Article Assessing the Play Provisions for Children in Urban Neighborhoods of India: Case Study Nagpur, Maharashtra Kirti D. Bhonsle 1, * andVinayak S. Adane 2 1 Department of Architecture, V.N.I.T., Nagpur440010, India 2 Department of Architecture, V.N.I.T., Nagpur 440010, India; vsadane@gmail.com * Correspondence: kirtibhonsle@gmail.com; Tel.: +0712-2744154. Academic Editor: Manuel Duarte Pinheiro Received: 4 June 2016; Accepted: 9 August 2016; Published: August 2016 Abstract:The creation of satisfying urban environments calls for the planners, designers and policy makers to understand the structures that cause residents to feel satisfied with their environments. The paper focuses on qualitative aspects of the childrens play spaces in the urban neighborhoods of Nagpur which were analysed with the background of their daily activity schedule survey, their assement of the existing play provisions and their aspirations from their neighborhood environment quality. Apart from these studies, the childrens and their parents perceptions of the quality of urban residential environments was also studied. The literature review gave anextract of relevant attributes of environmental quality(EQ) which became the theoritical basis for the work. The research generates an approach to assessing the child friendliness of our urban neighborhoods, which in certain ways is not even catering to the most fundamental right of the child to play; it also generates a matrix of children’s needs and parameters relevant to Indian context. A theoretical model of the residents satisfaction is also generated which forms the base for the qualitative questionnaire analysis in SPSS 20 with a set of dependent and independent variables which shows the correlation of the resident’s satisfaction with child friendliness of neighborhoods in the Indian context. The regression model and mathematical equation as an outcome of the qualitative analysis was also validated upon two other urban neighborhoods of the city of Nagpur. The research with all its tools used and the approach adopted can help in undertaking such child-centered researches in other cities of India which have their own unique issues and characteristics of urban growth. Keywords:urban residential environment; resdients perception; child friendly environments; social ties 1. Introduction The research focuses on the relationship between the residents and their neighborhood of residence in an urban environment, which is a typical issue in environmental psychology on different levels of home, neighborhood and city with different levels of usersi.e., children, adolescents, adults and the elderly [1]. The perspective of the residents is extremely important in understanding the urban residential environment quality as some guidelines and standards can be established that can help in assessing the urban design and planning programs of intervention aimed at improving the urban residential environment. The approach based on what public seeks in the environment, how it trades one set of values with another and how it can be motivated to make choices about environmental changes before a crisis occurs is more practical and worthwhile[2,3]. The quality of the urban environment directly influences the social and economic development of the city. Good residential environments can bring socio-economic benefits to the city whereas bad environemt quality will obstruct urban economic development [4]. The concept of environment quality can be interpreted either objectively or more subjectively which brings the environment conditions to be measured objectively Buildings2016, 6,x; doi:10.3390/ www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings