Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic crisis, and persistent systemic and structural racism have plagued Black communities. The continued physical and symbolic violence and murders of Black bodies are undeniable. As White institutions, schools are definite contributors to this brutality as they center the culture and realities of White children while ignoring or denigrating Black children. This is even evident in the undermining of Black families’ efforts to prepare their children to face the inequities and injustices they experience in the U.S. This article discusses Black families’ engagement in their children’s education amid threats through racial socialization research aimed at developing and validating Black children’s perspectives, experiences, and realities in Black identity to promote their positive social-emotional and psychological development. Black families must know how to cultivate their child’s healthy self-identity, voice, and agency, along with academic achievement. Schools should learn from these practices. Schools that choose to ignore these concepts will continue contributing to trauma and violence against Black children and maintain deficit-oriented views. The article includes examples and implications for teaching and supporting the well-being of Black children, and concludes with practical ideas that educators can learn from and integrate into their practices.

Contact with nature is valuable for the health, wellbeing and development of children. Meanwhile, the urban environment and the contemporary urban lifestyle limit the opportunity for contact with nature. Given that children aged three to six years spend a significant amount of time in preschool, this study aimed to: 1) investigate children’s opportunities to contact with nature during their time in preschool, including the availability of these schools’ own outdoor spaces and neighbouring green spaces for visiting; 2) recognise preschools’ practices in using available green spaces to enable children to have contact with nature; 3) identify the impact on the outdoor activities provided by preschools of factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic and preschool managers’ awareness of the importance of children’s contact with nature.

The current Covid-19 pandemic has interested the whole word, changing habits and use of places and cities. In the lockdown period, cities and public spaces became completely empty and new urban landscapes substituted the previous ones, transforming the private in public. Children, young and elder people were those who mainly had problems: to them, real life was negated at the time of their life in which this is more important. In Italy, the second country after China which was interested by the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, the reopening of all the public spaces happened after 2 months of closure. This allowed again “in presence” social interactions, although in respect of the physical distance, confirming the importance of these places for all people. Starting from these premises, the aim of this paper is to present the results of a study carried in the framework of the Horizon 2020 research project Urban Maestro, New Governance Strategies for Urban Design, of the ISMed-National Research Council post Covid research, and of the INU Community Public Space,the last two initiatives coordinated by the author. The objective is to identify the relationships between theory and practice of the Charter of Public Space after 10 years of its creation, and verify its validity, in particular, in this Covid-19 emergency period.

In a time of unprecedented change and uncertainty due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, cities worldwide became the epicentre of the unfolding health drama. Questions related to the contemporary human condition, rate of urbanization and alternative socioeconomic frameworks that started to emerge over the course of the past decade, now seem to be more relevant than ever. Urban typologies such as public spaces are under pressure, as the measure of “social distancing” rapidly became a novel narrative. Within this narrative, children – while seemingly less affected medically – may actually be influenced more than expected, both physically and mentally, since their social and spatial developmental needs are different to those of adults. The Urban Health Community of Practice of ISOCARP offers a series of questions and critical reflections accompanied by a wide geographical, cultural and disciplinary array of examples from around the world regarding the spatial, social and physical effects of the current crisis on children and how this could provide valuable feedback on updating future urban planning policies. This is a first step towards a commonly expressed paradigm shift that embraces human and planetary health resilience, a new equilibrium for cities and natural systems and a new, more inclusive social model.