Summary - Activity friendly neighborhoods for children
Sanne de Vries (TNO Kwaliteit van leven) , Paper VU Amsterdam2009
A safe traffic enviroment is more important for getting children to be more active, rather than more playfields and greenery in a suburb. The research concludes that there is a correlation between spatial planning of the neighborhood and the the ammount of physical activities done by children in these neighborhoods.
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The complete thesis 'Activity-friendly neighborhoods for children' from Sanne de Vries is available by sending an e-mail to info-zorg@tno.nl.
The general conclusions of the thesis are:
• The proportion of 6- to 11-year-old children meeting the healthrelated
60-minute physical activity guideline are highly dependent
on the guideline’s operationalization in terms of intensity threshold,
bout duration, and number of days of moderate to vigorous physical
activity, and on the assessment method used.
• Most pedometers and accelerometers are feasible, valid, and
reproducible devices to assess physical activity in healthy children
(2-11 years old) and adolescents (12-18 years old).
• It is feasible to assess physical activity in 2-year-old children with
accelerometers.
• The time 6- to 11-year-old children spend in moderate to vigorous
physical activity is associated with the frequency of parallel parking
spaces and the subjective rating of the activity-friendliness of the
neighborhood the children live in.
• The number of walking and cycling trips 6- to 11-year-old children
make are associated with certain modifiable characteristics of the
built environment the children live in, such as the frequency of
pedestrian crossings and the frequency of parallel parking spaces
in the neighborhood. However, these characteristics differ by the
purpose of walking and cycling and by the commuting mode.
2010
A safe traffic situation is more important than play areas and green surroundings to increase physical activity levels of children in residential areas. That is the conclusion Sanne de Vries (TNO) draws in her thesis on activity-enhancing neighbourhoods for children. She investigated how children’s activity behaviour was affected by the lay-out of ten urban neighbourhoods.
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