The deterioration of the children’s play environment has been a problem for long time. While children’s how to play are changing, the reduction of outdoor play spaces is an important issue. The purpose of this paper is clarifying the playability (especially focusing on attractiveness of features) of non-institutionalized play spaces such as local streets (roads less than 4m wide) for 2nd grade children, targeting historical city area, Nishijin, Kyoto. In this paper, play is defined as the behavior of children toward the target according to their curiosity and its process. Based on the above, intention for play means attractiveness of features of spaces for children. Therefore, in collaboration with Nishijin Chuo Elementary School, as part of the 2nd grade class-time, we held a research, machi-tanken, walking streets with children to find funny things in the school district, and recording their discoveries and actions.
This study has novelty in that it uses playability indicators for non-institutionalized play spaces, and it discusses the relations between target spaces and children’s behaviors with considering the background of the spaces. These viewpoints are important for discussions to preserve the non-institutionalized play spaces and envision an urban scale children’s play environment improvement. In addition, this study has uniqueness and novelty in that discussing spatiality for children’s play by referring to the developmental stage of 2nd grade children.
We analyze the video and children’s questionnaire descriptions paying attention to their discoveries, walking speed and their make-up comments. Make-up comments mean children’s words they found anything and called the name different from itself or verbalized the atmosphere of its location.
As a result of machi-tanken, the following points become clear in this paper.
1. The walking speed of children was relatively slow on narrow streets and the distribution of discoveries were dense.
2. From the questionnaire, it become clear that children found the alleys fun, and some of them enjoyed calling the loophole nature of the alleys warp.
3. It is clarified that the narrowness of the width of route (e) encourages play in the small shrine in the alley and in the situation where there are various items within reach of the children’s eyes.
4. It is clarified that there are also cases where children’s spatial experiences are expressed through the make-up without specific discovery points. The example is warp.
This research mainly shows that the narrow width and the loophole nature of the alley spaces are intention for play working effectively for their play in the spaces.
