INTRODUCTION “An interview with a 10-year-old living in a new urban development (…) Interviewer: Okay, and what did you play...? Simon 1: We played walking... just walking around” (Horton et al., 2014)
UNICEF’s Child-Friendly Cities Initiative has set the stage for a increasing global concern on the role of urban environments and its institutional structures in supporting the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 2004). In an urbanizing world, cities are the places where children grow up and where they meet their needs and aspirations. Thus, shaping the urban environment with their perspective in mind is vital for their development, wellbeing and access to opportunities (Gleeson and Sipe, 2006; UNICEF, 2018). In recognition of the neighbourhood’s role in children’s lives, since the 1970’s geographers and psychologists have studied their perceptions and experiences in their surrounding environment and its effect on their cognitive and mental development (Malone and Rudner, 2011). Over the last two decades there has been a dominant interest from the medicine, social sciences, and city planning fields regarding the correlation of the built environment (BE) and urban mobility on children’s health (Sipe, Buchanan and Dodson, 2006). Research has predominantly focused on how neighbourhoods can promote active travel and physical fitness to battle growing child obesity and sedentarism (Villanueva et al., 2014). Most of studies, largely from the global north, have found children’s active travel (AT) has decreased over the years, as walking and cycling modes are gradually replaced by the car (Mitra and Manaugh, 2020).
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