The subject of water is often present, as much in daily conversations as in the media; it is regularly in the news. Much the same thing happens in schools, where water is talked about and worked with. Aspects related to its properties and natural cycle are most frequently touched on; although in recent years the focus has been on the uses of “water as a resource”. Included in the proposals for courses in secondary or high school education are topics linked to the importance of water for human beings and other themes related to the finite nature of this resource. Curricular development happens over time, but the way that the subject of water is represented within the curriculum has stayed more or less the same.

Apart from its importance within the curriculum, the topic of water is one of the environmental subjects about which schools receive most proposals from local councillors, and from both public organisations and private companies. These proposals, while doubtless well-intentioned, have very different formats and somewhat varied aims; there ends up being a disjointed set of initiatives for development, whose impact is scarcely evaluated. Schools welcome them, but they rarely provoke collective debate.

Teaching pupils about water

So the jury is still out on how the subject of water can best be taught; to prove it you only have to carry out a search on the internet or have a look at the section on teaching resources in this magazine or others like it. Behind all the initiatives lies the conviction that educational work about water is always worthwhile. One assumes that its instigators believe that attitudes about water can be changed through teaching, that some behaviour is in need of change, and that global education intervention is relevant in this shift in attitude. Let us take these assumptions one by one.

There are those who maintain that habits are acquired through imitation, others say that they are learned as a result of thorough training, while some believe that neither the one nor the other is correct, but that it is the environment – the environmental problems at any given time – which generate the models for life and how it evolves.

It is possible that school children behave in a certain way because they do not realise that water is a precious and vulnerable asset, which belongs to everyone and is unequally distributed; this is because they follow social norms or because they have not been given precise rules of conduct in this area.

While it is known that intervention at the school level is relevant to changing behaviour, less clear is that the perception and readiness for action improve if there is social acceptance; this is the strategic situation. Pro-environ-mental actions carry more weight if backed up by similar practices in schools or society, providing they favour a sense of individual responsibility within the social group and if at the same time they are accompanied by coherent institutional initiatives.1

In that case, given that water continues to be a social concern and is maintained as a subject in school, there is no reason to say no to the educational activities. That said, it remains to be seen how it is to be achieved.

How do school children perceive water?

Any proposal to make changes in education should be supported by a thorough knowledge of the existing situation. A quick summary would show that the pupils understand that water is made up of several components, that it has a series of properties, can exist in different states, is used in everyday life and has a bearing on health; in addition they know about its role in the formation of the hydrosphere and in the water cycle. Generally, pupils respond without difficulty to questions about facts and figures, but find it much harder to evaluate processes and interactions between water and the individual and water and society. It is understandable that this should be the case, as these topics form part of the multiple curricular proposals which are taught during the years of compulsory education.2

It is also possible to see from this that some school children do not see the relevance in saving water, and that they pass the responsibility on to the different authorities; they also show a worrying identification with the relationship between consumption of water and quality of life.3

There are two hypotheses to consider when developing a plan for future action. In the first place, there seems to be a relationship between repetitive teaching and how much is learnt; in the second place, it seems that there is too much emphasis on the learning of facts and figures to the detriment of concentrating on other material related to collective action, which has not managed to “seep through” effectively enough into either the text books or the curricula set by the educational authorities. As a consequence, it should be clear that the power of schools to educate has not been lost, but that their aims need to be modified. The school syllabuses need an overhaul; this could come from within as there is room to achieve this in class planning processes.

Some suggestions for change

Summarising the most valid educational options for reversing such a deep-rooted method of teaching is not an easy task, still less to find strategies which will work for all school children. Still, following on from the aforementioned and working in teams to encourage participation, there are various possible options. They are complementary and would allow for multiple modifications, but they all require planning.

