{"id":14400,"date":"2012-05-11T08:25:34","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T12:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/?p=14400"},"modified":"2013-01-21T12:01:23","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T17:01:23","slug":"the-forest-the-fortress-and-the-future-of-participation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2012\/05\/11\/the-forest-the-fortress-and-the-future-of-participation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Forest, a Fortress, and the Future of Participation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"city<\/a><\/p>\n

Between the tree trunks, I can spot the traffic light at the corner of Cote-Saint-Catherine road. The outline of apartment buildings half a block away is hardly subtle, yet I still have the distinct impression that I am in a forest. It must be the wildness of the\u00a0forest floor, where heaps of scraggly branches tangle on the ground and a bushy green layer of underbrush is pushing up through the whispy remains of last year’s fallen leaves.<\/p>\n

Mackenzie-King Park in C\u00f4te-des-Neiges, is one of the few neighbourhood parks that’s got a bonafide patch of woods. It may only be the size of a city block, but\u00a0something very important has happened here: someone has built a fortress.<\/p>\n

\"city<\/a><\/p>\n

Why is this of such tantamount important? Take a look at what the experts have to say.<\/p>\n

Louise Chawla<\/a> is a professor of planning and urban design, and coordinated\u00a0Growing up in Cities<\/em>, a UNESCO program that seeks to involve children in evaluating and improving urban environments in over 50 countries worldwide. Chawla argues that a responsive<\/em> environment can help prepare young people to participate as citizens:<\/p>\n

“For ball play, rollerblading, or cycling, nothing is better than hard, flat surfaces. For most other actions, children need a more malleable world. Natural elements are particularly rich in the effects they offer, and what \u00a0is more, although they are predictable to a point, they also offer intriguing surprises. \u00a0Water flows and splashes in fluid forms. Soft earth can be dug and moulded in infinite iterations. Every rock has a different heft and shape for building. Every rotting \u00a0log reveals a different universe of insect life inside. Convivial city streets and public spaces offer similarly responsive settings for social interactions, which \u2013 like natural elements \u2013 never do exactly the same thing twice…<\/em><\/p>\n

“Adults\u2019 accounts of special childhood places show that they tend to be on the margins of the adult world, where children can find freedom to take risks and prove themselves, get dirty, make and unmake play worlds with abandon and interact intensively both with the physical world and with friends (Cooper Marcus 1978; Goodenough 2003). These sites include tree houses, play forts, creek banks, and overgrown lots, colonised by children on the edge of the adult world in both cities and rural areas. They also include public spaces where children feel welcomed by adults…”\u00a0(Chawla, 2008).<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“This reciprocity between self-produced action and environmental events lies at the heart of the development of a sense of competence (Bandura 1997). For this reason, Fuglesang and Chandler (1997) argue that responsive early childhood programmes <\/em>and parent training to increase interactive experiences of this kind are important precursors to children\u2019s readiness for more formal types of participation<\/strong>. In research with adolescents and adults, this experience of self-efficacy promotes learned optimism (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000) and life satisfaction (Ryan and Deci 2001). As Bandura (1997) has noted, to inspire people to continue working towards goals, nothing is as motivating as \u2018mastery experiences\u2019 of their own capability.” (Chawla, 2008, emphasis added).<\/em><\/p>\n

Which is all a rather academic way of saying that surely, this is the way children were meant to play?<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Source: Chawla, L. (2008).\u00a0Participation and the Ecology of Environmental\u00a0Awareness and Action. In: Participation and Learning<\/em>. Eds: Reid, A, Jensen, B. B. Nikel, J. et Simovska, V. Springer. (PDF<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Between the tree trunks, I can spot the traffic light at the corner of Cote-Saint-Catherine road. The outline of apartment buildings half a block away is hardly subtle, yet I still have the distinct impression that I am in a forest. It must be the wildness of the\u00a0forest floor, where heaps of scraggly branches tangleContinue reading “The Forest, a Fortress, and the Future of Participation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7835,7839,3537],"tags":[7442,66,10,49,108],"class_list":["post-14400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green-space","category-neighbourhoods","category-parks","tag-cooper-marcus","tag-cote-des-neiges","tag-environment","tag-squares-and-parks","tag-tree-tuesday"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Forest, a Fortress, and the Future of Participation - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2012\/05\/11\/the-forest-the-fortress-and-the-future-of-participation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Forest, a Fortress, and the Future of Participation - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Between the tree trunks, I can spot the traffic light at the corner of Cote-Saint-Catherine road. 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