A study on the importance Evaluation of Physical Environment Factors for a Child Friendly City

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the physical environment factors of a city for a child friendly environment and enable usage of the design guidelines for development of a child friendly environment in the future through importance evaluation of the respondents in each area. Physical environment factors have been drawn from preceding researches focusing on living environment, playing environment, and walking environment of a city with much activity frequency of children. The respondents were divided into architecture and urban professional group, children’s parents group, and children’s teachers group for AHP analysis. The physical environment factors used for this study were mobility, accessibility, playfulness, safety, territoriality, and comfortableness. According to the research result, the overall priority was put on safety. There are some areas which showed different results of importance evaluation among the respondents of each area: there were different results in territoriality and comfortableness. This study is meaningful in that it can be used for preparation of strategic plans for development of design guidelines for development of a child friendly environment in the future through the result of importance evaluation of the respondents in each area.