Toward a green and playful city: Understanding the social and political production of children's relational wellbeing in Barcelona

Abstract

This paper examines recent urban green amenities directed toward children and families and develops a novel understanding of the ways in which children's socio-natures are made/unmade through such interventions. We employ ethnographic and archival analysis in two new parks -Poble Nou and Nou Barris -in Barcelona to examine how a particular type of children's wellbeing, what we call "relational wellbeing" is shaped through the production of green-playful-child-friendly amenities. We find that planning processes and visions, urban development goals, and neighbourhood sociomaterial structure moderate the effect of green-playful-child-friendly amenities on relational wellbeing by directing how these spaces are used. This finding points toward the importance --for equity concerns --of accounting for the social and political processes that generate relational wellbeing. These processes are often reflective of broader economic agendas of urban transformation designed to extract value, control space, and/or legitimize speculative urban development -while sometimes eroding local socio-material conditions -to the point of producing green spaces of privilege, exclusion and control. The connection between relational wellbeing and green-playful-child-friendly interventions highlights the importance, within the urban environmental equity literature, of reconceptualising pathways of wellbeing and health beyond questions of spatial distribution of natural areas and offers a new perspective for the development of future guidelines on green-playful-child-friendly space policies.

Nature-based solutions as discursive tools and contested practices in urban nature’s neoliberalisation processes

“…By the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, green space provision became intertwined with the redevelopment of large post-industrial areas of the city (i.e. Poble Nou) and anchored around new real estate developments and the rebranding of Barcelona, both through long-standing campaigns (Barcelona posa't guapa 1980s-2009) and more recent 'smart city' initiatives (Anguelovski, 2014;del Pulgar et al, 2020). These years were also marked by largescale traffic reconfiguration and planning of new green space and infrastructure in ways that can also address water permeability, noise reduction and micro-climate regulation needs (Barcelona City Council, 2010).…”

Crescer a brincar nos espaços verdes urbanos

“…Embora estes jogos (futebol, skate, bicicleta, patins, etc. ) promovam o exercício físico -o que por si só é já benéfico, uma vez que se baseiam em objetos trazidos de casa pela criança como a bola, os patins ou a bicicleta, -podem também evitar que a criança interaja com a natureza (del Pulgar et al, 2020). Este efeito é oposto ao interesse mostrado pelos encarregados de educação que pretendem a existência de um maior número de aulas em EVU com o intuito de que os alunos possam interagir e conhecer o meio natural.…”

Envisioning Happy Places for All: A Systematic Review of the Impact of Transformations in the Urban Environment on the Wellbeing of Vulnerable Groups

“…No studies were excluded based on study design. A total of 10 papers were included in the final review [36,[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48].…”

“…In terms of country distribution, four out of 10 studies were conducted in the UK, of which two were in England [42,44], and two in Scotland [43,48]); two studies were in the USA [36,47]; and the remaining four studies were carried out respectively in Spain [46], Norway [41], Turkey [40], and New Zealand [45]. Study methodologies ranged from mixed methods [41,45,48], to qualitative [42,44,46], or quantitative surveys carried out either longitudinally [43,47] or cross-sectionally after the intervention [40]. One paper [36] presented a qualitative review of existing case studies.…”