Industrialization has impacted people’s lives and this development has fostered people to migrate from rural areas to urban ones in a small time that caused settlements not sufficient for people. That’s why, migrants and people with low purchasing power have begun to constitute their own homes “slums” which also will be a reason to urbanization and this restructuring swiftly forced people to abandon and overthrow the slums for constructing new and huge building. With this situation residence structure occur and to become widespread. This condition has been a B.C that shows separation among people with low and high life quality.
This study that is “The City I See Through My Eager Eyes: The City in The Eyes of Children” is prepared to show how urbanization affects people, how the structure and appearance of towns have been changed so that how people are distinguished from each other in every aspect and view. The specific purpose of our study is to assess the impact of urbanization on children’s perspectives, dreams and lifestyles. Depend on this information, we think that children are the keystone of the city. Therefore, we are aware of that nowadays children who will be citizens of tomorrow. The places, which are children living, directly affect their aims, culture, view of the world, imaginations and occupational choices. For this reason, we have compared the lifestyles and expectations of children by visiting different parts of the city. Thus, we had the opportunity to openly explore the differences and effects between the two living standards.
When we look at previous researches, it is possible to see city and child-based studies. In a study examining the socio-economic differences between urban and rural areas, the focus was on the issue of differences in population living in the same place. (Menon, Ruel, & Morris, 2000). Another study examine that the poor living conditions in the slums, especially health burden, and community-need-responsive approaches to improve children’s health in this place. (Agarwal & Taneja, 2005). Another study has focused on determining geographically, culturally, and socially differences and effects on children. In this research, three common dimension topics were included: safety and security, urban environmental qualities and basic services. (Nordström, 2009). More recently, the well-being of children is the key indicator of a healthy habitat, a democratic society and good governance committed to children’s rights. (International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 2010). And finally, children will be dreamers, designers and agents of change in the design of a child-friendly neighborhood. (Malone, 2012). In contrast to previous studies, which are focus on geography, economy, living conditions, recent years of affective research have also been an inspiration for our research and we have decided to examine the effects of city and rural difference on children’s point of view, world of dreams and anticipations.
We chose to work in Kale Neighborhood (Altındağ) and Oran, so that the opposites can be clearly seen while doing this study. In our study, we used qualitative research design and case study method, which is including direct observation and interaction with subject. We identified the target group as primary and secondary school children, so our sampling we utilized is purposive. The reason we chose this age range is that children have periods of time to explore some things and start shaping their lives. We used observation and interview techniques while working for data collection. We also supported our study with videos and photos. The points we focus on while observing are: the safety of the place where they live, the structures of houses and streets, the physical conditions of playing areas. In the interview, the children’s ideas are asked about these circumstances: usage of the city, city familiarity, satisfactions from their living conditions, and communication ways with people, and variety of playing games.
In terms of experiences that is gone forward in study obtained by observation of city structure and children beside of interviewing with them so this study include either comparison of difference between structures of slum (Kale Neighborhood) and urbanized district (Oran) and alterable world view of children in these regions.
First, if we focus on the differences in terms of city structure, it is possible to say that we are confronted with very distinct contrasts. While Oran has a modern, luxurious, residence-like building, the Kale Neighborhood is a self-contained, having a garden and usually single or two storied slums. In addition, since Kale Neighborhood does not have an activity area for children, children use the streets. On the contrary, Oran has areas privatized for every activity of children, which includes parks, big entertainment centers called as Joy Lands. We can also say that for Oran we have created an isolated lifestyle from the city with its all-embracing structure, but this does not apply to the Kale Neighborhood, because the construction is different and the interaction is more obvious. They have to contact the city center to meet their needs. But when viewed from the outside, the castle is also an isolated image from the city. People are hesitant to approach this area and we had this prejudice as well so this condition is able to be identified as an illustration to segregation and we can count this example of segregation as a result of industrialization and urbanization among people.
In this case, this segregation and isolation between regions directly influence children’s lifestyles and the way they view the world. For instance, when we consider of children in Oran we have observed that the standard of living we have noticed at interviews with children clearly affects children’s views of life. We saw that the two groups of children showed their expectations in parallel with their lifestyles when we asked about their dream jobs. Children in Kale Neighborhood do not want a very different life from their own lifestyles and do not set high standards for themselves. Children in Oran focus on higher standards than they live and seem more insatiable. This is related to the fact that they are seen as a symbol of status of luxury residences, and their way of life leads them to want more. They have a certain job choices that are directly related to prestige, salary and social status such as being a doctor, engineer etc. In the Kale Neighborhood such as the policeman, teacher. We have also observed that the children in the Kale Neighborhood are more prepared for life and aware of the facts. Children who live in Oran are more susceptible to imagination. If we compare the two regions in terms of social communication; children in the Kale Neighborhood spend most of their time interacting with outside and other friends. Children in Oran attach importance to individuality and spend time with objects like computers and tablets, not with other people. As a result, the children in Kale seem to be less open to communication and less timid to strangers, while the children in Oran are more introverted and especially away from communication against strangers. This situation can be related to community to society comparison.When we examine the relationship among people in two different regions with Ferdinand Tönnies’ community to comparison.These areas distinguished obviously in terms of friendship,localty,common good (Kale Neighborhood) and individualism beside of little sense of commonality (Or-An). In addition to the lifestyle of this situation, the attitude of the families toward their children can also be considered because families generally refused us to talk with their children. This situation can be reconciled with the security concern created by urbanism.
As a result, with this work, we had the opportunity to closely examine the differences and divergences created by urbanism, and we observed how children directly influence the change, which is created by urbanization. Therefore, the certainly constituted mental and physical lines between the regions must be removed in order to avoid this situation and in this way all children should have chance to grow on equal conditions.