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Redefining the Meanings of Placeness and Placelessness of Children in Urban Environment
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Ismail Said, 2NorFadzila Aziz, 3Nadiah Sahimi, and 2NorAin Yatiman
Associate Professor at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2 Postgraduate candidates at Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia, 3Lecturer at Universiti Tun Abdul Razak Malaysia
ismailbinsaid@gmail.com
Abstract
In the last two decades, many cities in South-east Asian countries are experiencing rapid population
growth. As a result 71 per cent of Malaysians are living in urban areas, with the largest percentage of the
population are children. Modern urban planning methods and policies have created living settings that
provide less opportunity for children to engage with the outdoor environment. This situation results to
low children's performances in three aspects: physical, social, and cognitive. Physically, urban children's
dexterity is low, which leads to obesity and other relate health problems. Socially, children are lack of
opportunities to engage in outdoor games that could develop not only social skills such as turn-taking,
negotiation, sharing and acquaintanceship but also the feeling of flexibility and freedom. Cognitively,
children with less engagement with the outdoor environment could have low sensorial actions with the
natural elements. As such, children might not understand the attributes of nature such as the shades of
greenery, the tune of a nightingale, the freshness of stream water, the elasticity of a tree branch, and the
pleasantness of breeze. The concern of urban children's lack of engagement with the outdoor environment
has been studied in the last three decades in various disciplines, including childhood cognition, children's
geographies, urban planning and greening, environmental psychology, and landscape architecture. In
Malaysia, such concern is minimal, relative to the massive population of children living in its cities and
towns. This paper discusses the meaning of placeness and placelessness of urban living environment for
children’s growth and development. Children’s place preferences and play behaviors in the outdoor
environments are influenced by their developmental needs, individuality, physical and social factors.
Preferred play spaces become their favorite place, and at time become their secret places. This
progressive behavior is due to independent mobility that the children get from their outdoor environment
as well as parental decision. In sum, experiencing the outdoor affords children to develop friendship and
other social skills, as well as constructing new knowledge through direct participation and hands-on
engagements. The knowledge includes the importance of greenery for wellbeing and nature is a playspace which is diverse, timelessness and fun to learn.
Introduction
Living environment in many towns and cities in South-east Asia is rapidly growing in the last two
decades. Green spaces including farmlands, forests and river corridors are transformed to residential
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communities and commercial centres. As such the communities are packed with row houses and high-rise
apartments with fragmented green spaces for recreation and play. In addition, new neighbourhoods
provide insufficient walking and cycling ways for the communities. This is the common practice in new
community development in cities in Malaysia such as Johor Bahru, Kuala Lumpurs, Petaling Jaya,
Kuantan, and Georgetown as well as in small towns such as Kulai, Kuala Selangor, Kampar, and Kulim.
Design and planning for new township is in adult perspective that is not incorporating children’s
viewpoint. As a result of this change, the outdoor spaces are fragmented, not safe and less accessible for
children to play and engage with the natural elements (Kernan, 2010). It means that children’s outdoor
space has been reduced and children’s safe access to the outdoors is at risk (Bjorklid and Nordstrom,
2007). In turn, parents are worried and then reluctant to allow their children to play in the outdoors.
Nowadays, it is increasingly uncommon to see groups of children walking, running or playing on the
outdoor environments without adult’s supervision. Such changes certainly have profound repercussions
on the psycho-physical development of children (Castonguay and Jutras, 2010). In other words, the city is
an unfriendly environment for children to grow and live (Riggio, 2002). This situation leads to avoidance
or no participation of children with the outdoors. Therefore, children have limited opportunity to create
sense of attachment to their living urban environment. This notion contradicted to the study by Kytta
(2004) that children are actually among the largest consumers of public outdoor environments. This paper
discusses the concept of placeness and placelessness of children in towns and cities in Malaysia and
explains the relationship of children with their outdoor environments.
Placeness and Children’s Places
For children, not experiencing the outdoor means low performance or functioning in three modes;
cognition, physical and social. High performance is the result of active play with the outdoor elements.
