Planning Childhood: Children’s Social Participation in the Town of Adults

The essay describes the activities included in The Town of Children project in Italy. In particular, it describes the activities enhancing children's participated planning of their urban environment. This kind of activities aims to involve children in transforming towns in safer and more sustainable places for people. The essay explains the meanings and the processes of this kind of initiatives, observing the meetings between experts/teachers and children during the planning sessions. The analysis is based on the videotaping of these meetings, which higlights the main features of the ongoing interactions between adults and children, and their consequences in terms of promotion of children's social participation and children's personal competence in planning parts of the urban environment. The analysis highlights the most effective actions in promoting children's social participation and the resistance of the traditional culture of chilhood to this new way of observing and promoting children's competences.