Children and urban vitalism amidst transitions: perspectives from slum-dwelling children in the Philippines

This work rethinks the notion of urban vitalism—viewing cities as a collection of interwoven relationships constantly in flux—from children's perspectives. This is accomplished by firstly empirically examining children's perceptions of the changes in their urban slum environments and secondly, by theoretically enriching our understanding of urban vitalism by linking urban transitions to the discourses that inform urban vitalism—smart, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities. The paper focuses on the perspectives of slum-dwelling children (9–12 years old) in San Jose del Monte City (Philippines), a city subject for conversion towards being “highly-urbanised”. Through remote semi-structured conversations, children shared insights about the transformations of their urban spaces. Two key discussion points emerged from this study: firstly, urban transitions do not necessarily translate to vitalism for children as spaces important to children become subjects of displacement in urban transition; secondly, that the potentials of urban vitalism can be hampered if transitions detach young members of society from planning. Insights from this work suggest that children create their own urban imaginaries of a vital city, which contribute to a kaleidoscope of sources of urban vitalism. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of child-oriented urban vitalism for urban studies.