in 1977. The goal of the project was to document some of the human costs and benefits of economic development by showing how the child’s use and perception of the resulting microenvironment affect his or her life and personal development.

Growing Up In Cities website

Related Activities:

Louise Chawla, who was a Fulbright Scholar in 1995 at the Children and Environment programme at the Norwegian Centre for Child Research, developed the plans for replicating the study. As the coordinator of the global project, she identified research contacts at the original sites and made contact with new sites, interested in participating in the project.

The Growing Up in Cities project comprised teams at sites in seven countries:
• Salta and Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Melbourne, Australia
• Bangalore, India
• Warsaw, Poland
• Trondheim, Norway
• Johannesburg, South Africa
• Oakland, California, USA

List of Participants:

The project was supported by the Norwegian Centre for Child Research, Childwatch International, the Management of Social Transformations, MOST, programme of UNESCO, and by UNICEF, in addition to the local support and funding of the site studies.

Tags: ["environment", "city planning", "Urban childhood"]

Published Sep. 26, 2008 10:27 AM - Last modified Apr. 17, 2013 3:38 PM