• Studying problematic situations and working on problem-solving.
• Developing teaching units with a “globalising” format and aims.
• Improving environmental management in schools by implementing school eco-audits.
• Collaborating with networks and organisations to work on the subject of water.
• Studying a well known issue. Problems with the water supply or incidences of contamination, social conflicts caused by distribution, inequality between the First and Third World, etc.  These are issues which are useful to look at, although they do not solve the problem as they first require the mobilisation of intellectual and attitudinal resources. By varying the dimension of the problem, they can be used at any educational level. There is one condition: that the learning process is organised around a single argument, which makes sense of the whole sequence. Starting from pre-existing ideas and from the recognition of habits leads to a restructuring and questioning of certain behaviours within the group. The sequence to follow, which should be short (or school children lose interest), is simple: the creation of a global overview to highlight the situation and analyse causes, suggest actions, develop them and evaluate the results.
• Teaching proposals on the subject of water. Working around two or three aspects, above all individual and collective uses of water, would mean that the most urgent situations can be identified to work on straight away. For example, related themes linked to the importance of water in life or in the environment, personal or collective use, etc. A few organised activities should be included: something to motivate, to develop ideas and to apply in a practical way. In this way there is time to deal with all of the issues and evaluate the results with the pupils, making it easier to stimulate learning. These proposals are recommended for groups which still do not have a clear global overview of the subject, although they already have a definite interest in teaching it.
• Improving the management of the school. Nowadays, the problems which the use of water generates in a school can be solved by simple technical tweaking or by installing water-saving devices. However, an eco-audit of water could be useful, as it would favour collective participation in the common objective that is sustainable management. In this case, we should certainly consider the improvement of environmental management and problem-solving. If by doing this changes of attitude are achieved, these will carry over into family life.
• Sharing water. The water network. There is a lot on offer from organisations such as UNESCO, Greenpeace, Intermón-Oxfam or others closer to home which offer materials and resources for schools. The creation of a water action group which could be linked to one of the existing networks is a good way of establishing the dynamic of learning from others and of sharing. Initiatives from autonomous government and town halls can also be taken advantage of, such as Agenda 21, Green Schools, Eco-Schools, etc. Given their participative nature, there would need to be a strong collective to keep them going year after year.

The unique position of schools to act as a catalyst for change has not been sufficiently exploited, but there is still time to achieve this. In order to do so, we have to make room for the educational practices which will create a different vision of water. This vision seems more related to a revision of the relationship between humans and water, with a global dimension and a participative aim, as opposed to just focussing on water’s properties and its use as a resource.

Carmelo Marcén, Professor at IES Miguel Catalán de Zaragoza

We are what we eat.

Yet we are increasingly ignorant about what we eat.  We know nothing about how food was produced, how food was processed or how it was distributed.  It is not that agriculture and food sciences are not taught at universities or colleges.  But food as our wholesome source of nourishment disappears under the fragmentation and reductionism of the narrow disciplines which have replaced the holistic education of food.

Since modern industrial agriculture and modern industrial food processing are driven by industry and corporations, the education and disciplines related to food and agriculture create sellers of industrial chemicals and industrial foods, not producers of safe, healthy, nutritious, sustainable foods.

The Green Revolution

The Green Revolution, the name given to industrial, chemical farming in the Third World, reduces soil to an empty container, into which synthetic NPK 1 fertilizers have to be poured. The life of the earthworm and mychorrizae, the source of soil fertility, disappear from education. The living, abundant seed too is emptied of life, of self organization of renewability.

The Green Revolution narrowed the basis of food security by displacing diverse nutritious food grains and spreading monocultures of rice, wheat, and maize, focusing on staple foods and their yields. The genetic engineering revolution is undoing the narrow gains of the Green Revolution both by neglecting the diversity of staples and by focusing on herbicide resistance, not higher yields.

Fifty-four percent of the increase in transgenic crops is for those engineered for herbicide resistance, or, rather, the increased use of herbicides, not an increase in food production. Worldwide, 40% of the land under cultivation by genetically engineered crops is under soybean cultivation, 25 percent under corn, 13 percent under tobacco, 11 percent under cotton, 10 percent under canola 2, and 1 percent each under tomato and potato.  Tobacco and cotton are non-food commercial crops, and crops such as soybeans have not been food staples for most cultures outside East Asia. Such crops will not feed the hungry. Soybeans will not provide food security for dal-eating Indians, and corn will not provide security in the sorghum belt of Africa. Now that corn and soya are being diverted for biofuels, they are causing hunger and food scarcity worldwide.

