A Mobility-as-Experience Approach to Children’s Everyday Commuting in Car-Dependent Mediterranean Cities

Technical Summary: A Mobility-as-Experience Approach to Children's Everyday Commuting in Car-Dependent Mediterranean Cities

Problem Statement
In medium-sized, low-density Mediterranean cities like Limassol, Cyprus, everyday mobility is heavily dominated by private vehicles, creating a car-dependent environment with limited modal diversity. This context significantly restricts primary school students' mobility, which is largely mediated by parental control, perceived safety, and spatial conditions. While existing research increasingly frames mobility as an embodied, affective, and relational experience rather than merely a functional metric, current methodological approaches remain insufficient for capturing these dimensions among young children. Conventional tools (e.g., structured surveys, travel diaries, traffic data) prioritize observable behavior over subjective experience and often fail to capture how children perceive, navigate, and emotionally respond to their environments. Furthermore, youth mobility research is disproportionately concentrated in Northern European contexts, leaving Southern European, car-dependent cities underrepresented.

Methodology
To address these gaps, the authors present a participatory, workshop-based methodology grounded in the theoretical frameworks of affordances (Gibson, 1979), enactivism (Varela et al., 1991), and restorative urbanism (Roe & McCay, 2021). The study employs a qualitatively driven, mixed-methods approach implemented through school-based experiential workshops across 13 public and private primary schools in Limassol.

The methodology utilizes a structured three-stage framework:

1. Introduction and Guided Discussion: An interactive session where students reflect on travel modes, independence, and the emotional impact of traffic and environmental conditions.
2. Age-Adapted Questionnaire: A structured instrument combining closed-ended and open-ended questions with a drawing component to capture behavioral patterns, perceived safety, and emotional responses.
3. Paired, Craft-Based Spatial Reconstruction: Students collaboratively construct two physical models using materials such as foam boards, LEGO, and colored paper: one representing their current route to school and one illustrating an "ideal" route.

Data collection is multi-modal, capturing:

• Verbal Data: From group discussions and video-recorded student presentations of their models (guided by four specific questions regarding current conditions, proposed changes, user feelings, and environmental impact).
• Visual and Spatial Data: From student drawings and the physical models themselves.
• Quantitative Data: From the structured questionnaire responses.

Analytical Approach
The study employs methodological triangulation across verbal, visual, spatial, and numerical data:

• Reflexive Thematic Analysis: Applied to verbal data (discussions, open-ended responses, transcripts) to inductively identify themes related to safety, autonomy, and emotional experience.
• Visual-Spatial Content Analysis: Applied to drawings and models to identify the frequency and co-occurrence of environmental elements (e.g., traffic, greenery, barriers) and how spatial configurations represent constraints or transformations.
• Descriptive Quantitative Analysis: Used to visualize questionnaire data (frequency distributions, charts) to identify dominant patterns and compare datasets across schools (public vs. private, eastern vs. western areas).

Key Contributions
The paper makes three primary methodological contributions:

1. A Transferable Framework for Youth Mobility: It offers a replicable, low-cost methodology designed for mid-sized, car-dependent Mediterranean cities. By using adaptable workshop formats and school-based settings, it allows for the systematic study of youth mobility in contexts characterized by fragmented infrastructure and high car reliance.
2. Advancement of Participatory Research: The approach positions primary school students as active co-creators of knowledge rather than passive respondents. By integrating visual, spatial, and narrative tools, it captures complex spatial and emotional experiences that are often inaccessible through purely verbal or text-based methods.
3. Bridging Planning and Lived Experience: The methodology translates children's lived experiences into spatial representations (models and drawings) that are directly relevant to urban planning. It reveals discrepancies between technical infrastructure assessments and the actual emotional and sensory experiences of young users, highlighting specific barriers (e.g., traffic intensity, lack of crossings) and desired improvements.

Results and Findings
While the paper primarily presents the methodology rather than a full dataset of results, it outlines the types of insights generated:

• Emotional Geographies: The workshops successfully map "emotional geographies," identifying specific areas associated with stress, fear, comfort, or enjoyment.
• Affordance Perception: Students evaluate environments not just by physical function but by what they enable or constrain in practice. The methodology reveals how children interpret safety and autonomy, often diverging from objective planning metrics.
• Latent Demand: The "ideal route" models demonstrate a latent demand for safer, more engaging, and sustainable mobility environments, even in highly car-dependent contexts. Students frequently propose interventions such as safer crossings, quieter streets, and increased greenery.
• Contextual Variations: The comparative analysis across different school locations allows for the identification of how urban form and socio-economic conditions influence mobility experiences.

Significance
The paper argues that sustainable mobility transitions cannot be achieved through infrastructure and policy alone; they require a deeper understanding of how urban environments are experienced by users, particularly those whose voices are often underrepresented. By foregrounding the perspectives of primary school students, this research supports the development of more inclusive, responsive, and human-centred mobility systems. The methodology provides a practical means to operationalize theoretical concepts of embodied and relational mobility, offering a pathway to more equitable urban planning that addresses both the functional and experiential dimensions of everyday life in car-dependent cities.