The social and built environment of many minority children living in impoverished neighborhoods frequently fails to support their healthy development. Designing safe outdoor play environments that support children’s physical activity provides a potential mechanism for promoting their healthy development. However, virtually no research exists that examines how children themselves think about and use their neighborhood for physical activity. The goal of this project was to study how neighborhood physical and social processes affect the impact of redeveloped inner-city school playgrounds, known as Learning Landscapes, on children’s physical activity from the perspective of children and their caretakers. This study enriched another Active Living Research project, If They Build It, Will They Come? An Evaluation of the Effects of the Redevelopment of Inner-City School Grounds on the Physical Activity of Children, Principal Investigator Lois Brink. Information about the physical activity opportunities in the Learning Landscapes playgrounds and children’s neighborhoods was collected from students from 3 diverse schools from the main study. Children’s physical activity was assessed using SOPLAY, a direct observation method, aerial photography, children travel behavior diaries, and student focus groups.