The trend toward the cultivation of genetically engineered crops indicates a clear narrowing of the genetic basis of our food supply.  In place of hundreds of legumes and beans eaten around the world, there is soybean. In place of diverse varieties of millets, wheat, and rice, there is only corn. In place of the diversity of oil seeds, there is only canola.

These crops are based on expanding monocultures of the same variety engineered for a single function.  In 1996, 1.9 million acres around the world were planted with only two varieties of transgenic cotton, and 1.3 million acres were planted with Roundup Ready soybeans. Currently one corporation, Monsanto, and 4 crops; corn, canola, soya, cotton account for 95% of all GMO’s planted worldwide. As the biotechnology industry globalizes, these monoculture tendencies will increase, thus further displacing agricultural biodiversity and creating ecological vulnerability.

Further, by forcing the expansion of non-food crops such as tobacco and cotton, transgenic crops result in fewer acres in food production, aggravating food insecurity.

Destruction of biodiversity

In Indian agriculture, women use up to 150 different species of plants (which the biotech industry would call weeds) as medicine, food, or fodder.  For the poorest, this biodiversity is the most important resource for survival.  In West Bengal, 124 “weed” species collected from rice fields have economic importance for local farmers. In a Tanzanian village, over 80 percent of the vegetable dishes are prepared from uncultivated plants. Herbicides such as Roundup and the transgenic crops engineered to withstand them therefore destroy the economies of the poorest, especially women. What is a weed for Monsanto is a medicinal plant or food for rural people.

Since biodiversity and polycultures are an important source of food for the rural poor, and since polycultures are the most effective means of soil conservation, water conservation, and ecological pest and weed control, the Roundup Ready technologies are in fact a direct assault on food security and ecological security.

Genetic pollution

Genetically engineered crops increase chemical use and add new risks of genetic pollution. Herbicide-resistant crops are designed for intensive use of herbicides in agriculture. But they also create the risks of weeds being transformed into “superweeds” by the transfer of herbicide-resistant traits from the genetically engineered crops to closely related plants.

Research in Denmark has shown that oilseed rape genetically engineered to be herbicide-tolerant could transmit its introduced gene to a weedy natural relative through hybridization. Weedy relatives of rape are now common in Denmark and throughout the world. Converting these “weeds” into “superweeds” that carry the gene for herbicide-resistance would provoke high crop losses and increasing use of herbicides. For these reasons, the European Union has imposed a de facto moratorium on the commercial planting of genetically engineered crops.

In many cases, the weeds that plague cultivated crops are relatives of the crops themselves. Wild beets have been a major problem in European sugar-beet cultivation since the 1970s. Given the gene exchange between weedy beets and cultivated beets, herbicide-resistant sugar beets could only be a temporary solution.

Superweeds could lead to “bioinvasions,” displacing local diversity and taking over entire ecosystems. The problem of invasive species is being increasingly recognized as a major threat to biodiversity.

Farmers suicides

In India, genetically engineered Bt-cotton is pushing farmers into debt and suicides. More than 250,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last decade. Since corporations like Monsanto started to introduce non-renewable seeds and establish seed monopolies. In the seed too, fertility has been robbed.  Non-renewable terminator seed is the aim of industry. Here too, genetic reductionism promotes the destruction of diversity and destruction of living renewable seed.

In March 1998, the USDA 3 and the Delta and Pine Land Company announced the joint development and patent on a new agricultural bio-technology benignly called “Control of Plant Gene Expression.”  The new patent permits its owners and licensees to create sterile seeds by selectively programming the plant’s DNA to kill its own embryos. The patent, which has been applied for in at least 78 countries, applies to plants and seeds of all species. The USDA, a government agency, receives a 5 percent profit from the sales of these seeds, which it considers a built-in “gene police.”

