ABSTRACT
Probably the largest number of readers know of Colin Ward through his writing about children. Colin was a keen observer of human behaviour and saw the way that children played with one another in the city as a demonstration of his deep belief in groups being able to organize themselves. He was also an urban planner who realized cities were being stolen from children, and an environmental activist and educator who believed that children could be authentically involved in making their communities better and more just. His vision was of a shared city with children; not a city for children but a city with children (Ward 1979: 179). Two wonderful, complementary books characterize different sides of his view of children’s capacities to self-organize and to be effective agents of social and environmental change. In The Child in the City he describes how children make the city for themselves through their daily explorations and play: colonizing, adapting and transforming its spaces for themselves rather than simply using them in ways assumed by planners and designers. In Streetwork: The Exploding School, which he wrote with Tony Fyson (1973), Art and the Built Environment with Eileen Adams (1982), and the Bulletin of Environmental Education (BEE) that he edited for nine years, he describes how children can be engaged in helping to remake cities by working in schools as critically engaged researchers, planners and communicators. Social scientists now applaud themselves for recognizing in their theories that children are not passive recipients of adult socialization but active agents in their own development and in society. Many child rights advocates also articulate children’s community participation, not realizing the great strides that Colin made with the idea in the 1970s in the UK. In seeing children as important social actors both in the daily life of their communities and in their capacities as agents of change, his distinct perspective is more relevant than ever. In this chapter I will dare to use his perspective to reflect on what has happened to childhood, focusing particularly on the UK and to children during their pre-adolescent years.
