A comparative case study design was used to investigate whether and how physical environmental factors influence adolescents' everyday leisure-time activities in their own neighborhoods. Participants were recruited through schools. Two schools, Begby and Gudeberg, and their neighborhoods were selected in different landscapes in Southern Norway. Begby is situated in a hilly, natural landscape dominated by indigenous vegetation and an organic road structure. Gudeberg is situated in a more open, flat area with mainly cultivated vegetation and a grid road system. While both neighborhoods are urban, their built environments differ. Gudeberg has varied housing areas and bigger industrial/commercial areas. The Begby residential areas consist mostly of single-family houses and offer more recreational areas for non-organized activities. All 9th and 10th grade classes in the schools (14-year old students) were invited to participate in the project.
Through a self-report process using paper mapping (57 participants across schools) and digital mapping (88 participants across schools) exercises, data was collected on adolescents' general use of neighborhood outdoor areas. This data included information about the roads and tracks of land students used for activities and their perceived possible dangers, such as traffic hazards, lack of lighting and 'creepy' people. Another part of the study consisted of identifying the potential affordances in the landscape -- that is, everything that the landscape has to offer in terms of opportunities for activity and general outdoor use. The self-reported “actual use” was then combined with the potential affordances in each neighborhood to generate a reading of “actualized affordance.”
Factors identified by the adolescents as barriers to outdoor activities included such safety issues as traffic, lack of lighting, and perceived personal insecurity, mainly relating to intimidating groups of people. Findings also indicated that differences in landscape characteristics result in different types of activity patterns. Two main groups of actualized affordances were identified: affordances for various activities and affordances for getting together.
In the Begby neighborhood, there were more “affordances for various activities” (meeting friends, playing football, horse-riding, skiing and shopping), and in the Gudeberg neighborhood more “affordances for getting together” (especially in the park area and the Old Town area). As articulated by the authors, the results of this study suggest that the affordance concept, combined with a landscape approach, may be useful for interpreting differences in activity patterns on a neighborhood scale and that variation in the outdoor environment is important for supporting outdoor activities.
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