The result? If farmers save the seeds of these plants at harvest for future crops, the next generation of plants will not grow. Pea pods, tomatoes, peppers, heads of wheat, and ears of corn will essentially become seed morgues.  Thus the system will force farmers to buy new seeds from seed companies every year. This method has been dubbed “terminator technology,” threatening farmers’ independence and the food security of over 1 billion poor farmers in Third World countries. When Third World farmers sow seed, they pray, “May this seed be exhaustless.” Monsanto and the USDA, on the other hand, seem to be saying, “Let this seed be terminated so that our profits and monopoly will be exhaustless.”

Education for Earth Citizenship

“Over the past three decades I have tried to be change I want to see. “

When I found that dominant science and technology served the interests of powerful, I left academics to found the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, a participatory, public interest research organisation.  When I found global corporations wanted to patent seeds, crops or life forms, I started Navdanya to protect biodiversity, defend farmers’ rights and promote organic farming.  In partnership with the Schumacher College in the UK, Navdanya´s now offers a series of transformative courses to groups of all ages to cultivate contemplation, enquiry and dynamic action that aim to inspire participants for a lifetime.

Vandana Shiva

Founder and director of Navdanya International

Courses offered at Navdanya

• Biodiverse Organic Farming: The Solution to the Food and Climate Crisis
• Little Ecologist Program for Schools on Envisioning the Future
• Grandmother’s University: Women’s Traditional Knowledge in Food & Health
• International Conference on Gandhi, Globalisation and Climate Change
• Water and Climate Change: Glaciers, Rivers and Dams in the Himalayas
• International Conference on Himalayan Rivers and Climate Change
• Web of Life
• Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Agriculture
• Women, Health and Environment
• Earth Democracy: Alternatives to Corporate Globalisation
• Course on Nano-technology with ETC, Canada
• The Future of Food : Climate Change, GMO’s and Food Security
• Gandhi and Globalisation

I’m a student of Sustainable Land Management at Hadlow College in the UK. What’s more, I’m doing it at a time when it sounds good and everyone says ‘that’s the right thing to be doing’. But few people yet appreciate what sustainability means for future society.  The UK government is paying to educate more people to understand how things must change, but they are still intent on an economy based on continual growth and increasing demand.

Many students of sustainability are damming of political processes and motives. My contention is that Sustainability courses should square up to this, necessarily including politics and how to influence policy.

Since outlining this argument, I attended a student debate about the implications of Peak Oil, chaired by Dr Howard Lee, director of Sustainability programmes at Hadlow. The debate inevitably moved beyond Peak Oil and Dr. Lee crystallised a salient point. It’s not enough to understand the principles of sustainability. “Effective sustainability is all about how to wrap it all up in a sweet enough way for people to swallow it, then the only way to make progress is for ‘believers’ to get inside government and stay there without forgetting what they have learnt and believe in”.

Sustainable Agriculture still not sexy enough for students

So, who do we need on the inside? Looking specifically at Sustainable Agriculture, there’s a perception that all the ‘smart’ people (for smart you can read ‘money-focussed people not already involved in farming’) have been giving agriculture a wide berth for years. Interest in it as a career has plummeted. Perhaps it’s been 20 plus years of bad news on the TV, in the UK it has certainly come across strongly that there is no future in it.

This avoidance of agriculture as a career has led to a raft of closures amongst traditional agricultural colleges. Hadlow College, however, has kept going. It seems to have done so by creating its own niche, by concentrating on sustainability.  Hadlow has gone on to develop a wide range of related degrees that extend its appeal way beyond ‘straight’ Agriculture and Horticulture. One such is Sustainable Land Management.

Undoubtedly, the buzzword around Hadlow is ‘sustainability’. All the academics like the word, but what about prospective students? “No”, appears to be the answer.

It seems neither ‘agriculture’ nor ‘sustainability’ push buttons for the school-leavers. That worries me. Until these are careers that are seen as being important and, critically, are perceived as offering enough money to provide a rewarding career for bright and ambitious school-leavers, we’ll not change this. And, no-one in government seems in a rush to change this.

