ABSTRACT
This introduction provides an overview of the keyconcepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a critical perspective on primary school age children's health and wellbeing in urban places. It addresses the benefits of an interdisciplinary perspective through chapters that offer a series of 'windows' into children's worlds, variably emphasising theoretical and empirical vantage points, a range of scales and the opportunity to learn from diverse places. The book implicitly addresses a fundamental paradox that although children's wellbeing is seriously compromised in various ways across the world, children are able to express resilience and appear to find happiness – however fleeting – in unexpected ways and places. The book also brings together accounts and experiences of children's health and wellbeing in urban environments from both majority and minority world perspectives.
