This field report focuses on an initiative to create a Child Friendly City, outlining the necessary planning and design criteria for child-friendly open spaces. The focal area is the Küçük Ayasofya Neighborhood in Istanbul, Turkey, which... more
This field report focuses on an initiative to create a Child Friendly City, outlining the necessary planning and design criteria for child-friendly open spaces. The focal area is the Küçük Ayasofya Neighborhood in Istanbul, Turkey, which is an historic city center that has undergone rapid urbanization. The methods used to study the process of developing the city space include observations, photography, and child surveys. The field report concludes with a discussion of lessons learned.
This article explores the travel habits of young people in Slovenia over the past thirty years and seeks to explain the reasons for a complete change in their travel patterns. It focuses on the travel habits of primary school pupils as a... more
This article explores the travel habits of young people in Slovenia over the past thirty years and seeks to explain the reasons for a complete change in their travel patterns. It focuses on the travel habits of primary school pupils as a special group of traffic participants and urban space users. We compared data from 1991, 2001 and 2016 on primary school pupils' travel habits, car ownership, school locations and catchment area sizes, along with traffic regulation around primary schools. Based on this, we established that the patterns for Slovenia correspond to patterns from abroad. The substantial changes in children's travel patterns coincide with the intense motorisation of Slovenian towns, which has grown to proportions that even exceed those in many developed countries. This increase in car ownership is reflected in growing car use. The activities currently carried out in schools regarding traffic management are not helping stop this trend. A change is required in the traffic safety paradigm. Consideration of children's mobility must become part of comprehensive transport planning, which should be geared towards reducing and calming traffic in school areas by setting up infrastructure that discourages car use and encourages safe alternatives.
Researchers use measures of street connectivity to assess neighborhood walkability, and many studies show a relationship between neighborhood design and walking activity. Yet, the core connectivity measures are based on constructs... more
Researchers use measures of street connectivity to assess neighborhood walkability, and many studies show a relationship between neighborhood design and walking activity. Yet, the core connectivity measures are based on constructs designed for analyzing automobile mobility – the street network – not pedestrian movement. This article examines the effect of a finer-grained characterization of street connectivity and illustrates the idea using parent ratings of street and intersection walkability for children throughout a suburban school district in Oregon. Several policy and practice recommendations are presented, including a discussion that extends Michael Southworth’s foundational representation of streets and the walkable city using a refined, more pedestrian-centered approach to visualizing connectivity and walkable urban form.
