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There is an increasing understanding of the role of the built environment on children's neighbourhood mobility and play and the importance of this for children's development. This has led to concerns over children's declining neighbourhood mobility and calls to see an increase in children's use of public space. This paper draws on findings from a research study working with 9 and 10 year olds living in inner London, England. The children participated in go-along interviews and a range of other qualitative methods, which explored how they used their neighbourhoods for getting around and play. Findings from the study demonstrate the importance of threshold spaces for children in supporting both their neighbourhood play and their wider neighbourhood travel and mobility. Threshold spaces are defined as a semi-public space that straddle the gap between the private space of the home and the wider public realm. Children's use of threshold spaces was influenced by a reduced movement function in these spaces, restricting vehicles and people passing through, and the presence of signals that it was ok to play, with girls being more sensitive to these features than boys. Threshold spaces were important as a start point for children's wider explorations of their neighbourhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hiring out sites, particularly urban parks, to the organizers of private events is now an important way that some public spaces are funded. Government austerity, and the additional pressures that COVID19 has placed on government finances, means this approach to public space management is becoming more visible and widespread. By focusing on some notable cases from south London, this research note highlights this trend and its implications. The analysis unpicks the notions of private and public to better understand outdoor events and explores whether paid entry events deliver net benefits for the public. Some parks now switch between functioning as public spaces and event venues and are governed beyond the state. This suggests hybrid, "public–private" parks are emerging. The piece concludes with some recommendations for research that captures this different way of thinking about events: not as amenities that require public funds, but as contested ways of funding public amenities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The City of the Dead is a large area on the periphery of Cairo where people live in house-like tombs. This study focuses on two Egyptian novels Šakāwā l-miṣrī l-faṣīḥ (1981-1985) by Yūsuf al-Qaʿīd and Madad (2014) by Maḥmūd al-Wirwārī, in which living in the cemeteries is portrayed as a paradoxical reality where life and death overlap. Limits between the two are blurred, and this creates a confusing situation where landmarks are lost and moral values are subverted. This situation echoes the characters' personal dilemmas and the uncertain historical context in which they live. This article sheds light on the representation of life in the cemeteries and the concrete and symbolic function of this space. It also discusses this representation within the portrayal of peripheries and marginal spaces in contemporary Egyptian fiction, and explores the way the two novels—published several decades apart—use this ambivalent space to relate their respective historical realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]