The Socio-Spatial Integration of the Child in the Urban Space of Collective Housing

Abstract

From the first human settlements until nowadays, the urban public space has been a primary motivation for creating and improving the quality of life for all categories of citizens. Due to its importance and central role in community life, its design, function, and use have become interesting topics. Children as an important and vulnerable category of citizens are spending their life more intensively within playgrounds, green spaces, and plazas of their housing neighborhoods as their first type of outdoor living environment. Thus, these open outdoor spaces in residential areas are highly important to children, because they provide different arenas for play activities as the most necessary function for children's selfexpression and development. Despite the importance of open outdoor spaces in housing neighborhoods for the child category, the urban reality in the Algerian context is quite different. These spaces are characterized by being either overcrowded or completely deserted, anonymous, monotonous, limited, unsafe, and polluted. As a consequence, these environmental conditions and the low quality of these spaces tend to provide fewer opportunities for playing, recreating, and learning. Based on this hypothesis that children's outdoor activities are highly affected by the quality of the outdoor environment, a mixed methods approach is adopted to verify the assumptions and provide responses to the research question centered around quality and usage. The research methodology consists of a combination of qualitative and quantitative procedures combining direct observations, space syntax analysis, a survey by questionnaire as well as behavioral mapping. The results support our initial hypotheses and provide a comprehensive vision of the role that open outdoor areas in residential neighborhoods play in defining and shaping the children's outdoor activities through quality components that include play structures; vegetation and natural elements; accessibility and visibility characteristics, as well as safety; condition cleanness and maintenance; and diversity. Furthermore, the inexistence of appropriate play spaces for children within the neighborhood vicinity has become a common identity for the Algerian collective housing neighborhoods. These conditions are thought to be contributing elements that lead children to sedentary outdoor play, the return to street usage as a playground, and further encourage the decline of outdoor play. This study offers to decision-makers a perspective for rethinking and considering the open outdoor spaces in residential neighborhoods regarding the child category. Finally, this research suggests more related areas of interest that might be regarded as further research paths leading to gaining a better understanding of this child-environment relationship.