Study on Understanding the Actual Conditions of Children's Activities in Commercial Streets

Abstract

In many regional cities and other central city areas, projects to promote urban walkability are underway to transform them into people-centered spaces. In response, academic studies have been conducted to clarify pedestrian circulation behavior and behavioral characteristics in commercial areas, but there are only a few studies that focus on children themselves. In this study, therefore, we observed children's movement in commercial area streets to understand the actual conditions of activity and examined the relationship between children's attributes and the walking environment. The results of the cross tabulation revealed that the occurrence of activity is related to age, accompanying persons, and walking environment. A multinomial logistic regression analysis was then conducted with these factors as explanatory variables and the occurrence of activity as the dependent variable. The results quantitatively revealed that activity is related to the ages, the accompanying persons, and the street environment, which are expected to be helpful in promoting future child-friendly town center walkability policies.