New Urban Living Essays collection

Collection of essays entitled 'The Place Where I Live' that were written by primary school children in 6th class (11-13 years of age) between 2002 and 2004. The essays are taken from the larger collection New Urban Living that is archived with the Irish Qualitative Data Archive. The New Urban Living study sought to develop a rich account of civic and social life in four Irish suburbs in the greater Dublin area, namely; Leixlip in County Kildare, Lucan in County Dublin, Mullingar in County Westmeath and Ratoath in County Meath. The study areas were selected to capture differences in the nature and timing suburban development and in the relationships between suburbs and the metropolitan centre. Essays were created by the students as a preliminary exercise to their participation in classroom-based focus groups with the researcher at their school. The essays aimed to cover topics including feelings about the locality as a place to live; nature and extent of friendship networks; nature and type of activities in which children were involved in their leisure time; views on the main problems in the locality; attitudes toward and use of information technology. 171 essays in total are available as Jpeg images, as well as transcripts of the written content.