The Evolution of Young People’s Spatial Knowledge

Young people imagine, perceive, experience, talk about, use, and produce space in a wide variety of ways. In doing so, they acquire and produce stocks of spatial knowledge. A quite dynamic and ever-changing process by nature, young people’s production and acquisition of spatial knowledge are susceptible to many kinds of conditions―from those that shape their everyday routines to those that constitute historical turning points. Against this backdrop and drawing on a qualitative metaanalysis, the authors set out to discover what changes the spatial knowledge of young people has undergone during the past five decades. To that end, sixty published studies were sampled, analyzed, and synthesized to offer a meta-interpretation in terms of both the evolution of young people’s spatial knowledge and the refiguration of spaces. As such, this book will appeal to scholars conducting spatial research on childhood and youth as well as scholars interested in urban studies from diverse disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, geography, architecture, urban planning, and design.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. The Open Access fee was funded by Technische Universität Berlin

Ignacio Castillo Ulloa, PhD, is Researcher and Lecturer in the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning at Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, and co-editor of Spatial Transformations: Kaleidoscopic Perspectives on the Re-Figuration of Spaces. He is Researcher at the CRC 1265 "Re-Figuration of Spaces."

Anna Juliane Heinrich, PhD, is Researcher and Lecturer in the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning at Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, and the co-editor of Education, Space and Urban Planning: Education as a Component of the City. She is PI at the CRC 1265 "Re-Figuration of Spaces."

Angela Million, PhD, is Professor of Urban Design and Urban Development at Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. She is the co-editor of Spatial Transformations: Kaleidoscopic Perspectives on the Refiguration of Spaces and Education, Space and Urban Planning: Education as a Component of the City. She is PI at the CRC 1265 "Re-Figuration of Spaces."

Jona Schwerer is Research Assistant in the Research Center "Transformations of Political Violence" at the Chair of Urban Sociology and Sociology of Space at the Technical University of Darmstadt. He is an associate member of the CRC 1265 "Re-Figuration of Spaces."