Target: increase food production in the UK by 50% by 2030

So, why are Sustainable Land Managers interested in agriculture? After all, we’ve got plenty of other things to do like plan waste management, fret about global issues and interpret various environmental problems from satellite imagery?

There is this struggle for land use between agriculture, conservation and leisure. High input farming and the fact that food has never been cheaper in real terms, nor more varied. Imports throughout the year have also helped sever peoples understanding of their dependence on the local land. Most of the (urban) UK population now has the impression that farmers don’t care about the environment. Moreover, they believe more land could be put to leisure or wildlife uses for their pleasure and conscience respectively.

If the fundamental premise of Sustainable Land Management has any foot in the real world, high input farming may only survive one more generation. A controlled transition is already behind schedule. Low input, low output is likely to have to be the end-game and the voters are going to feel the consequences.

Whilst everyone lauds the concept of sustainability, the practical reality is very different – and reaching a sustainable, suitably ‘sweetened’ compromise is increasingly remote.

The UK government is still grappling with the scale of the approaching dilemma. Late in 2008, it approached farmers and academics to help it plan ahead and invited answers to questions that included: “How well placed is the UK to make the most of its opportunities in responding to the challenge of increasing global food production by 50% by 2030 and doubling it by 2050, while ensuring that such production is sustainable?”1

Research in agriculture has declined and, more importantly, not investigated the issues highlighted below (consumer trends, urban food security, organic waste streams, communal food production, micro livestock, domestic water harvesting etc.). There will need to be an urgent injection of funds to help us understand and develop a new skills base. New research and development will need to be rapidly outreached into the farming sector, with widespread provision of relevant training. Evidence to the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee, submitted by Dr.Howard Lee.

What can be read between the lines is the main challenge to the teaching of sustainability. Doubling current production using sustainable methods looks impossible. We await the government’s conclusions.

Re-training for a low-input low-output future

Fortunately, some of the leading lights in farming now agree with the need to start working towards a lower input, lower output future. Probably, much to the dismay of many fellow farmers. The National Farmers Union has suggested that food production should not be increased and that a significant investment is made in Research and Development as well as education of farmers and the public.

On a generational basis, the regime of high input farming is relatively new. But, attitudes amongst incoming Hadlow ‘International Agriculture’ students from UK farming backgrounds suggest that ‘sustainability’ is a distraction. Their instincts are still to get on their nice big tractors and plough more per day than anyone else. Hadlow is challenging these instincts.

If Sustainable Agriculture is the way it must go, then there’s a need for complete change of agricultural policy and a re-education of a generation of farmers as well as the general public. This is the biggest challenge for students and teachers of sustainability.

Sustainable courses such as those at Hadlow are helping build up a head of steam and a resource of people able to help the transition. We need to wise up to how we will force change – not just what we would do if we are given the chance.

Richard Evans

Student of Sustainable Land Management Programme,

Hadlow College, UK

The press agencies serve up this type of news with a somewhat mundane frequency. I have just read, for example, a recent news item from China. Today, a day like any other, they are studying turning a rural area near Beijing into the first ecocity in this vast, dynamic country. The article explains the innovations and improvements that are to be introduced and which will transform the place into a paradigm of doing things well… Quite a symbol of sustainability. A tram system will be used to reduce people’s dependence on private vehicles, and all this so soon after the typical private vehicle in China moved on two wheels, thanks to human traction! China, then, will have the most sustainable city. This would be a sufficiently interesting title in itself if it were not because over recent months the media have also hyped up other examples in the same way that they talk about the case of this Chinese city. Masdar, in Abu Dhabi, is a particularly eccentric case as it is in the middle of the desert and is being promoted by one of the main oil producers. There is also the credible case of Freiburg in Germany, or Portland in the USA, which has been chosen as the most sustainable city in the country that has the well-deserved title of the “the world’s most wasteful country”.

