Children and Young People’s Spatial Agency

Abstract

This chapter will focus on outdoor environments and some of the issues to do with the use of those environments by children and young people. As a landscape architect the author’s interest focuses on the planning, design and management of outdoor environments underpinned by an understanding that such outdoor environments are not primarily for those who plan, design or manage them. Neither should outdoor environments be considered as only provided for those who pay for them: the client. Outdoor environments are for those who do and who might use them. Indeed it has been suggested that many outdoor environments are at their best when used by people whose daily lives intertwine with them in necessary, optional and social activities (Gehl, 1996). So this chapter will focus on outdoor environments exploring concepts of constructed and found space and the relationship of these to children and young people’s use and responses to them.