Tales from the Steppes

2006-05-29

9:42 p.m.
Monday, May 29

Ok, so this is really boring but I am seriously asking for critiques here. The following is the executive summary for my thesis and I would like anyone who has the time and inclination to read the damn thing and let me know if it makes sense to someone not in my field. Any thoughts or comments you might have will be gratefullt received. I am not necessarily looking for edits, but, what the hell, if you have any I will use them too.

I do have references for all this stuff but have not included them because I certainly do not need help with them. I am not sure this will ever get used anywhere - it is more for my reconstituted committee. I have an 11 page detailed outline available as well, just in case anyone is suffering from insomnia.

Anyway, I will thank you in advance for all of the wisdom that I am sure you are about to dispense. Really. After all, you are the smartest people I know. What else can I say to get you to read this? It will make you cool? It will get you high? You know you want to read it, even though it is long and a bit dry? Best of luck.

"This thesis looks at the relationship between the detailed physical design of neighborhoods and the experience of the residents. It focuses on a New Urbanist community because this is a relatively new development form that has goals specifically related to the way residents interact with their community. The research looks at elementary school children expressly because that is the age group most influenced by their neighborhood. In order to control for social and cultural issues, one community, the Kentlands, was chosen for study. The methods used to elicit information from children about where they go, what they do, and why they do them (settings, actions, motives) grew out of personal observation coupled with a study of methods currently in use by researchers. In order to understand the influence of the physical environment, four sub-areas of the neighborhood as a whole were chosen for study. The biggest challenges faced in this study were societal in nature; many parents were not interested in having their children cooperate with the study and even after agreeing to participate, were often to busy to actually follow through. However, some useful information has been gained about the relationship between physical environment and children�s experience of their neighborhoods. This study suggests avenues for future research.

When parents choose a place to live, they most frequently cite factors directly related to raising their children. Even people that do not have children but are planning on having them at some point list �A nice place to raise a family� as a deciding reason for choosing one house over another. This choice most often leads families to the suburbs. Suburbs are often associated with good schools, low crime, and lots of space for kids to play in. It is also associated with a specific pattern of relatively low density development.

New Urbanism is a relatively new form of development, mostly concentrated in the suburbs as a practice. It advocates a dense, mixed-use, community that is human-scaled with an emphasis on community and public space. As a balance, lots are substantially smaller so there is a public space/private space trade-off. Smaller parks are interspersed throughout the community and walkability is a key concept.

New Urbanism is not merely a development form; there are explicit social goals related to the formation of community associated with it. Literature advancing New Urbanism promotes a family-oriented lifestyle and deliberately invokes nostalgia for a shared imagined past. The benefits for children are featured liberally in advertisements for communities as well as marketing pieces. Some of these positive aspects include freedom of movement, convenient destinations, and access to neighborhood schools. While a number of studies have evaluated New Urbanism and the forms it often takes, none of these studies have focused on children.

While New Urbanist communities are a relatively small, though growing, segment of the residential development market, the impact of New Urbanism is proportionally much greater. A far greater number of neighborhoods are being built that have an apparent density and lot sizes that mimic New Urbanist developments but do not include the amenity package of open space, schools, and shops. The differences may not be readily apparent to the consumer as the view from the street looks the same.

While there is no doubt that adults are impacted by the neighborhoods they choose to live in, children are affected to a much greater extent as there are both developmental and experiential implications. In a way, children are an indicator species for their community. These effects can be categorized as physical, social, cognitive, and emotional. An example of a physical issue is traffic safety, which can be an immediate concern with limiting children�s movements as well as the developmental ramifications of reduced opportunities and experiences. An example of a social effect is the way contested spaces in the neighborhood provide opportunities for children to assert their independence and encourages both friction and compromises between peers. These effects are numerous, wide in scope, and interrelated.

In order to understand how children are affected by the physical design of their neighborhood, it is important to consider the factors that affect their spatial use. These factors can be roughly classified as physical, social, parental, and cultural and are both intensive and extensive. For example, the location of a park relative to a child�s house is an extensive physical factor while the physical affordances within the park are an intensive physical aspect. The availability of friends near to the park is an extensive social factor, which can help determine whether a park is used or not. It is not possible to overstate the importance of parental influence on children�s use of space in the elementary school age group. Parents closely monitor and control the movement of their children, as well as influencing the child�s perceptions and judgments. One factor that is often overlooked is that of culture; childhood is a social construct with expectations that change between time, place, and sociocultural group. Age and gender also contribute to this social construct.

The Kentlands was chosen as the neighborhood to be studied because it has a well-developed culture and identity. It has a self-selected population that was willing to pay extra to live in this community and buy into the concepts of New Urbanism. Four areas within the neighborhood were picked based on criteria derived from principles espoused in the Charter for New Urbanism. These areas were then analyzed for detailed physical factors that would contribute to a child�s experience. For example, the exact location of stop signs and crosswalks within a neighborhood can make a big difference to a child�s movement, while an adult would not normally notice things like this.

Children were recruited for the research by a door to door canvassing effort. The exact location of most of the children was already known from using the local elementary school�s phonebook. By asking at houses that had children that lived there, it was sometimes possible to find out about children who attend private schools. Subject recruitment was one of the most difficult aspects of the research, even though participation was relatively effortless.

The first stage of the research involved giving the children some relatively ambiguous instructions and a disposable camera. The children were told to take pictures of their neighborhood to show to someone who had never been there before. The children were very excited by this and eager to get started. Unfortunately, this was the only stage many of the participants ever completed and some of them did not even do that. As a generalization, the children that lived in denser areas took photos that included less natural subjects and were closer to their houses. Some of the children even took pictures of their televisions and computers and when asked about them, indicated that they were of great importance in their lives.

The second stage of the research was supposed to involve the children talking through their photographs and then going on a fieldwalk of their neighborhood. On this fieldwalk, the children would describe their neighborhood through their eyes as well as answering questions in an unstructured interview. The reality is that this only happened once and the child�s parent was along so that it was never possible to independently obtain information. All of the other interviews took place in the children�s homes with their parents present. Even scheduling this level of activity was very difficult as participants were not available and appointments were often not kept. Responses to most of the questions varied greatly but there were some themes that emerged. For example, none of the children were allowed to go more than a block from their home and most were not allowed to cross the residential streets by themselves.

The third part of the participatory research involved a short informal parent interview. Most of the parents interviewed were quite open about their attitudes and opinions of the neighborhood and the limitations they imposed on their children. Most of the parents indicated that they considered the neighborhood safe, though some had concerns about traffic safety. Several of the parents expressed a desire to have a larger private yard because they did not feel comfortable with their children playing in the public spaces.

While this research has not conclusively answered any questions, it does begin to suggest some trends that should be explored in future research. One issue is that while New Urbanism may allow older children greater freedom of movement, elementary aged children are very constrained. Their play opportunities are further reduced by the decrease in private space, unless accompanied by an adult. However, when the public space is not separated from the residences by a road, children are allowed to use the space, under less parental supervision. Another issue relates to methodologies that might be more appropriate for use with this population group. A third issue might be to study the cause of parental limitations on children when the parent�s reveal, at least to casual questioning, a belief that the neighborhood is safe."