The phenomenon of lists is not just found in the case of cities. Let’s have a look at advertising. The car with lowest emissions, we read in the advert on page 7, and on page 19 we find another vehicle that claims its slice of environmental commitment. Efficiency is now stressed as a selling point in some white goods shops. Our trusted salesman can look us in the eye, without blinking, presenting one product after another: the most efficient fridge in the world, the most economical dishwasher… Even the energy companies and oil companies have taken up the baton to present their products in a race that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, often with a hint of unnerving gesticulations of schizophrenia.

Our liking for lists is a response to a marketing strategy, that much is clear, and also tells us a little about humans in the early years of the 21^st century. Competitive, materialistic, fast and volatile. But that thought is worthy of another article, or perhaps a whole encyclopaedia.

Let’s go back to the lists. The thing is that all this fuss about which is the most sustainable city, the most efficient washing machine, the most economical car, etc. has both a positive and a negative side. The positive side is that excellence in the field of sustainability is a coveted marketing value; it is a brand that interests tourists and which seduces investors and creates business opportunities. The negative side is the hubbub that surrounds it, the worst educational tool. Confused labelling creates distrust, not curiosity; the sum of superlatives means that we look at these proposals with irony, not with the desire to find out more details. It is a shame, because pulling out this kind of list should guarantee that interesting practices and reflections are discovered. The example of Freiburg mentioned above seems to be cut and dried, but the cases of Wanzhuang, near Beijing, and Masdar, in Abu Dhabi, are very different. Which tools are available to help us see beyond the official and institutional propaganda, which most certainly carries some weight in these two cases? How can we filter out the messages for investors that the two news items probably contain? How can we separate the wheat from the chaff? Thorny stuff…

Does it make sense to turn to these lists in search of learning values? It maybe doesn’t make much sense to entrust this task to these “top ten” lists. At the end of the day this should fall to the educational community, academic publications, government and producers and manufacturers through the use of stickers and labels, etc.

In fact, this thought leads us into a trap. Surely the media and what they print also have immense educational and learning power? Of course they do. They have this power, but it is more difficult to control it and adapt it to curricula. They ultimately mould the way in which we see things and how we interpret them. Pretending nothing has happened is a strategy that is as comfortable as it is ill-chosen.

The classification of objects or cities should be interpreted properly. The journalism world has for some time fed off the “spectacularization of information” and the lists of “the cleanest”, “most polluting”, “most efficient” and a long etcetera are becoming increasingly more common. They help simplify things and make them more attractive, which is important when in a news item. The first job for the educator and the student is to heighten their critical view. This is an essential task within the entire educational cycle. Not just so they know how to “read” classifications, but rather know how to interpret news in general. In this case knowing how to analyse things is the first step in learning.

Finally, we discover that in effect some of these lists are sufficiently interesting and certainly have learning value. This will not be the case of Wanzhuang or Masdar, but it will, for example, be the case of Portland. The US portal sustainlane.com has offered a very interesting virtual space for some time now. It is a blend of social network and information repository. In 2006 the list mentioned above was published, classifying the city of Oregon as the most sustainable in the United States. The advantage in this case is that the people behind the classification explain the criteria used in an intelligent and somewhat exhaustive fashion in an attempt to be transparent.

The interested reader can review the items analysed and get an idea of the complexity of this venture. In truth, any type of classification is a game, a way of organising reality, always so elusive, always so multi-faceted. It is therefore important to be able to analyse the criteria followed. We certainly recommend you take a look at sustainlane.1

But for sure, the United States is far away. It is far in terms of distance, and far in terms of the consumer culture and the administrative and political organisation. There are some interesting initiatives going on in Catalonia. The Generalitat has its environmental award scheme. The Environmental Forum has set up the Ecocity awards, with state-wide scope. The awards given to Local Environmental Initiatives by Barcelona County Council are used to highlight good practices related in this case to energy and water issues. From a different perspective the magazine Opcions also contributes rigorously and regularly to analysing consumer goods from a sustainable perspective.

