Decreasing experiences of home range,outdoor spaces,activities and companions: changes across three generations in Sheffield in north England

Home range is commonly understood to be the distance from home that children are allowed to go in the outdoor environment with the term being used within various academic disciplines. Different factors influence children's home range including traffic, age, parental fears and understandings of what it means to be a good parent. Research addressing home range over different generations has identified a context of changes in the built environment, demography and technology. This paper reports results from three generations of two families in Sheffield in the north of England and confirms a reduction in four major domains: home range, variety of outdoor spaces visited, range of activities undertaken and the number of companions.     

Viewing obesogenic advertising in children's neighbourhoods using Google Street View

The advertising of unhealthy food and beverages forms an important component of obesogenic environments. Such marketing to children is a key health determinant because of its impact on dietary preference and food purchasing behaviour. The location of outdoor advertising is important in exploring obesogenic environments and children's neighbourhoods. The aim of this study is to explore issues involved in the use of Google Street View to examine outdoor food and beverage advertising. The implications for using Google Street View in the context of neighbourhood built environment research and grass‐roots advocacy are discussed. The study was conducted within walkable distances from 19 primary and intermediate schools in Auckland, New Zealand, where “walkable” was defined as limited by 800 m road network boundaries, which are equivalent to school buffer boundaries. Google Street View allows for centrality of data collection, coding, and storage. However, challenges exist with the method because 727 (29.4%) of a total of 2,474 outdoor advertisements that were identified were not able to be categorised because images were unclear, not in English, blocked, or at angles where detail cannot be deciphered. Specific to outdoor advertising for food and beverages, the results presented here show that children are exposed to a significantly greater number of unhealthy advertising than other advertising, P=0.001, eta‐squared statistic (0.45) indicates a large effect size. Overall, the results show promise for the use of Google Street View in the study of obesogenic environments.     

The journey as a transcultural experience for international students

An international two-year Erasmus Mundus MA, Transcultural European Outdoor Studies (TEOS), uses the journey as a central metaphorical concept, the “peregrinatio academica”, and experiential pedagogy. Students study human nature interactions through the lens of outdoor education and recreation while travelling for a semester at a time in three European countries: England, Norway and Germany. We argue that the transcultural concept is facilitated by the diverse nationalities of the student cohort and the concept and experience of the journey. Empirical evidence from student feedback, course discussions, and staff reflections is used to explore the ways in which the programme elucidates ideas of expert and Eurocentric knowledge of landscape and learning by valuing individual knowledge constructions and new research. Simultaneously, we argue that the typical European “gaze” on the “other” somehow is reversed as “others” gaze at European cultures, and, to some degree, contribute to destabilizing culturally taken-for-granted knowledge. This offers new opportunities for a more nuanced transcultural exploration of human nature interactions in diverse landscapes and cultures. We conclude that the knowledge and skills developed by this programme supports the development of “transculturalized” students with the enhanced capacity to shift between and discuss diverse positions and ways of viewing and knowing.     

Branded cities: outdoor advertising,urban governance,and the outdoor media landscape

Abstract: In many cities both rich and poor, new forms of outdoor advertising are emerging with potentially significant implications for the nature of the urban public realm. Public–private partnerships for advertising‐funded provision of basic items of urban infrastructure such as bus shelters, street signs and public telephones have grown as a result of structural changes in the advertising industry and shifts towards neoliberal forms of urban governance. This article critically interrogates the implications of these new outdoor advertising arrangements for the urban public realm, and argues that they have potentially harmful consequences for the accessibility and diversity of the outdoor media landscape. It then proposes three strategies for the democratisation of that landscape. These strategies are not premised on an outright rejection of outdoor advertising, but rather seek to contest the monopolistic capture of outdoor media by public–private partnerships involving urban authorities and outdoor advertising companies.     

Weather sensitivity and climate change perceptions of tourists: a segmentation analysis

ABSTRACT

Many communities rely on tourism spending, so it is important to understand any potential changes to tourist flows resulting from changing climate and weather patterns. However, tourists are not a homogenous group, as they have different motivations, values, and goals. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation is to better understand potentially varying perceptions and behavior of different tourist types, specifically in regards to their weather sensitivity, climate change concern, and behavioral intention for climate change mitigation. Tourists were randomly surveyed at 20 locations throughout the state of Maine in the United States (n = 704). Segmentation analysis on the activities tourists participated in yielded three segments of Maine tourists: non-nature-based tourists (50.6%), nature-based generalists (16.2%), and nature-based specialists (33.2%). Differences across segments were explored for perceptions of weather impacts, climate change concern, and mitigation intent. Additionally, weather sensitivity was analyzed based on type of overnight accommodations to better understand if this also had a role in differences. Non-nature-based tourists thought that weather variables were less influential during their travels in Maine than the other segments, while nature-based generalists perceived weather to have the highest influence. Additionally, nature-based specialists had the highest level of climate change belief, while nature-based generalists had the highest willingness to engage in climate change mitigation behavior. Results are useful to understand how segments of tourism demand may be altered with a changing climate, such as increased temperatures, precipitation, and storms, and what groups may be the most beneficial to target for marketing or educational efforts to reduce the impact of climate change.     

