Exploring Access to Nature Play in Urban Parks: Resilience, Sustainability, and Early Childhood

Thomas Beery

doi:10.3390/su12124894

Abstract

Nature play is an important component of the development of resilience in early childhood. Nature play is also an element of urban sustainability through a consideration of access to urban nature. From the foundation of access to nature play as a part of both resilience and sustainability considerations, a mixed-method case study was initiated. Spatial analysis, survey outreach, and focus group methodology have been combined to consider whether city parkland provides access for preschools to incorporate nature play, and, further, whether other barriers may exist to limit or prevent the use of city parks for nature play by preschool programs. The results indicate the existence of quality proximate access, but other factors creating barriers for broader application of nature play exist. The results also illustrate the critical role of public access to public parks as part of urban sustainability and the development of resilience in young children. The implications for the use of city parkland for nature play are presented.

Highlights

Given the uncertain and rapidly changing times, including the potential for overwhelming system disturbances such as biodiversity loss, climate change, natural disasters, war, and terror, the field of early childhood education has increasingly considered the development of resilience [1,2,3] and sustainability [4,5,6]
The study has been conducted based on the idea that access to nature play opportunity in early childhood may be a critical element in the development of individual resilience and an important part of sustainability [22]
The spatial analysis results provided an overview of favorable proximate access to nature play opportunity for preschool settings in the city of Duluth, with a majority of preschool facilities located within 400 m of a city park and many within 100 m

Summary

Introduction

Given the uncertain and rapidly changing times, including the potential for overwhelming system disturbances such as biodiversity loss, climate change, natural disasters, war, and terror, the field of early childhood education has increasingly considered the development of resilience [1,2,3] and sustainability [4,5,6]. The ability of a system to bounce back from adversity is one way that resilience has been described [12]. The Stockholm Resilience Center defines resilience as “the capacity of a system, be it an individual, a forest, a city or an economy, to deal with change and continue to develop” [13]. Drawing on both sustainability and resilience, a useful way to describe socio-ecological resilience is the flexibility that allows for systems to maintain function despite disruption [14], and, further, to adapt to disruption while creating new opportunities [15]. Just how we support this flexibility is an environmental education question of growing concern [25]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion