Introduction

In Colin Ward's The child in the city the riveting black and white photographs give a message that children are ever-present in urban neighbourhoods. The cover shows children playing by a canal, as one lone adult looks on somewhat warily. The author makes the following plea:

It is doubtful if the photographs that bring Ward's 1978 edition to life could have been re-taken for the edition of his book in 1990 which comes as pure text. What has happened in the interim? Why is it no longer common to see large groups of unaccompanied children by the canal? Canals still exist and if anything are far cleaner and more scenic in the 1990s than in the 1970s, but they are no longer seen as legitimate places for unaccompanied children to be. Now, police making their school visits warn children to stay away from canals and also not to cross roads without an adult. The outdoor environment is portrayed as out of bounds and unsafe.

It would be wrong to view the 1970s as some halcyon age for children, but children's environmental rights are being eroded. Why is this and does it matter? What constitutes a good environment for the child, what does it look like, what are its components, how can it be used, and where should it be? Some people would say there is a prior question: does children's physical environment actually matter?

Debates concerning the extent to which environment influences children's behaviours are not new. The nature–nurture debate poses the question of which has the greater influence – genetic inheritance or upbringing? Similarly, the social construction of gender debate asks whether the behavioural differences between boys and girls are due primarily to innate genetic differences or to differences in upbringing and gendered societal influences.