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Participation represents a very important strategy for the sustainable development of cities and many governments have implemented a number of initiatives with this objective in mind. Of all the forms of children's involvement in changing the city, the present work takes into account two models of children's participation: Children's Councils and Participation in Planning. Special emphasis has been put on the description of the methods followed by a number of Italian cities in carrying out these initiatives. A description is given of the positive effects on the child's personal and social development and factors are seen to be relevant to success are discussed. It is argued that it is necessary to extend the cultural debate on the political and social signi®cance of these experiences and to put in place additional procedures guaranteeing a functional collaborative relationship among all the parties concerned.

After examining the characteristics of the degradation of the urban environment and the costs that this entails for the child's development, in particular as far as play experience and autonomous mobility are concerned, the article goes on to discuss the role of the children's contribution to the promotion of real and consistent change in the city. The reasons underlying the recent increase in the number of experiments of children's participation are examined together with the main characteristics of this strategy as a privileged access to knowledge concerning the needs of our younger citizens and as an innovative resource in solving the city's problems. It is shown how children's participation experiences can lead to the acquisition of a fresh sensitivity and competence by city administrators and technicians. An analysis is made of several proposals made by children in the course of participation experiments followed by the authors in cities in Italy and abroad during 10 year's of activities in the`The Children's City' project. These proposals con®rm the children's capacity to identify the city's problems as they emerge and to propose solutions that are often innovative or useful for all members of the population.

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Does a relation between subjective perception of one's own socioeconomic status and what one believes about impoverishment exist? Are people's causal attributions for poverty related to their concern for cost of living, their evaluation of economic situation in the last 12 months or prevision for next 12 months? This paper aims at studying these relations in order to better understand people's viewpoint on what originates poverty. The study considers data collected into a research carried out in 2012, in Italy and that has involved around 1000 participants. A Principal Component Analysis has allowed detecting three main components and the following analyses have showed significant relations between attributions and factors like, e.g., the perception of the personal socioeconomic status and concern for cost of living.