Abstract:
This thesis topic is around children and how architecture can shape our neighbourhoods to become more child-friendly. It started with the observation of children’s disappearance in the public realm within the urban environment. The low priority of designing for children’s own domains in an urban area and the child-blind contemporary planning strategy had set boundaries and restrictions on children’s immediate environment, which seriously restricted their freedom. Moreover, ‘children’s independent mobility’ (CIM) was also limited by the car-dominated suburban environment in an urban sprawl context, and many of them rely on ‘adult-dependent mobility’ (ADM) which discouraged them from exploring the neighbourhoods independently. This thesis recognises the need for initiatives to encourage children’s active travel in their everyday life. It explores the ways of using architecture as a medium to connect nature and open spaces to provide autonomous walking experiences to extend children’s daily boundaries of private yards or child-care institutions. The research question is: “How can architecture design be used as a medium to encourage children’s presence in the public realm and encourage Children’s Independent Mobility (CIM) within the suburban community?” A neighbourhood planning in a medium-density community is proposed in Hobsonville, a rural suburban district in the Auckland Region. A series of footpaths with four critical spaces identified to encourage activities for children in the public was designed: Space in Nature, Space for Observation and Communication, Space of Transition, and Space of Children’s Domain. The aim was to create a ‘children’s journey’ to facilitate their daily travel between home, nature and public spaces.