An Investigation into ‘Life-world’ of children and their forms of urban agency in a transient neighbourhood in Mutwal

Abstract

The metropolitan region of Colombo is striving for a world-class city status. The visible changes in Colombo skyline suggest an underlying development trajectory that is typical of cities in the global south. As David Harvey (2008) argues ‘Gentrification’ processes enabled by Neoliberal market forces create city spaces that marginalize urban needs of local communities. In Sri Lanka, needs of transient migrant populations who are expecting upward social mobility while living in Colombo are overlooked by urban development processes. Furthermore, children in such areas are excluded from all forms of urban planning and design processes. They have no power to influence or contribute to place-making in Colombo which they are impacted by. The paper identifies this as major issue undermining the UNICEF ‘Child-Friendly Cities Initiative’ and 1989 UN ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’ that enforce ‘child participation’ in urban development processes. The paper presents empirical research capturing every-day ‘life-world’ of children who are residents of Mutwal. The paper investigates a broader research question as to how children in transient neighbourhoods perform ‘urban agency’ as they play in street spaces. Research objectives were three-fold; firstly, to understand the nature of neighbourhood play in Mutwal from the perspective of resident children and their caregivers. Secondly, to understand ‘how children in focus group interact with outdoor street spaces?’. Thirdly, to find if children in focus group engaged with ‘urban agency’ as they play in streets and if so, ‘to what extent their actions contributed to building social cohesion?’. ‘The Social Audit Cookbook’ by Eva Cox (2002) was used as the primary guide to carry out this inquiry. Research methodology consisted of focus group study gathering qualitative data through interviewing parents and children, carrying out child-led city tour, drawing workshop and photo-elicitation exercise involving children aged 5-14 years. Data was analysed in the form of content analysis involving thematic coding using Nvivo software. Findings helped to understand the complexity of how children engaged with ‘urban-agency’ in Mutwal and how working with resident children has the potential to inform inclusive urban practices from the bottom-up.