Children living with 'sustainable' urban architectures

This paper considers the everyday geographies of children living in new large-scale urban developments in which multiple forms of ‘sustainable’ urban architecture are characteristic features. We argue that children’s experiences of living with materialities, politics, and technologies of sustainability have too often been marginalised in much chief research on childhood, youth, and sustainability. Drawing on qualitative research with 8–16-year-olds living with materialities of ‘sustainable’ ecohousing, urban drainage, wind turbines, and photovoltaic panelling, we explore how sustainable urban architectures are noticed, (mis)understood, cared about, and lived with by children in the course of their everyday geographies. In so doing, we highlight the challenging prevalence and significance of architectural conservatisms, misconceptions, rumours, disillusionments, and urban myths relating to sustainable urban architectures.