The issue of children’s accessibility to natural environments has always been a primary concern of CERG (for example, please see Wildlands for Children). We believe that children’s play in natural settings offer the most diverse and rewarding affordances for young children’s growth and development (link to Eleanor’s past work). Furthermore, there is a theoretical basis […]

Although all of our work is driven by a desire to have a direct impact on children’s lives, not all of it is designed with an immediate practical intent. We  find it necessary to carry out research because we often identify gaps in our understanding that impact the quality of children’s lives. We can’t always know […]

From its inception CERG has taken every opportunity to create ways to involve children themselves in the process of research, planning and design of environments, beginning with the three special issues of Childhood City Newsletter on “Children’s Participation” that we edited with Robin Moore in 1979 and 1980. In 1989, recognition of the rights and […]

CERG has consulted on many design projects with children in mind,  ranging from urban design, landscape architecture, architecture and product design for children’s safety. The perspective we bring to the design process includes our understanding of how children explore, play and use different kinds of settings. It also includes recognition of the values of involving […]

Based in our conviction of the importance of finding ways to listen to children we have been driven to develop new kinds of research tools and methods. In our early work on the naturalistic study of children in their everyday environment we found little guidance from the fields of psychology anthropology or sociology and had […]

CERG is committed to finding way to contribute to the development of more inclusive and participatory forms of democratic community governance. We have been particularly concerned with improving planning for children at the at neighbourhood or community scale by finding improved ways to involve residents, including children and youth themselves Much of our early work […]

CERG has a particular concern with the improvements in the quality of play opportunities in cities. This is related to research carried out by CERG members that has revealed the poor availability of play resources for many children in cities (see The Changing City of Childhood, as well as dissertations by Sandy Gaster and Pamela Wridt).   […]

CERG has an overarching commitment to the use of social science research in helping to achieve a more just world for children. It is for this reason that over the past two decades we have used United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as a guiding document for our research priorities. Our research […]