The city through children's perception and practices in Tunis

The article examines the city-child relationship by analyzing children's representations of their neighborhoods, their play areas and their home -school journeys. It verifies the importance of the urban context, in its urban and social dimensions, in the appropriation of urban territory by children. It is based on children's cognitive representations and interviews in two neighborhoods of the capital Tunis : Sidi Hsine, an informal neighborhood, poorly equipped and with a poor population with a traditional lifestyle; Ennasr, residential suburb, planned according to functionalist principles and inhabited by an affluent population leading a modern lifestyle. Experimentation and comparison highlight the role of urban legibility, combined with a coveillance and a sense of security, in improving the image of the territory for the child. Finally, they affirm the importance of parental choices in terms of education and mobility, from freedom to protection, in the child's relationship to its urban environment.