Maybe it is not spectacular stuff, given that the Catalans are known for their cautious and careful nature, but it is a good start. The start of what? Of getting to know the lie of the land, for example. Innovative solutions. Maybe some of these towns are close to the school or college… The award is, in this case, an excuse to get to know at firsthand an experience that is worth following, that is worth getting to know.

Educational work could also be more proactive in nature. Perhaps through research credits, students could work in class on a system of indicators that would allow neighbourhoods or areas of the city or town to be classified according to their level of sustainability. Distant from the news mentioned above, with their hidden agendas included, this work could be an interesting way to perceive information and present it in an easy-to-understand and attractive way. The act of creating the list would mean that the student has to manage complexity. But this is not about doing mathematics. However precisely because they are not mathematics, the choice of good practices is more interesting and is even a cause for debate.

As the end result after this work the student will be furnished with greater maturity when faced with headlines that talk day after day about more sustainable cities, cars with fewer emissions, or more efficient white goods.

At least, then, something good will have come out of it.

Oriol Lladó

Environmental journalist

Furthermore, the city that they propose strongly resembles ancient cities. When asked how he imagined the city of the future, the acclaimed Italian architect Renzo Piano replied: “As similar as possible to that of the past”. It isn’t about being romantic or nostalgic, but rather it’s about reclaiming the role of public places in the city, their function as a place for meeting and exchange, a place to express diversity that has gradually been lost up to the present day. The Renaissance city was dreamt up as an alternative to the medieval model of the castle, based on the principle of separation: the powerful and wealthy feudal lords lived within the castle walls, and outside the walls was the village of the serfs and the peasants at the service of the powerful. The city broke with this way of thinking and was built around a main square, a symbol of public space. The governmental palace and cathedral were in this square, and the market was also brought to life here, a symbol of exchange and interaction. The historical city did not have areas separated by different social classes. Its streets were attractive as they were made up of the fine mansions of the nobles, built by great architects, and the humble houses of the artisans. Diversity enriched the city and made it pleasing to the eye. This is the same as ecosystems: an ecosystem will be healthy and full of life if it is complex and joined-up, if each of its parts interacts with others.

For some decades since the Second World War, cities have managed to sell their own character down the river by adopting a model of separation and specialisation. The historical city centres have become depopulated, suburbs have emerged, neighbourhoods have been created for rich and poor, dormitory towns, cultural areas, working areas… In this modern city, thought out for adult male workers, the car has become king. Cars have caused the city to lose its public spaces, clean air, silence, beauty…

Most citizens feel left out in this city adapted to suit working adult citizens. In fact, take a look at the streets of a city, whether large or small, and you will be hard pushed to see elderly people, children roaming freely or disabled people getting about in wheelchairs. These groups of people have been excluded from public spaces and separate, specialised spaces have been created for them, with services for the elderly, disabled or children (from the infant school to the nursery or play centre).

The right to play

Children are the first to lose out in this city as they cannot exercise their most important right, recognised in article 31 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child: the right to play. To be able to play properly, a child needs to be able to go out alone with his friends and experience adventure, discovery, surprise, obstacles, risk. He has to savour the sweet taste of victory and the humiliation of defeat. He needs to get to know new people, unknown places, but most importantly, get to know himself. All of this would be possible if there weren’t adults accompanying them, watching over them. This option has unfortunately become tremendously difficult in the modern world. A child in a developed country will probably spend all of his time between school, homework, extra-curricular classes (languages, sport, music, dance, etc.) and the television or computer, not even having the possibility of living experiences by himself or with his friends. If we continue along this path, tests, difficulties and risk will disappear from the lives of our children. When asked the question “What is play for a child?” the well-known psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto replied: “I would say that it is enjoying fulfilling a desire by overcoming risks”.

This situation leads to serious developmental consequences with dramatic effects that can often be seen during adolescence. Because they have never been able to experience the risks that correspond to three, five or eight year-olds, the desire for risk, challenges and danger builds up. This explodes the first time the thirteen or fourteen year-old girl or boy gets hold of the keys to a house or a motorbike. And we are shocked and surprised by the many young victims on the roads, by the disconcerting number of cases of school bullying, by the increasingly young age that young people start smoking, drinking or taking drugs, and by incomprehensible teenage suicides.

