Supporting Children’s Independent Activities in Smart and Playable Public Places

Chiara Garau,Alfonso Annunziata

doi:10.3390/su12208352

Abstract

The global process of urbanization, and the modification of social interaction determined by the pandemic crisis, poses the issue of the place of vulnerable users and, in particular, children, within the contemporary city. This research aimed to elaborate a theoretical and methodological framework, based on the concepts of affordance and capability, for analyzing the potential of public spaces to enable and support children’s independent activities. This potential, or meaningful usefulness, is expressed by the Index of Meaningful Usefulness of public Urban Spaces (IUIS). The latter is calculated via the tool ‘Opportunities for Children in Urban Spaces’ (OCUS). This methodology is applied to the analysis of significant public spaces within the historic center of the city of Iglesias in Sardinia, Italy. The results reveal adequate usefulness of the selected spaces, while underlining criticalities related to intrinsic spatial and physical attributes. The application to the case study confirms the validity of the theoretical and methodological framework embodied in the OCUS tool for supporting urban design and planning by orienting place-shaping processes towards the acknowledgement of children’s needs.

Highlights

Global trends towards urbanization [1], and the related triumph of the city [2], intersect global phenomena, including the climatic and the pandemic crisis [3,4], emphasizing the centrality of the urban realm as the crucible of the human condition in the Anthropocene [5]
This paper focuses on the construction of a methodological framework for assessing the extent to which the spatial, social, and material attributes of public spaces are conducive to children’s independent outdoor activities (CIAs)
The application of the Tool to the case study, as illustrated in Table 4, reveals that the meaningful usefulness of the selected places is marginal for Collegio Square (IUIS equal to 0.28), San Francesco Square (IUIS = 0.27), and Salvaterra Castle (IUIS = 0.06) and modest for the remaining spaces, with values of IUIS ranging from 0.35 for Cagliari Street to 0.43 for Quintino Sella Square. (Figure 6)

Summary

Introduction

Global trends towards urbanization [1], and the related triumph of the city [2], intersect global phenomena, including the climatic and the pandemic crisis [3,4], emphasizing the centrality of the urban realm as the crucible of the human condition in the Anthropocene [5]. Within this perspective, the ways in which the spatial, material, and social structures of the city affect individual and collective practices emerge as a global issue. A further relevant issue concerns the ways in which the articulation of public open spaces can enable co-presence and functional proximity, while ensuring social distancing in the post-pandemic era

Objectives

Results

Conclusion