ABSTRACT
In our cities, children play ball games in sports clubs rather than on the streets, and climb playground apparatus rather than trees. Where urban areas are formed by functional differentiation, particular opportunities for and constraints on the actions of individuals are spatially fixed in specialised centres. Some are also temporally fixed by time-scheduled activity programmes. Places geared toward children’s needs, often toward the needs of children of a particular age, are scattered like islands on the map of the city at greater or lesser distances from one another. Other places are specialised for the purposes of adults’ use, and are often inaccessible, dangerous or simply not of interest to children. Thus, the societal differentiation of childhood is reflected in the urban landscape as segregation of places for children and for adults.
