Where Do Children Travel to and What Local Opportunities Are Available? The Relationship Between Neighborhood Destinations and Children’s Independent Mobility

Abstract

Associations between access to local destinations and children's independent mobility (IM) were examined. In 2007, 10-to 12-year-olds (n = 1,480) and their parents (n = 1,314) completed a survey. Children marked on a map the destinations they walked or cycled to (n = 1,132), and the availability of local destinations was assessed using Geographic Information Systems. More independently mobile children traveled to local destinations than other children. The odds of IM more than halved in both boys and girls whose parents Article 680 Environment and Behavior 45(6) reported living on a busy road (boys, OR = 0.48; girls, OR = 0.36) and in boys who lived near shopping centers (OR = 0.18) or community services (OR = 0.25). Conversely, the odds of IM more than doubled in girls living in neighborhoods with well-connected low-traffic streets (OR = 2.32) and increased in boys with access to local recreational (OR = 1.67) and retail (OR = 1.42) destinations. Creating safe and accessible places and routes may facilitate children's IM, partly by shaping parent's and children's feelings of safety while enhancing their confidence in the child's ability to use active modes without an adult.

The Effect of the Social and Physical Environment on Children’s Independent Mobility to Neighborhood Destinations

“…Overall, 22% of children did not have a sibling, 35% had a younger sibling (0-7 years), and 56% had an older sibling (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17) years) ( Table 1). Thirty percent of children were independently mobile to and from school; 40% to a friend's or another family member's house; 48% to a park, oval, or sporting field; 30% to the local shop; and 29% to at least 3 of these local destinations (ie, 'overall') ( Table 2).…”

“…It is likely that having destinations, such as parks, en route to and from school provides children with safe places to stop and play as well as cutthroughs away from the main roads thus reducing their exposure to traffic. 13,17,40 Future studies should explore the multiple built environment influences on children's independent mobility when more than 1 destination is visited in a single trip.…”

“…1,8,15 However, children living in neighborhoods with well connected, low traffic streets have higher overall independent mobility. 17 Broader community social constructs such as collective efficacy (ie, mutual trust and the shared willingness of residents to intervene for the public good), 18 and perceptions of social and physical disorder (eg, vandalism, graffiti, evidence of drug and alcohol use) may also play a role in parent's willingness to grant their children mobility licenses. 15 To date, studies of the environmental correlates of independent mobility have been limited by the lack of objective and context-specific measures of the physical and social environment.…”

Children and youth transport in different urban morphological types

“…Therefore, individual factors are not very useful in urban-design practices, which focus especially on total environment. In addition to "residential density," other environmental variables recognized in studies are, for example, network connectivity Frank, Andresen, and Schmid 2004;Frank et al 2007Frank et al , 2008Broberg, Salminen, and Kyttä 2013;Villanueva et al 2012Villanueva et al , 2013, density of bus stops (Carr, Dunsiger, and Marcus 2010;Broberg, Salminen, and Kyttä 2013) or land cover of single-family housing (De Vries et al 2010;Broberg, Salminen, and Kyttä 2013). All of these factors have led to more or less diverging effects in different studies conducted in varying countries and cities, among different age and gender groups.…”

“…It also seems to have a positive effect on boys' independent mobility (Villanueva et al 2013). In this study, the access to recreational venues and parks was operationalized as the area proportion of sports and recreational venues, parks, and forests within the buffer.…”