Environmental Child-Friendliness

Collaboration and Future Research

Abstract

An important social aspect of sustainable development is that it offers children and youth opportunities for individual development based on influence and participation. Children’s possibilities to move around freely, to explore the natural and built environments, to meet others and to observe and try out roles in public places are all conditions for children’s participation. Two consequences of the intensified building and increased traffic now taking place in Swedish cities, particularly in inner city areas in the largest cities, are that children’s outdoor space has been reduced and children’s safe access to the outdoors is at risk. For children, having limited or no access to their nearby environment, important for their development in multiple ways, means they will have no environmental experiences of their own to communicate to others and on which to base their opinions. Our research projects show that traffic is the greatest obstacle to children’s independent mobility along with the lack of places for children to use.