Cognitively, it involves sensorial action with trees and animals such as scanning and searching pebbles on
ground to use as bullet for slingshot and seeing mango tree laden with fruits that trigger a child to climb
the tree. In turn, the sensorial actions may generate a child to play with slingshot to shoot the mango fruit
or to climb the mango tree and harvest its fruits. Shooting and climbing are motoric actions involving
dexterity and rigor movement (Ismail, 2008). These are progressive behaviours for young children that
afford them to be curious and to discover new things and knowledge (Christensen and James, 2008). It
means that the outdoor environment affords them sense of control for their bodies and set their boundaries
to play (Olds, 1988). Children are social being. Hence, at the mango tree, a peer may join the child to
shoot the fruits or to climb the mango tree. The result is communication on how to shoot the fruits or to
climb the tree. The interaction would permit sharing and turn-taking such as who should climb the tree
first, how to share the harvest, and when to come again to climb the tree. These are social functioning that
green spaces such as treed street, home garden, play field, loose-fit space, parks and river corridor
available in many small towns in Malaysia (Mazlina, 2011). The three functioning can only be attained
when the children perceive that their living environments are friendly. A child-friendly environment is
perceived by UNICEF as framework that affords children to move safely and independently in their own
terms (Riggio, 2002). It is also an environment that allows children to have meaningful activities (Horelii,
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2007) including manipulating the environmental elements to create their own play tools. For example,
Ismail (2008) discovered that middle-childhood children collected stones to construct a dam across a
stream in a forest park. Likewise, Ismail (2008) found that young children filled wax in their rubber seeds
to make them stiff for a game that challenge how to crack opponent rubber seed. Moreover, Noor Ain
(2012) indentified that young school children collect mid-rib of coconut leaf blade and detached it from
the blade and use it as pointer during the reading of Quran. These are hands-on activities affording the
children to recognize the environment as their favourite place to play and socialize. A favourite place is a
setting that children feel happy and enjoy being in it but sad being away from it. Furthermore, some of the
places are not known by parents but only by peers. These are the secret place that is defined by children’s
sensorial, motoric and social actions in them. It means that only through direct engagement with the
elements of a place that children develop sense of attachment that is placeness to a setting. A setting with
sense of placeness means it provides the children freedom to explore and to satisfy their curiosity. It
addresses the needs for them to observe, to think about, to make choices, to attract their attention, to
engage in their favourite activities and to give them the opportunity to meet friends. The opportunity to be
in the outdoor environment is important for the development of children’s motor and cognitive skills,
interpersonal attitudes and emotions.
Opportunity to engage with the outdoors is directly influenced by independently mobility of the children.
For children, independent mobility means freedom for them to explore their neighbourhoods, towns and
cities without adult supervision (Romero, 2010). In town or city landscape, this concept permits children
to experience home gardens, playgrounds, neighbourhood parks, community parks, nearby forest and
river corridors and loose-fit spaces. It is a learning and growth processes that children encounter with the
natural and man-made elements. With the natural elements, children can run on flat ground, climb hills,
roll downhill, play in rain, dip feet in puddle, climb and hang from trees, hear the songs of bulbuls and
magpie robins, and swim in streams, rivers or ponds. With the man-made elements, they climb steps, slide
on railings, run around building columns, and jumping over drains. All the sensorial and motoric
activities are influenced by functional properties (affordances) of the elements (Kytta, 2004; Ismail,
2008). Affordances refer to the functional properties of the environments offering a child to interact
actively with the environment (Gibson, 1979; Heft, 1999; Kytta, 2004). For example, flat and smooth
surfaces can allow for cycling, running and skating; smooth slopes can allow for skateboarding, while
shrubs can allow for a hide and seek game. Affordances and other stimulation provided by the
environment allow and support children’s exploration and play. On the other hand, their perception and
physical activities are less influenced by form, colour, smell or taste of the elements. It means that
independent mobility is a process of motion and perception in an environment that enhanced children’s
knowledge. Motion permits a child to locate himself freely in space, create his own boundaries, have
access to diverse territories, manifest power, and explore his abilities. Perception involves scanning the
environment for opportunity to grasp, to hold, to catch, to chase, to play, to eat, and to consume. These
are the affordances that children viewed when they interact with vegetation and animals.
