The Public Value of Child-Friendly Space: Reconceptualising the Playground

Purpose The playground is a commonly advised means to integrate children into the public realm of “child-friendly cities”, yet research has tended not to examine it in relation to adjacent public space. This paper aims to understand the extent to which the playground – a socio-spatial phenomenon – facilitates children's integration into the public realm, enabling critical examination of the “child-friendly space” concept. Design/methodology/approach An ethnographic study was carried out across three sites in Athens, Greece, where typical neighbourhood playgrounds replicate features common across the global north. Methods combined observation (167 h; morning, afternoon, evening), visual-mapping and 61 semi-structured interviews with 112 playground users (including adults and children from the playgrounds and surroundings). Rigorous qualitative thematic analysis, involving an iterative post-coding process, allowed identification of spatial patterns and emergent themes. Findings Findings reveal perceptions surrounding the protective and age-specific aspects of child-friendly design, limit the playgrounds' public value. However, a paradox emerges whereby the playgrounds' adjacency to public spaces designed without child-friendly principles affords children's engagement with the public realm. Research limitations/implications Reconceptualisation of the “child-friendly playground” is proposed, embracing interdependence with the public realm – highly significant for child-friendly urban design theory and practice globally. Researchers are encouraged to compare findings in other geographical contexts. Originality/value This original finding is enabled by the novel approach to studying the playground in relation to adjacent public realm. The study also offers the first empirical examination of child-friendly city principles – participation in social life and urban play – in a Greek context, addressing a geographical gap in literature on children's everyday spaces

Where sustainable school meets the 'third teacher': primary school case study from Barcelona, Spain

Participatory evaluation of aspiring sustainable schools and their pedagogical potential has recently come into focus. A few authors have made a significant start in examining schools as both environmentally and socially sustainable environments, which might simultaneously represent the ‘third teacher’. However, discussion around this idea is new in Spain. This paper describes a participatory post-occupancy study conducted with teachers and pupils in Fort Pienc School, Barcelona, Spain. Findings reveal the pedagogical potential of the school’s spaces and fabric, characterised as ‘sustainable’, and highlight the aspects that the research participants feel are performing and underperforming. The paper concludes that if we want sustainable schools to be a strategy for renovating the educational process and for leading us towards a better tomorrow globally and locally, new models for exploring the pedagogical potential of sustainable schools should be developed and the efforts of all relevant parties synchronised; from architects to governments, from pupils to teachers.Postprint (published version

‘…nice to get some alone time’: children’s spatial negotiation of alone time needs in the family home.:children’s spatial negotiation of alone time needs in the family home.

This article exposes the spatial dimensions that children seek to support their alone time needs in the family home, based on empirical data from the At Home with Children research project. Normative ideologies of domesticity problematize child alone time at home as a threat to family togetherness. In turn, domestic space foregrounds this idea through the contemporary move towards open plan living and the lack of attention paid by housing overcrowding policy to children’s ‘alone space’ needs. This article offers new thinking by exploring the perspectives of children and teenagers on the everyday spatial negotiation of their alone time needs while at home with family during COVID-19 lockdown. These perspectives are drawn from semi-structured interviews with 45 families living across England and Scotland, UK. The findings reveal that both children and teenagers seek spaces for alone time because they enable four core experiences: privacy, agency, ownership, and restoration. The article discusses associated dimensions of space identified by children and teenagers, contributing new understandings to the under-researched realm of children’s domestic geographies. The findings show the relevance of space for alone time, to children’s well-being, fundamentally challenging adult-centred constructions of family togetherness. Finally, the article highlights the way in which this focus on the voiced needs of children sets a new agenda for the housing standards, with major policy implications for measures of occupation density and for housing design which enables children to maintain their well-being

Children’s Experiences of Their Journey to School: Integrating Behaviour Change Frameworks to Inform the Role of the Built Environment in Active School Travel Promotion

Childhood obesity is a public health problem with multiple effects on children’s life. Promoting Active School Travel (AST) could provide an inclusive opportunity for physical activity and shape healthy behaviours. Data for this cross-sectional study were drawn from questionnaires carried out in five primary schools located in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, in neighbourhoods chosen for their variability in IMD (index of multiple deprivation) and spatial structure of street networks (measured through space syntax measure of integration). A randomly selected and heterogenic sample of 145 pupils (aged 9–10) completed an open-ended questionnaire to state what they like and dislike about their journey to school. Thematic analysis identified four typologies (environmental context, emotions, social influences and trip factors) based on the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) and specific themes and sub-themes underlying children’s affective experiences of their journeys to school. This study is the first known to authors to attempt to adapt the Capability, Opportunity and Motivation Behaviour (COM-B) model into AST and children’s experiences and associated behavioural domains with design aspects. Such an insight into children’s attitudes could inform urban planners and designers about how to apply more effective behaviour change interventions, targeting an AST increase among children

“…We Honestly Just Got Sick of Doing Working Together.” Spatial Negotiation of Adult-Child Thrown togetherness During Lockdown

Following a pre-pandemic decline in family time at home, the Royal Institute of British Architects called for multi-functional living spaces to become the new family social hub, where familial togetherness materializes. However, a deeper understanding of the family home as a socio-spatial system, shaped by the negotiation of values, is required to inform housing design. This article draws on the concept of throwntogetherness to explore the family home during COVID-19 lockdown as a conflictual site of value discrepancies. Qualitative analysis of 45 in-depth interviews unpacks adult-child throwntogetherness as a state of negotiation between adults, children, and the spaces and values (care, companionship, control, privacy, play) upon which the family home is built. The study identifies the spatial strategies (Connectedness, Compartmentalization, Containment, and Together-space) used to reconfigure domestic space to negotiate lockdown throwntogetherness. The findings contribute new spatial understandings of adult-child togetherness, with important implications for open-plan housing design, questioning pre-pandemic assumptions