ABSTRACT
This chapter explores various ideas relating to the urban child’s environmental experience of nature, explaining how they relate to biophilic interaction, and including the notion of the biophilic self being evident from an early age. It discusses the importance of city wild-spaces to urban-based children and how the qualities of the environment are investigated through bodily interaction, presenting results from studies which reveal how interaction occurs. It discusses how children are highly influenced by early exposure to nature and construct their ideas of what constitutes nature, including the development of environmental literacy; its dependency on adequate childhood exposure; the freedom for children to explore wild places on their own terms; the acquisition of environmentally focused life skills as part of education; the importance of such skills in accessing the natural world in later life and how the initiatives indicated also support other aspects of children’s education and development.