Moving freely allows children to assimilate the actions of others. Assimilation is an ecological perceptual
activity of a child copying his peer’s action to perform a task. For example, a young child would follow
the footstep of a middle-childhood peer to climb a tree. That is, how to pull himself on the tree trunk and
later stepping on its branches. After repetitive actions, he may change his way of climbing the tree, an
accommodation (McDevitt and Ormrod, 2002). The progress from assimilation to accommodation is a
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relevant to the growth and development for young children. It also affords a child to be more time with
their friends to play in places that he likes. Assimilation and accommodation generate a child to achieve
social skills that is learning to share, negotiate and take-turn. In turn, the children create their own place.
Rasmussen (2004) called the place as children’s place. It is a context form by children’s actions, define by
their social interaction, and perceive through the lens of their group. In Malaysian towns, the place can be
a five-foot corridor along a row of shop-houses that young children recognize it as a place to exchange
views and play tools. For young adolescents, the place can be further away from their homes which can
include a street where they use tennis ball to play football. The goal posts are simple; two pairs of slippers
or discarded cans.
In short, in the context of town and city, children’s place is the interplay between children’s landscape
experience and the environment that the design and planning of the place is finalised by children, not
adults. Lee (2009) views this interplay as everyday urbanism that children engaged with the urban
environment routinely. Everyday urbanism is the practice of allowing children to create their own place to
play and to socialize, thus affording the children sense of control and manifest their body and energy
within their own will and choice (Olds, 1988).
Placelessness and Places for Children
In many Malaysian towns and cities, the freedom and opportunity for children to create their own place is
very limited. This is because open spaces, incidental spaces and loose-fit spaces are few or fragmentally
laid by adults that include policy-makers, developers, and planners. The open spaces are fragmented by
streets, bridges and buildings causing difficulty or dangerous for the children to access either by walking
or cycling. In Malaysia, the fragmentation of open spaces in urban residential neighbourhood is the result
of regimentation planning of the houses that maximises space for buildings and road system. Therefore,
playgrounds and parks are placed not in strategic location for children to access easily and safely.
Residential streets are not equipped with walkways for children to walk in group. In addition, cars are
parked along local streets that limit the space for the children to roam the neighbourhood at their own
pace and behaviour. Design of playgrounds and parks is finalized by adults leaving little opportunity for
the children to manipulate the outdoor elements according to their social play agenda. In cities, shophouses (shop at ground floor and residence on upper floor) are no longer being built. Large shopping
malls are replacing them, leaving no corridor and incidental spaces for children to play. This is the
phenomenon of the new urbanism that allows little opportunity for children to create their own territory
and to develop very detailed knowledge of their living environment. New urbanism practice has
transformed the living environment not friendly for children in order for them to develop their physical
and social skills that are requisites for their wellbeing.
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Initiatives on the Role of Children and Their Living Environment
Play is a need and right of young children as stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (The
United Nations, 2010). The knowledge of benefit that children gain from engaging with outdoor
environment discovered in studies done in childhood cognition, children's geographies, urban planning
and greening, environmental psychology, and landscape architecture. The gains include physical and
social developments and good health. In South-east Asia, there are a few organizations such as Child
Friendly Cities Initiative Asia-Pacific (Malone, 2011) and Knowing Children (Ennew, 2012) concern or
study on the right of play. The former aims to improve the lives of children, including those living in
cities, by recognizing and realising their rights and creating sustainable environments for them. The latter
conducts research on designing policies and programmes for children in South-east Asia for them to
engage with the outdoor environment. Therefore, provision of these spaces in cities and towns for
children should be requisite for to play and for their growth and development. This is because play is a
need and right of young children as stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (The United
Nations, 2010).
Conclusion
Children regard the urban outdoor environment as their territory to play and socialize, leading to their
growth and well-being. Urban planners, designers, architects, landscape architects and policy-makers
should include children’s views in the design and planning of residential community. It is essential to
remind ourselves that the children use of the environment is directly depend on their perception and
motoric actions with the environmental elements and spaces. Their perception is not similar to us that
they concern on functional properties of the element or space rather than rules, forms, and colours. They
social actions change a space into a place with the following characteristics:
1. Places full of activity, such as the streets, the walkways, shopping malls, loose-fit spaces such as
river banks, corners and pocket parks.
2. Places where interaction with peers is possible that permits them to create their own favourite as
well as secret places.
3. Places with sufficient and diverse variety of vegetation, animals and water for them to
manipulate.
4. Places that they recognised as safe and easy to access.
The change is the practice of everyday urbanism that views children as their own being and have the right
to participate and play in their living environment.
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