Pre-schoolers' transport imaginaries: Moving towards sustainable futures?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2020.102690Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Young children's current urban experiences shape their view on transport.

  • Children replicated and regurgitated the domination of the automobility system.

  • Children need to experiment with alternative modes of transport.

  • Doing/being/thinking sustainable transport systems starts from birth.

  • Need to expand children's imaginary horizon for moving to sustainable transport.

Abstract

Being on the move is part of children's everyday life in cities. However, little is known about how young children experience transport systems or their aspirations for mobility in cities. In this paper, we explore pre-schoolers' experiences with the mobile world and show their affinity with different transport modes and hopes for their current transport system. We draw on a participatory research project that engaged children in class discussions, a tile-based city building exercise and neighbourhood walks. Findings suggest that although the voices of children aged 3–5 years are absent in mobility or transport debates, children are fascinated by mobility and transport related activities and services. Pre-schoolers from Dunedin, New Zealand, though recognising a predominantly motorised transport system, also showed creative or alternative modes making their way into their own transport systems. In this paper we argue that children should be introduced to and experience alternative modes of transport in the early years to allow for more imaginary transport geographies creating greater support for more sustainable, liveable urban environments for all ages.

Introduction

Primary school children and young people's voices are making increasing noise in transport related studies. Many studies to date have elicited children and young people's experiences of being driven, using buses, walking or cycling in urban environments - with a focus on their journey to school being dominant (Wilson et al., 2018; Mitchell et al., 2007; Fusco et al., 2012; Jones et al., 2012). However, little is known of how very young children, aged 3–5 years, experience being mobile in the modern transport environment (Templeton, 2018; Smith and Kotsanas, 2014) or what their aspirations and hopes for mobility in cities are. This paper, therefore, aims to bring young children's voices to the fore, revealing pre-schoolers' understanding of their mobile worlds, their affinity for different transport modes and indications of their hopes for changes to their current transport system. We aim to extend the current understanding of doing/being/thinking transport systems. We assert that young children are already socialised in the predominantly motorised transport system they encounter on a daily basis and thus we argue that young children should be introduced to and experiment with alternative modes of transport in the early years to allow for more imaginary transport geographies. Their altered imaginary geographies may address the need for more sustainable, liveable urban environments for all ages. Values and norms internalised as pre-schoolers may shape future societies in a positive way.

Section snippets

Transport and children's mobile urban worlds

In our contemporary, car dominated urban environments, children's engagement with their environments and their mobilities are spatially fragmented. Many children in auto-dependent societies spend most of their time in ‘islands’ such as houses, schools, after-school-care and leisure facilities scattered over the entire urban area and linked by vehicle transport routes (Zeiher, 2003; Depeau et al., 2017). Parents chaperone their children between these islands, which is especially well-documented

Mobility experiences of young children in urban environments

While, as we just outlined, there is quite a substantial body of research on especially primary school children, transport and mobilities, little is known about how pre-schoolers experience, use and engage with different modes of travel or their mobile worlds in cities. One reason for this omission is that young children are invariably considered as dependent travellers (Smith and Kotsanas, 2014; Clement and Waitt, 2018; Gustafson and van der Burgt, 2015), although the concept of ‘independence’

Starting points: the need for sustainable, liveable cities for expanding children's imaginary horizon

Normalising active transport, independent mobility and use of public transport in which social interaction cannot be avoided can be part of a healthy city childhood (Freeman and Tranter, 2011; Ergler et al., 2017). Cities are recognising the need to redress the balance in favour of people over cars (Gehl, 2013). Here we reference two examples where children experience alternative ways of interacting with their city, interaction we argue is a prerequisite for imagining their city in new ways.

Study location

The study took place in Dunedin, New Zealand, a reasonably compact city, located in the South Island of New Zealand that has about 120,000 citizens. The city has an area of 3314.8 km2 and city-proper of 255 km2. City dwellers are dominantly of Pakeha/NZ European origin, other populations include Maori, Asians including Chinese, Pacific Islanders and recent immigrants and refugees. Most of these demographics were reflected in the 27 study participants aged 3–5 years. The sea in the east and

Research design

The data presented is derived from the Dunedin pre-schooler city mapping project (Ergler et al., 2015; Freeman et al., 2017), which has been approved by the Human Ethics Committee at the University of Otago (15/115). We worked with 27 children aged 3–5 years from three Dunedin early childhood centres (see Table 1). The participating centres cater for a range of different social classes and backgrounds and are located in low, medium and high deprivation areas. The 11 girls and 16 boys who

Fascination with the mobile world or replicating a traditional auto-dominant city?

The three to five year olds exhibited a deep passion for and fascination with motorised transport in their cities by replicating and regurgitating the system of automobility (Urry, 2004). Our participants showed in their cities, during the walks and the mat discussions that they had embodied the centrality of the motorised transport system they encountered in Dunedin on a daily basis. They bought into and rarely deviated from, normalised, auto-dominant practices of the contemporary transport

Conclusion

We have argued that children need to be introduced to and experiment with alternative modes of transport in their early years to be able to imagine alternative city futures to install the desire and hope for moving away from the auto-dominant city and towards more sustainable, liveable urban environments. In doing so, we have made the voices of an absent cohort in mobility or transport debates heard. These voices showed that it is important to gain insights into and understand very young

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Otago ‘Near Miss Funding’ Grant.

Author credit

We prefer not to include a credit author statement as this is a team project and all authors contributed to the paper in the order of authors.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interests.

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