PLANO MADANI
VOLUME 5 NOMOR 2, OKTOBER 2016, 114 - 124
© 2016 P ISSN 2301-878X - E ISSN 2541-2973
Available online : http://journal.uin-alauddin.ac.id/index.php/planomadani
AFFORDANCES OF STREET ENVIRONMENT FOR CHILD-FRIENDLY
CITIES DURING HOME-SCHOOL JOURNEY
IN OLD CITY ZONE OF MAKASSAR
Arti Manikam
1
, Ismail Said
2
Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
1
Email : artimasrun@gmail.com
Received (diterima): 07th September 2016 Accepted (disetujui): 10th October 2016
ABSTRACT
Home-school journey is part of children daily routine in many Indonesian cities and
towns. Consequently, the street environment is an important component for children’s
growth and development. In the last two decades, many urban centers have been
identified as unsuitable for children’s home-school journey due to issues relating to high
urban density and traffic congestion. Therefore, many children are denied the
opportunity to experience the outdoor environment. Their life is centered at homes and
within their schools. There are few studies that explore the affordances of street
environment on home-school journey for less privileged children in old city zones. This
study explores the affordances of street environment that influence children’s play
behavior and performance during their home-school journey. The elements and
environment of home-school journey play an important role in promoting children’s
active free play toward their environment. This study observed 40 less-privileged
children, aged 9 to 11, from low income families that walked to their schools in the old
city zone of Makassar. Data on children’s activities and their perceptual responses on the
street environment during the journey were elicited using one method which was
children’s observation. The data were content analyzed using Nvivo software. The result
revealed that the children displayed a variety of behaviors related to the social
transaction, physical play and decision making. Affordances of street environment are
associated with elements including buildings, vehicles and street furniture whereby the
children’s direct engagements lead to indirect learning. Therefore, middle-childhood
children recognized that the street environment is part of their routine living experience.
Keywords : child friendly, journey, affordances
A. INTRODUCTION
Affordances of home-school journey are measure by its ability to support
children‟s physical, social and cognitive development (Malone & Tranter, 2003).
The elements and environment of home-school journey play an important role to
promote children active free play toward their environment. Most of children love
to play in natural environment. Nonetheless, the children in urban area have less
opportunity to play in natural environment (Chatterjee, 2005; Chawla & Heft,
2002; Malone & Tranter, 2003; Veitch, Salmon, & Ball, 2010), these children
from urban area end up playing around their school, home and their surrounding
area.