Moon,mud, and cell phones: geographies of race and construction of difference through normalization

How does the meaning of space emerge and get negotiated when individuals of diverse backgrounds interact with each other? Studies reporting that African Americans tend not to spend time in outdoor space attribute this finding to limited access to resources, cultural values, degree of assimilation to mainstream practices, discrimination in outdoor space, or a perception that outdoor recreational space is “white space”. Little research has addressed how such meanings relate to other meanings attached to outdoor space, let alone how this happens through interactions between people with different views on outdoor space. This article, based on interviews and participant observation of college students on an alternative break trip from the Northeastern U.S. to New Mexico in 2014, shows how students of various backgrounds experienced nature differently, how differences were articulated and explained, and how they subverted normalization processes that render not “being in tune with nature” as deficiency. Suggesting that geographies of race are fluid and influenced by individuals’ agency, this article calls for encouraging students to examine the ways their subject positions have shaped their experiences and challenge cultural bias in what is deemed universally desirable.     

Bringing gender and spatial theory to life at a German technical university

This article focuses on the use of a university sculpture garden, the renaming of streets, and advice about the use of public space in order to teach the intersection of gender theory with spatial theory. This article outlines methods for teaching gender and spatial theory to international and multidisciplinary bachelor’s and master’s students in English at a German technical university. Most of the students had not learned gender or spatial theory prior to the course. A review of the course syllabus is included, and interactive teaching methods are outlined for the writings of three scholars: Elizabeth Grosz, Henri Lefebvre, and Dolores Hayden. Three intertwined aspects of campus life: its student life, its architecture, and its outdoor sculpture are brought into conversation with those theorists. Students learn the history of their campus buildings, outdoor spaces and artwork, along with how university spaces, place naming, and storytelling all affect their educational and individual experiences. By interacting with and analyzing examples of campus architecture, urban space, and outdoor sculpture, students discover how spatial and gender theories function in everyday life. However, students were more convinced that living gendered interactions affected everyday life, and less convinced that static gender representations such as the sculpture garden or street naming impacted gender ideas and perceptions.     

On children's independent mobility: the interplay of demographic,environmental, and psychosocial factors

In the past 50 years, a marked reduction has occurred in European and North American children's freedom of movement and outdoor play. Using a structural equation model, the present study investigates the interaction between personal, environmental, and psychosocial factors that affect children's independent mobility. The study involved 313 mothers of 8–10-year-old Italian children. The results supported the hypothesized model: the age of the child, the maternal perception of social danger, and positive potentiality of outdoor autonomy were the most influential variables on children's independent mobility, measured as an index. Further, the maternal perceptions mediated the influence of the other demographic, psychosocial, and environmental variables on independent mobility.     

城市儿童户外体力活动研究进展

在快速城市化的当今,公共健康已成为各国尤其是发展中国家的突出问题.城市人口急速增加、城市建成区快速高密度蔓延,加之汽车入侵、城市结构及居住模式的改变,供儿童日常活动的户外公共空间越来越有限,儿童体质20年来持续下降,儿童能否在城市中健康成长成为维系中国家庭及整个社会稳定与可持续发展最具挑战的课题之一.文章对国内外户外环境中的儿童体力活动研究及实践进展进行了综述,国内外已有研究主要集中四个方面:(1)运用多种测量方法对儿童体力活动水平进行调查研究; (2)宏观尺度的城市儿童户外活动空间结构空间分异研究以及儿童游戏场地设计分析; (3)具体的户外环境因子对儿童体力活动的影响研究; (4)儿童对户外环境中的体力活动机会感知等四个方面.文章最后提出促进城市户外环境中的儿童体力活动应进一步研究的方向,包括环境因素对体力活动类型及体力活动强度影响、户外物理环境因子如温度、风速、日照等对儿童体力活动的影响、儿童与父母对户外环境及活动机会感知差异以及儿童户外环境感知偏好研究等.     

The emergence of early childhood education outdoor programs in British Columbia: a meandering story

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the emergence of early childhood education outdoor programs in British Columbia, Canada. The story told follows paths not dissimilar from how one might observe children on a walk to the park. While the park is the destination, it is the journey to the park, of picking up pebbles, looking at flowers, and finding sticks, that enlivens and binds the journey. Through our consideration of stories from a number of outdoor programs, we weave patterns that join their emergence and consider how their stories might sustain and encourage educational action.