Children’s independent mobility licence and its association with the built and social environment: a study across neighbourhood typologies in Kolkata

ABSTRACT

Narratives on children’s independent mobility (CIM) from developing countries remain limited and under-researched. This is the first paper from India that examines CIM across three urban neighbourhood typologies, taking a case of Kolkata. The study reports from the comparative analysis of the data provided by 384 parents of children aged 7–12 years from four schools on their CIM licence scores and neighbourhood perception. Logistic regression was employed to examine the association of CIM with the built environment (BE) and social environment (SE) variables of the neighbourhood. The results reveal that older children (10–12 years) were found to enjoy higher CIM licences irrespective of their gender. Low-rise neighbourhood inheriting an organic spatial growth fosters higher CIM than planned mid-rise or high-rise neighbourhoods. When all variables were taken together, the influence of neighbourhood social cohesion and safety on CIM was found to override the influence of BE variables.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s independent mobility
• built environment
• social environment
• neighbourhood typology
• Kolkata
• India

Acknowledgements

The authors thank school principals, teachers, parents and children of St. Thomas’ Boys’ and Girls’ School, Khidirpur and Kendriya Vidyalaya, Salt Lake Sector 1 for their participation in this study. We also want to express our appreciation for the literary contribution of Suryendu Dasgupta in the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.