The impact of neighborhood places on children’s happiness: a comparative study from Ankara

2022-6-08
Yıldırım, Göksun
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The environments where people live affect them both in physical and psychological way. As cities get bigger, people's happiness can be negatively affected. Since cities are not planned with children in mind, they create various problems for children regarding their well-being. Although there are many studies examining the relationship between the happiness of adults and neighborhood places, there are only a limited number of studies investigating this relationship within the scope of children's happiness. This thesis investigates whether subjectively measured children's happiness are related to the objectively measured features of the built environment. The neighborhood environment is the environment that encourages and hinders children’s happiness. For this purpose, as part of a larger-scale study, two neighborhoods with different urban characteristics are selected from the periphery and the inner-city of Ankara. In this context, Selçuklu neighborhood in Sincan district and Abidinpaşa neighborhood in Mamak district are chosen as the study areas. By using GIS, the green area and land use mix ratios of these two neighborhoods are obtained. Then, third and fourth grade students who wanted to participate in the study are selected from the public schools in the chosen neighborhoods. A participatory mapping activity is conducted with the child participants. In this activity, children are asked to mark and discuss their happy and unhappy places on the maps of their neighborhoods. After the mapping study, children are expected to answer a questionnaire about their happiness levels in their neighborhoods. In total, 150 children's questionnaire data, maps, and data from objective measurements of their neighborhood are analyzed. This thesis contributes to the existing literature by indicating that children's happiness varies according to different neighborhood places. The study findings show the important role of school areas, traditional commercial establishments, public open areas and big box stores in children's happiness. The results of the study aim to help urban designers in creating places that promote children's happiness and to actively involve children in the planning and design process.
Happiness, Children, Built environment, Place mapping, Neighborhood
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/97940
Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats
G. Yıldırım, “The impact of neighborhood places on children’s happiness: a comparative study from Ankara,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2022.
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