Toward a City of Joy
Ribeiro, Laure
Toward a City of Joy - 2022.
66
Children live on the city’s margins: they do not move around unaccompanied and don’t play in the streets but rather in stereotypical, confined spaces that format their way of moving and perceiving. And yet interaction with her environment, and freedom of movement—not to mention the ability to share the same world as his elders—are vital to a child’s full development. Are the causes of this retreat from the public space of the street linked solely to the child’s risk of being kidnapped or assaulted or of being hit by an automobile? What are the reasons for such obsessive concern over a child’s security? Behind this fear of urban perils that might afflict a child might there not lie an unspoken fear of children themselves, those beings that Aristotle termed « an anomaly »? Is the marginalisation of the city kid not symptom of an overarching rejection of children themselves because of how they embody questioning, openness and freedom? Autocratic regimes such as Sparta’s advocated for the regimentation of children and their separation from the world. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley depicted an authoritarian society in which children, produced by machines and conditioned to accept the social class for which they were built, live in a parallel world to that of adults. In contrast to these concepts might not a truly democratic city advocate for the personal growth of a free, independent child, as Janus Korczak or Alexander Neill argued a century ago? Where does a child’s freedom to explore and inhabit a city stand now? And are various initiatives currently aimed at furthering these ideals—notably in Paris—up to the task?
Toward a City of Joy - 2022.
66
Children live on the city’s margins: they do not move around unaccompanied and don’t play in the streets but rather in stereotypical, confined spaces that format their way of moving and perceiving. And yet interaction with her environment, and freedom of movement—not to mention the ability to share the same world as his elders—are vital to a child’s full development. Are the causes of this retreat from the public space of the street linked solely to the child’s risk of being kidnapped or assaulted or of being hit by an automobile? What are the reasons for such obsessive concern over a child’s security? Behind this fear of urban perils that might afflict a child might there not lie an unspoken fear of children themselves, those beings that Aristotle termed « an anomaly »? Is the marginalisation of the city kid not symptom of an overarching rejection of children themselves because of how they embody questioning, openness and freedom? Autocratic regimes such as Sparta’s advocated for the regimentation of children and their separation from the world. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley depicted an authoritarian society in which children, produced by machines and conditioned to accept the social class for which they were built, live in a parallel world to that of adults. In contrast to these concepts might not a truly democratic city advocate for the personal growth of a free, independent child, as Janus Korczak or Alexander Neill argued a century ago? Where does a child’s freedom to explore and inhabit a city stand now? And are various initiatives currently aimed at furthering these ideals—notably in Paris—up to the task?
Réseaux sociaux