The recent publication, Children, Nature, Cities (Murnaghan and Shillington, eds., 2016) is a wonderful compilation of reflections and critical analyses of the interpretations of nature in the city, and children’s experiences of both. Using the lenses of political ecology and geography, they present a wide range of ways that children can and do interact with nature in cities, as well as less discussed issues and barriers to accessing and experiencing such spaces among different ages and ethnicities through participatory and ethnographic research. Important to this critique is the persistent idea that nature is far away – it is somewhere out there in the wilderness, separate from children and the cities in which they live. However, the wide range of articles on the Child in the City website alone attests that we have a much broader framework for considering what urban nature might look like. Full blog
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