Pre-schoolers' transport imaginaries: Moving towards sustainable futures?
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.
References (86)
- et al.
Children’s independent mobility in the City of Toronto, Canada
Travel Behav. Soc.
(2017) - et al.
Promoting active school travel in elementary schools: a regional case study of the school travel planning intervention
J. Transp. Health
(2019) - et al.
The safe journeys of an enterprising school: negotiating landscapes of opportunity and risk
Health Place
(2001) - et al.
Routines and informal situations in children’s daily lives
Travel Behav. Soc.
(2017) - et al.
Exploring children’s seasonal play to promote active lifestyles in Auckland, New Zealand
Health Place
(2016) - et al.
Belonging in transience: vocal mapping for a commuting preschool practice
Emot. Space Soc.
(2018) - et al.
Active school transport, physical activity levels and body weight of children and youth: a systematic review
Prev. Med.
(2009) Habitus and the loser cruiser: how low status deters bus use in a geographically limited field
J. Transp. Geogr.
(2018)- et al.
The impact of parents’ fear of strangers and perceptions of informal social control on children’s independent mobility
Health Place
(2014) - et al.
Toward an understanding of children’s perceptions of their transport geographies: (non)active school travel and visual representations of the built environment
J. Transp. Geogr.
(2012)
‘Being on the move’: time-spatial organisation and mobility in a mobile preschool
J. Transp. Geogr.
Car use of young adults: the role of travel socialization
Transport. Res. F: Traffic Psychol. Behav.
Natural and built environmental exposures on children’s active school travel: a Dutch global positioning system-based cross-sectional study
Health Place
Do organized leisure activities for children encourage car-use?
Transp. Res. A Policy Pract.
Neighborhood and developmental differences in children’s perceptions of opportunities for play and physical activity
Health Place
Generation Y mobilities through the lens of energy cultures: a preliminary exploration of mobility cultures
J. Transp. Geogr.
Rethinking passive transport: bus fare exemptions and young people’s wellbeing
Health Place
Kids and cars: environmental attitudes in children
Transp. Policy
The extent of children’s independent mobility and the number of actualized affordances as criteria for child-friendly environments
J. Environ. Psychol.
The relative influence of urban form on a child’s travel mode to school
Transp. Res. A Policy Pract.
Nuances of neighbourhood: Children’s perceptions of the space between home and school in Auckland, New Zealand
Geoforum
Built environment correlates of active school transportation: neighborhood and the modifiable areal unit problem
J. Transp. Geogr.
Neighborhood, route, and school environments and children’s active commuting
Am. J. Prev. Med.
Children’s independent mobility
A systematic review of disability’s treatment in the active school travel and children’s independent mobility literatures
Transp. Rev.
A long term analysis of the mechanisms underlying children’s activity-travel engagements in the Osaka metropolitan area
J. Transp. Geogr.
Children’s incidental social interaction during travel international case studies from Canada, Japan, and Sweden
J. Transp. Geogr.
Rights-based research with children: principles and practice
Can shared practices build a new city?
J. Archit. Urban.
Preschool children’s knowledge about the environmental impact of various modes of transport
Early Child Dev. Care
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Qual. Res. Psychol.
Poblenou Superblock
Children, mobility, and space: using gps and mobile phone technologies in ethnographic research
J. Mixed Methods Res.
Pram mobilities: affordances and atmospheres that assemble childhood and motherhood on-the-move
Child. Geograph.
“Mind that child”: childhood, traffic and walking in automobilized space
Mobilities I: catching up
Prog. Hum. Geogr.
Danger from traffic to fear of monkeys: Children’s independent mobility in four diverse sites in Japan
Global Stud. Child.
The Energy Plan 1.0. Dunedin: Dunedin City Council
The Psychology of Attitudes
‘Yay, a downhill!’: Mobile preschool children’s collective mobility practices and ‘doing’ space in walks in line
J. Pedagog.
The Power of Place in Play a Bourdieusian Analysis of Auckland children’s Seasonal Play Practices
Managed childhoods: A social history of urban children’s play
Cited by (3)
Pacific Island children: The use of maps in helping better understand children's lives
2023, Asia Pacific ViewpointHow are practices of care sometimes not fair? The case of parenting and private car use
2023, Australian GeographerPre-Schoolers’ Vision for Liveable Cities: Creating ‘Care-Full’ Urban Environments
2022, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie