Kyttä, M., 2002, Affordances of children’s environments in the context of cities, small towns, suburbs and rural villages in Finland and Belarus, in: Journal of Environmental Psychology, 22,
- Author : Kyttä, M.
- Year : 2002
- Journal/Series : Journal of Environmental Psychology
- Volume Number (CONSECUTIVE: Counting all Volumes of this Journal ever published) : 22
- Pages : 109-123
- Abstract in English : Affordances refer to the functional significant properties of the environment that are perceived through the active detection of information. Affordences include properties from both the environment and the acting individual. They are always unique and different for each individual and each specific group of people. In other words or from the viewpoint of architecture: the functions of an environment. The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of the affordances of children’s outdoor environments in communities of varying degrees of urbanisation in two countries. The main question is: are there differences in the availability of affordance between the two countries. Significant differences were found. In the Finnish data, the county village provided the largest number of actively available affordances and the city the lowest number. In Belarus, the greatest number of affordances was noted in the small town and the lowest number in the city. It is suggest that good planning might to increase the amount and type of affordances and consideration should be given to the creation of environments that support social interaction between children.
- Comments/Notes : KEYWORDS: environmental psychology, children, affordances, neighbourhoods, quality of life, quality, community quality. The term quality is not used, but in fact this article is on quality of children’s environments. UTILITY: lecturers/teachers, academic research, students of universities of professional education.