EXAMINING CHILD-FRIENDLY URBAN PLANNING AND DESIGN GUIDELINES BASED ON THE INSIGHTS FROM CHILDREN: THE CASE OF ANKARA

Date

2023-9-05

Author

Akın, İlayda Zelal

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The concept of a Child-Friendly City (CFC), endorsed by internationally recognized legal frameworks such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and Agenda 21, entails a dedication to creating environments that support children's health and well-being. Although all UN members, including Türkiye, agreed to these documents, there is still more that governments and researchers can do to improve the environment in which children grow up. For instance, an examination of the literature in Türkiye reveals that there is only one recently published document intended to assist local governments in planning and designing child-friendly surroundings in conformity with the applicable domestic and international legislation. While it is evident that these recommendations are important and beneficial, it is not known whether they address the problems faced by children at the local level. To address this gap in the literature, this thesis asked three main research questions: What problems do children identify in their neighborhoods? To what extent do the existing urban planning and design guideline which was prepared at the local level for creating child-friendly environment (CFE), respond to the local problems experienced by children? And, in case there are gaps in the examined CFE guideline regarding the presence of sufficient recommendations that address local children's problems, what suggestions can be given based on the recommendations provided in the existing literature? To address the first research question, an empirical study was carried out with 9–12-year-old children in four distinct neighborhoods of Ankara, Türkiye. Data was obtained from focus groups with 217 students by utilizing the participatory place mapping method. The participating children were asked to describe and discuss the problems they see in their immediate surroundings and use stickers to highlight them on the satellite maps that represent their neighborhoods. Children’s responses were written on a map legend, and these notes were later subjected to a thematic content analysis. The findings of the content analysis were interpreted by evaluating descriptive statistics results. In order to respond to the second research question, the existing urban planning and design guideline for creating CFE was conducted through content analysis. The answers obtained from the first stage were compared with the analysis results and discussed if the guideline needs improvement. The findings of this study highlight the weaknesses of local CFE guidelines and offer new insights regarding neighborhood-level evaluations aimed at improving child-friendliness in urban areas. Providing appropriate resources can enable local authorities to create child- and youth-friendly urban areas; therefore, this assessment in the local context will further improve the documents intended to guide local authorities. These results also provide practitioners and policymakers with evidence-based information to implement effective behavior change plans promoting children’s active behavior. Besides, this study also introduces a new method proposal for evaluating locally developed CFE guidelines, which is anticipated to be applicable to other contexts as well.

Subject Keywords

child-friendly planning guidelines, participatory mapping, children’s experiences,, built environment, neighborhood

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/105587

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis