Children talk about their New York City neighborhoods

What do New York City children have to say about their neighborhoods? Neighborhood research, the body of work exploring the link between the neighborhood context and residents’ health, has received increasing attention in recent years. Despite the recent growth of neighborhood research, there has been surprisingly little attention to what children themselves say about the neighborhoods they live in. This study moves beyond traditional research by examining children’s views of their inner-city New York City neighborhoods to inform on the neighborhood attributes most important to them. The research then explores the relationship between different neighborhood measurements (children’s and parents’ evaluations of neighborhood conditions, census data, and neighborhood observations by outside raters) and their association with children’s health. The study answers questions such as “what is the relationship between subjective and objective neighborhood measures” and “whose ratings of neighborhood characteristics matter most to children’s health.” The book is directed towards scholars and researchers in urban health, urban planning, child development, and interdisciplinary studies.