Children as urbanites: mapping the affordances and behavior settings of urban environments for Finnish and Japanese children

Abstract

Increasingly, children are residing in urban environments, yet little is known about the urban affordances for children. A place-based approach was employed to map the urban experiences of over 1300 children residing in Helsinki (Finland) and in Tokyo (Japan) in terms of meaningful places (affordances), travel mode and accompaniment to these places. Shared affordances were considered behavior settings, and audited on-site by trained experts for their main function, land use, openness, and communality. Significant differences were found between countries for all affordance categories. Although differences in behavior settings were observed between countries, a number of patterns emerged: outdoor settings and those with shared communality were the most prevalent behavior settings, traffic settings were predominantly evaluated negatively and commercial and indoor settings most positively. Findings suggest that although the context is important, independent mobility and the possibility to actualize environmental affordances seem to be fundamental in both contexts as the key criteria for environmental child-friendliness.

A Scoping Review of Children and Adolescents’ Active Travel in Ireland

“…This means that the affordances are very much contextual and situational as a child might be able to cycle in a space where confidence and safety are perceived (e.g., neighbourhood) but not perform that ability/behaviour in a more contextually challenging environment, which could explain at a more theoretical level Nelson and colleagues' [31] findings of low perceived cycling ability in low active travel patterns. Based on Gibson's [59] theory, and from a research example provided by Kyttä, Oliver, Ikeda, Ahmadi, Omiya, and Laatikainen's [61] research with a sample of Finnish and Japanese children, it could be hypothesised that affordances related to active travel are strongly dependent on affordances of independent mobility and this might prove to be an effective focus to the future designs of interventions and active travel research in general.…”

Understanding children’s neighbourhood destinations: presenting the Kids-PoND framework

“…Web-based public participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) programmes are able to harness digital technologies for participatory mapping and capturing people's perceptions of place (Kahila and Kyttä 2006). PPGIS has been successfully used in a number of countries for conducting child-centred research with, rather than on, children (Brown and Weber 2011;Kyttä et al 2018). PPGIS methods allow simultaneous analysis of 'soft' place-based data primarily concerned with human experiences, alongside 'hard' objective environmental data using GIS (Kyttä, Broberg, and Kahila 2012).…”

Smart City Governance and Children’s Agency: An Assessment of the Green Infrastructure Impact on Children’s Activities in Cagliari (Italy) with the Tool “Opportunities for Children in Urban Spaces (OCUS)”

“…In particular, the Bullerby model, structured by Kyttä [36,42] and revisited by Broberg et al [39] and Kyttä et al [35,43], combines children's experiences, operationalized in terms of actualized affordances and of their diversity, collected through public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS), and objectively measures structural properties of the built environment. PPGISs are also central in the web-map-based survey structured by Lopes et al [44].…”

“…Indicators included in the emotional and social opportunities dimensions assess and measure conditions and materials of the public space that incorporate specific social and emotional opportunities and restrictions for children. The social and emotional affordances, which were defined through building on findings from studies conducted by Kyttä [42], Broberg et al [39], and Kyttä et al [35], are associated with specific configurational, compositional, and material characteristics of the public space, operationalized in terms of representative indicators and sub-indicators. The correlation among features of natural settings, emotional and social affordances, and the individuation of pertinent indicators is based on the literature on built environment.…”

“…Building on definitions proposed by Gibson [7] and Heft [9], an affordance can be conceptualized as a functionally significant character of the environment, considered in relation to an individual (p. 20). Kyttä [35] observed that the concept of affordance also includes the emotional and social opportunities and restrictions incorporated in an environment in relation to a specific individual. Kyttä [36] likewise introduced a distinction between potential and actualized affordances.…”