Children's neighborhood place as a psychological and behavioral domain

Interviews of 91 children living in a large high-rise, high-density planned neighborhood of 5277 families reveal that children find most of their psychologically valued settings within the neighborhood outdoor spaces such as designated play areas and developed parks. They are aware of differences in experience between such valued ‘places’ and other ‘spaces’. They choose the places because such places offer some key environmental attributes—spatial, physical, and social—that support behaviors that children want to engage in. Due to these attributes, behaviors in places are different from behaviors in other spaces, with the former being more purposive, social, creative, and dependent on particular affordances of the setting. This can be confirmed in a follow-up behavioral analysis of three pairs of most popular places and their counterpart settings. This observational analysis shows that settings children mention to be important to them are utilized more often (about twice as much) than their counterparts, showing a variety of behaviors, incorporating more intentional activities (as opposed to transient, short-lived ones), encouraging group behaviors (as opposed to single-person activities), and providing children with a sense of their own territorial play area. The study demonstrates that in children's neighborhood environment, emergence of such important places is related to use pattern and there are some key attributes and core behaviors greatly contributing to children's place experience.