Abstract
This study discusses how different living areas affect children's life styles. This survey was conducted in various areas, including sparsely populated, agricultural, and urbanized or city planned areas in large cities. Based on practical facts, we analyzed the relation between school districts and children's activity areas including their friends, play sites, daily playing behavior, recognition of school districts and so on. Our findings are summarized as follows : 1) Contacts with friends from different school districts, the radius of daily action consisting mainly of play, activity rate, and usage of play sites outside school districts are eloquent indices of children's activity zones. 2) The recognition of a school district does not offer a good index of the extent of childern's life zones, but rather, indicates their familiarity with their living area. 3) Children's lives are not limited within their school district, but extend beyond their boundary in after school activities such as play. If there are playing sites not far from their homes which are more attractive than those in the near vicinity, children tend to use the more distant sites. From this, it can be said that the existence of school districts does not restrict the radius of children's activities.
