It all used to be better? Different generations on continuity and change in urban children's daily use of space

Abstract There is much speculation about children's changing space–time behaviour, yet little is actually known about it. The study reported on here, which was based on oral histories, statistical and archive research, and observations in Amsterdam, compared children's use of space during the 1950s and early 1960s with that of today. The public space of the street used to be a child space, but in two of the three streets studied it has been transformed into an adult space. Conversely, private home space—traditionally the domain of adults—has become a child space. Over time, children's geographies have become more diverse. In addition to the traditional childhood of outdoor children, we distinguish indoor children and children of the backseat generation. These two new types are characterized by a decrease in playing outdoors and an increase in adult supervision. Although this may be regarded as a loss, new children's activities have emerged, outdoors as well as indoors. Contemporary cities can be exciting places for children, but it is clear that inequality by class has become more manifest. Both new geographical childhoods have resulted in a decrease in children's agency, which may have a negative impact on segregation patterns. Acknowledgements I should like to thank all the children and adults who participated in this research. I am indebted to Carolien Bouw for the pleasure and inspiration she provided while working together on this project. My thanks also go to Vera van den Bos, Martine Buijs, Laura de Graaff, Marleen Stroo and Bernard Kruithof, all of whom did part of the fieldwork. I feel grateful to Pia Bjorklid and Maria Nordstrom for their invitation to lecture on the conference Public Space in Lund (2004) where I presented a first version of this paper. Notes 1. All figures come from the Onderzoek en Statistiek (O + S; ‘Research and Statistics’) department of the city of Amsterdam. Many figures were collected especially for the purpose of this research. This applies in particular to the figures at the street scale (see Table 2). 2. From here on, I shall sometimes refer to Wognumerstraat as ‘North Amsterdam’, Van Breestraat as ‘South Amsterdam’ and Bankastraat as ‘East Amsterdam’.