‘This is a Great Place for Children. Here, They Can Play, Do What They Want, Have Fun and Other Things.’ Mapping Primary School Children’s Everyday Spaces

Abstract

This article presents empirical findings from a learning environment based on education for Spatial Citizenship (Gryl & Jekel, 2012; Schulze et al., 2015) conducted with primary school children (6 to 10 years of age) in the city of Essen, Germany. In workshops comprising three stages, participants used an easy-to-use mapping application to trace significant places and objects in their school surroundings in relation to the workshops’ overall topic of envisioning designs and features of a ‘city for children’. This paper focuses on the analysis of collaborative maps created from children’s perspectives on urban space in their own life-worlds.