Introduction

Many of the methods described below are relevant to each of the chapters of Part II: environmental research, planning, design management, education, and political action. To avoid duplication, the different applications of each method to these different domains are described here together. Additional published resources are referred to in footnotes. ¹ No attempt has been made here to discuss the many approaches to ‘warm up’ that can increase the proportion of children who might be made to feel comfortable to participate in any session and improve the functioning of the group as a whole. This is because there are so many of these methods and their appropriateness varies so much according to culture that the reader is encouraged to refer to a local source. Much emphasis is given in this section to visual methods, for they can so dramatically improve the degree of community participation by people of all ages. ² Nevertheless, most of the growing literature on methodologies for participation ignores children. ³