Children's Access to Nature Play

Article 31 of United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children states “that every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts”. Since the 1970s, attention was made on the overt standardization and safety of play equipment. However, contemporary studies emphasize the detrimental physiological and psychological impacts of creating a risk-free play environment for the children.

This study aims at finding a methodological framework for identifying residential neighborhoods with high children number those lack in walkable access to nature-play areas and attempts to give a conceptual solution through design and policy recommendations. Nature-play is defined as an unstructured play environment where children can engage in free play within nature. Hart (2002) notes that ‘play’ as defined by adults is often not ‘play’ for children. Free-play is defined as the voluntary activity of a child and their freedom of play without a compulsion. This paper tries to bring back the neighborhood level informal activities of children and contact with nature via free-play and presence of diffused green spaces in the community.

From existing literature, we can find five primary factors restricting children from outdoor nature-play opportunities - lack of nature in urban settings, exclusion of children from city planning policies, misconception of ‘play’, perception of fear in parents and legal policies for independent child mobility. Though there exist some contemporary instances of non-traditional play spaces in urban settings, an integrated approach to create a landscape of such spaces is limited. This paper’s main objective is to facilitate ‘accessible nature play’ opportunities for children in US cities. The study uses Geographic Information Systems to analyze the existing access to natural areas in Cincinnati, Ohio in the United States, and compares the accessibility to high children block groups of the city. Four significant areas are identified as nature-deficit areas and investigated further at a microlevel. In one of such areas a test site is selected, and detailed site designs are provided as recommendations.