Children’s interactions with water in city centres: a case study from Sheffield, UK

ABSTRACT

Children’s experiences of outdoor environments have been studied now for more than 40 years yet no research has specifically focussed on children’s experiences of water play in constructed spaces of city centres. This article discusses the development of an observational mapping tool, called TOWEC, to record the interaction of children with water. It then reports findings and analysis from observations over a year-long period of 3,399 children interacting with water in the award winning public open space of the Peace Gardens in the centre of the City of Sheffield, UK. The findings reveal that children undertake both active and passive activities associated with the constructed water features and that these activities are influenced by gender, age and temperature, but not ethnicity. The water features were not designed for children to play in but the children realise the potential affordance that the water features provide.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• water
• play
• spatial occupancy
• city centre
• open space
• affordance
• mapping tool

Acknowledgements

Tool for Observing Water Experiences of Children (TOWEC) was developed as a part of a PhD thesis undertaken at the Landscape Department in the University of Sheffield to understand children’s experiences of water in urban open spaces. The authors would like to thank Sheffield City Council for allowing this research to take place in the city centre.

The first author would like to acknowledge the Turkish Ministry of National Education’s financial support for his PhD and Sheffield City Council’s collaboration for authorising permissions to conduct site studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.