Reimagining Children's Spaces in the Urban Nightlife: Lessons and Challenges From the Literature

Introduction

The premise of this work is the broader question of who cities are for. Age segregation in urban spaces is commonplace (Vanderbeck, 2007). The night time is assumed to be the domain of adults, leaving limited understanding of children’s experiences in the city upon the nightfall. This chapter contextualizes children’s night time experience within the efforts on building child-friendly cities as a response to the increasing population of children in urban areas, with a forecasted rise to 70 percent broader (UNICEF, 2011). Due to wider recognition of the growing impact of urbanization to children’s lives, Child’s Right to the City gained traction among organizations for children, government and private agencies, and scholars, among others, in the past decades (Chawla and van Vliet, 2016). For instance, UNICEF launched its Child Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI) in 1996, which supports municipal governments in making cities more Child's Rights as per the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 2004). Such efforts are followed by the integration of children in the expansion of smart cities, which pay attention to “the intersection of data technologies and urban environments” (Lee et al., 2020: 116; Mora, 2019; van der Graaf, 2020). However, the previous efforts to make cities more accommodating for children are usually focused on daytime, with the birth of the “24/7 ” economy” (Presser, 2003), the securitization, commercialization and gentrification in the evening and night time economy (ENTE) have changed the dynamics of urban spaces, both beneficial and harmful for children. This begs the question on how these contemporary developments in child-friendly cities encompass children′s city life at night.

A cursory literature each is instructive to gain perspective on children’s concerns at night time. Children have age-specific needs at night, such as how they commute, sleep and play. For instance, the consequences of urban disasters at night are more serious than the day (Gu et al., 2019) in which children are more vulnerable in disaster situations than adults (Cutter, 2017). Children’s social dispositions also drive them to be present in urban night spaces such as going with their mothers to supermarkets after being fetched from school (Gonzales and Daganzo, 2013). Such situations lead children to be pedestrians who need well-lit road crossings and footpaths for safer commuting and walking at night (Freeman et al., 2015). A related concern is about alternatives available in cities to divert children’s attention away from gadgets, which risk factors to poor sleeping patterns (Brambilla et al., 2017) or how the city can assist children with conditions such as ADHD who might find it difficult to go to bed at night (Yoon et al., 2012; See also Sevón et al., 2017). Goodman et al. (2014) even suggest that additional daylight savings time is beneficial for children’s general health to support physical activity. Finally, the relevance of night time for children is demonstrated in children’s literature. One common theme is children’s appreciation of nighttime¹ (e.g., dawn transitions, night market, making friendship at night), which implies that children are observant of the city even during night time and they are important as “the tourists of the future” (Cullingford, 1995: 126). Studies also report struggles of children at night² (e.g., crime, responsibilities, homelessness), which are examples that surface the potential “infrastructural violence” (Rodgers & O’Neill, 2012) against children in cities at night. Such collection of literature implies a need to revisit our assumptions about child-friendly cities in view of improving outcomes for children at night. This chapter contributes to the growing knowledge on child-urbanism dynamics by exploring how children are positioned in the urban nightlife ofd how urban nightlife’s conviviality can be more child-responsive.