The Dictionary of Human Geography

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agenda for research includedpopulationand

demography,land use, patterns of home

ownership andmigration, community devel-

opment and character, neighbourhood history,

occupational and class mobility, social unrest

and social control (includingpolicingand

urban policies). Many of these topics remain

of vital interest to urban geographers, and

draw upon ideas from the Chicago School

about pattern, process and community,

although our contemporary approaches to

and theories of these topics are necessarily

different. dgm

Suggested reading

Dear (2002); Entrikin (1980); Jackson and Smith

(1984); Park, Burgess and McKenzie (1925).

children A burgeoning area of scholarship

in human geography that encompasses

notions of children as active producers of

space, as geographical subjects and as envir-

onmental agents, at the same time as it recog-

nizes children’s limited mobility, the

peculiarities of their exposure to various envir-

onmental degradations andhazards, and the

mediated nature of their spatial engagements.

The earliest work in the field, pioneered by

James Blaut and the psychologist David Stea,

addressed the ‘ontogeny of environmental

behavior’ by looking at children’s geographical

learning, especially their understandings of

spatial relationships, mapping skills andplace

knowledge (Blaut and Stea, 1971, p. 387).

Their Place Perception Project (1968–71)

spurred much generative work in the field,

including Roger Hart’s (1979) landmark study

of children’s place experience, Denis Wood’s

fascinating research on the relationship

between young people’s spatial behaviour

and their cognitivemaps, and research on such

issues as children’s differentiated access to the

outdoor environment or ‘home range,’ their

understanding of environmental processes

and human–environment interactions, and

their ability to negotiate aerial photographs.

At about the same time as Blaut, Stea and

their colleagues at Clark University were

researching children’s acquisition of environ-

mental knowledge, William Bunge (see Bunge

et al., 1971) was launching the Detroit

Geographical Expedition, which examined

the effects of noxious and deteriorated envi-

ronments on children’s well-being, and devel-

oped projects of environmental activism

around the uneven geographies of people’s

everyday lives and children’s exposure to

problems rooted in these geographies. These

two streams of work – not, coincidentally,

by radical geographers – set the stage for

much subsequent scholarship on children’s

geographies and the geographies of children,

even as some of their key practitioners were

marginalized from the field.

As geographers have continued to address

the development of spatial cognition, mapping

skills and environmental learning, there has

been an ongoing debate about whether map-

ping represents a cultural universal that chil-

dren share from earliest childhood, as Blaut

and Stea and their colleagues have argued,

or is dependent on cognitive development,

as Roger Downs, Lynn Liben and their

colleagues have argued. While much of this

debate has concerned children’s relative pre-

paredness for acquiring spatial concepts and

mapping skills (and thus was an argument

about the role of geographicaleducationat

different ages), it was animated by the princi-

pals’ understandings of the nature of Piagetian

developmental psychology and what Blaut

considered itsidealistunderpinnings. Both

sides recognized children’s embrace of geo-

graphical concepts, and advocated their being

taught mapping and spatial skills in all phases

of their education, agreeing that it would not

only be a cornerstone of enhanced geographic

literacy but contribute to cognitive develop-

ment and learning in other arenas (Blaut,

1997; Liben and Downs, 1997; cf. Matthews,

1992). Despite this conclusion and the dec-

ades of scholarship that support it, there

remains a surprising disconnection between

the work of scholars interested in geographical

or environmentaleducationand those who

look at children’s place experience and their

acquisition of environmental knowledge and

spatial skills.

Work on children’s geographies has been

developmental, ecological, milieu focused,

comparative and concerned mostly with

the global North. As the field evolved, its

concerns expanded to include children’s

understanding and experience of place (Hart,

1979; Matthews, 1992; Wood and Beck,

1994), their knowledge of environmental pro-

cesses and human–environment relations

(Kates and Katz, 1977; Hart, 1997; Katz,

2004), the social ecologies of their environmen-

tal interactions (Ruddick, 1996; Valentine,

1997; Aitken, 2001) and studies of particular

children’s environments, such as playgrounds,

schools, parks and neighbourhoods (e.g.

Skelton and Valentine, 1998; McKendrick,

1999). In tandem with broader disciplinary

concerns, research focused on children and

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 80 31.3.2009 9:45pm

CHILDREN