Our results indicated that crime was not a significant factor in influencing the safety playability of neighbourhoods. This is likely because perceptions of crime are much different than actual crime rates. Parents are inclined to let their children play freely in their neighbourhood if they feel the area is safe and this is a subjective idea not necessary reflective of actual crime rates. The sensitivity analysis proves that crime should be of low weight or even excluded from future playability studies. The attraction score was proven to be the most significant influencing factor in the overall playability score. Even though Lonsdale had a higher safety and transportation rating than Grandview-Woodland, the overall playability score reflects that Grandview-Woodland is much more playable due to its higher attraction score. Transportability was also proven to be an important aspect of neighbourhood playability, having more impact on the final score than safety. This is likely because a neighbourhood that is easy to walk or bike around encourages children to make use of outdoor play places. Safety was the least important factor, because safety is very perception based and different kids had different comfortabilities playing in certain neighbourhoods, being around busy roads and crossing streets. Even though Grandview-Woodland had a lower safety score, the overall playability scores for Grandview-Woodland were higher as a result of its high accessibility to attractive play places and a larger number of attractive play places for kids.
Our study has certain limitations as it was not feasible to account for all variables and the model still be effective. A limitation is that certain variables included could be both negative and positive factors in influencing playability. For example, streets can be an attractive place for kids to play if there is minimal traffic, but could also impact the safety score negatively since in our model, we assumed proximity to streets was a negative aspect. In our analysis, we also were unable to account for front and backyards and receive data on kid’s play habits on their own property, as this was an ethics issue surrounding privacy concerns. Additionally, informal play spaces such as green spaces not officially classified as parks, could be attractive play places to children, but were not accounted for in our study, as only official greenspaces and parks were incorporated. Another issue is that every child and their family have a different opinion on what aspects of playability are important to them, so weighting can vary between person to person, as well as the distance that they allow children to play varies, which in turn affects search radii values. Another limitation was the sample size of our interview data was quite small, as we were only given approval to view five interviews, which may not have been representative of the population. Lastly, our model may not be useful for replication in other types of land spaces such as dense urban, rural or in non-western countries of the world.
Although we have expressed some limitations to our methods, overall this study is beneficial to health and GIS research, as well as a powerful tool for the public to make informed decisions if playability is of concern to their family. Our methods can be easily replicated and applied to the entire Lower Mainland to complete a larger scale playability study. The playability ratings are beneficial for city and urban planners, as the results can be used to identify factors that influence playability and be utilized to design neighborhoods to increase physical activity and play in children.
In this study it was determined that built features of environments can greatly impact the playability of neighbourhoods. Play is important to children’s mental, physical and social health, demonstrating the need for spatial data to be applied to health research and rating playability. Playability is a relatively scarcely researched topic and this project offers a methodology to approach the complex task of rating neighbourhoods. Although this model did not incorporate all possible factors such as perceptions, it used spatial data to infer the playability of the study regions. This is one of very few playability studies performed in the Lower Mainland at a larger scale and ideally, this research methodology can be a beneficial framework to measure playability and be implemented at a larger scale across the Lower Mainland. The results of this study are beneficial to health science, social science and GI-Science disciplines as well to citizens and government bodies, so building features of the environment to encourage play can be understood and have a positive health impact on our society’s children.
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