%0 Journal Article
%T A Prefigurative Politics of Play in Public Places: Children Claim Their Democratic Right to the City Through Play
%A Karen Witten
%A Lanuola Asiasiga
%A Octavia Calder-Dawe
%A Penelope Carroll
%J Space and Culture
%@ 1552-8308
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1206331218797546
%X Children have as much ¡°right¡± to the city as adult citizens, yet they lose out in the urban spatial justice stakes. Built environments prioritizing motor vehicles, a default urban planning position that sees children as belonging in child-designated areas, and safety discourses, combine to restrict children¡¯s presence and opportunities for play, rendering them out of place in public space. In this context, children¡¯s everyday appropriations of public spaces for their ¡°playful imaginings¡± can be seen as a reclamation of their democratic right to the city: a prefigurative politics of play enacted by citizen kids. In this article, we draw on data collected with 265 children in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, to consider how children¡¯s playful practices challenge adult hegemony of the public domain and prefigure the possibilities of a more equal, child-friendly, and playful city
%K play
%K prefigurative politics
%K children¡¯s rights
%K urban public space
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1206331218797546