The city of children

We set up the City of Children project seventeen years ago in the light of this situation of unease, neglect and danger. The project aims to get those who govern cities to ask the children for help. We encourage them to adopt this as a new parameter (instead of the model of the adult, male worker) to evaluate and change the city based on the conviction that a city adapted to children is a better city for everybody.1

The idea is to give children the right to speak, ask them for advice, listen to them and take their opinions into account. It also consists of returning autonomy to children, allowing them to fully exercise their citizenship which gives them the right to freely roam the city’s public space. If this were to happen, children would be able to live essential experiences once again, would become more independent and would need fewer toys, less TV and fewer afterschool classes. For less money, children would have more fun and would grow up to be healthier.2

If children can again experience autonomy in the city, walk to school with their friends and not with their parents, play in their neighbourhood, going to places that best adapt to the games that they choose and not just parks created especially for them, we will have achieved an important change. The city will become safer. We, the adults, deny our children freedom because the city is dangerous, but in fact the city is dangerous because it has turned its back on children. The presence of children on the streets and in squares obliges residents to look out for them, to be responsible and supportive. The Safe routes to school programme was run in different municipal areas of the city of Buenos Aires, a suburban area with a high level of environmental degradation and hazards, registering a subsequent reduction of more than 50% criminal activity.3

What do the children suggest?

After more than fifteen years experience with children’s councils and after gathering hundreds of proposals from youngsters, we can confirm that Italian, Spanish and Argentinean children share certain needs and concerns. We will now give three of the most common requests by way of example.

Public spaces

Children do not want specially-designed spaces that always remain the same and where they need to go accompanied by their parents. They want to use real spaces in the city alongside other people, adults, the elderly, and thereby draw out their own spaces and experiences. A space is public if and when it is alive and visited. It is public if it corresponds to the diverse interests of diverse groups and generations of people. It is public if it can be walked or run across, if it is sufficiently safe, so that children, elderly or disabled people feel like they are at home in their own city. It is public if it is attractive. One child said “Just going to school is lovely, but the streets should also be lovely”.

Fewer cars

Children come into great conflict with cars. These take up their play spaces, make the street more dangerous, justifying prohibiting them from going out alone. One child in an Italian city made a suggestion to the mayor: “There are loads of car parks in this city, why don’t we share them? Half the space for cars and half for the children”. The suggestion was met with a condescending smile but the mayor had misjudged. The proposal was wise, and would have improved the city for everybody, not just the children.

The right to play

Children ask to be able to play, and to play for the right amount of time and every day. We do not understand why they have to go to school for so many hours (article 28 of the Convention), then they have homework to do, leaving little time for playing. If a city set itself the goal of guaranteeing that all children could play, we would need to remove all the prohibitions that currently exist in public places and community spaces (these are unlawful after the Convention). We would have to close play areas and allow them to play in public places (pavements, streets, squares, gardens). We should empower children’s self-sufficiency. A girl from Suria, a town in the province of Barcelona, said “Play areas are always flat and we can’t hide” and one boy from Buenos Aires pointed out that “For a square to be good for children it shouldn’t have too much security”.

In conclusion, a girl from Rosario, Argentina, said: “It’s all the adults’ fault. We should set limits on grownups”. A terrible indictment, but if we observe the environmental degradation of our cities, the growing percentage of serious illnesses and the paucity of experiences lived by our treasured children, can we really consider this to be misleading or an over-reaction?

Francesco Tonucci

Director of the International Project of the Italian National Research Council

Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies

2 Children in our cities are being exposed to the serious risk of childhood obesity, mainly caused by a sedentary life at home, in the car and in front of the television. Paediatricians are also in agreement with the project, insofar as it promotes autonomy in children so that they can go to school on their own or play with their friends.

3 According to that stated by the security director of the City of Buenos Aires in a public conference in July 2005.