Opening neighbourhood streets for community-building and children's outdoor free play

Street play interventions have the potential to socially benefit children and all community members within a neighbourhood, which have increasingly been taken over by vehicles. The StreetPLAY pilot program implemented in the city of Toronto by Earth Day Canada is the first-of-its-kind in Canada. Surveys in the neighbourhood were analyzed to explore the social benefits, associations between demographics and perceptions, and potential for replication in similar urban neighbourhood contexts. The results from independent sample t-tests and ANOVA tests indicate community member’s age and status as a parent was statistically significant to perceptions of community connectivity following StreetPLAY programming. The findings from this research confirm the social benefits to the community and contribute to novel Canadian research on play interventions; they are a quick and inexpensive form of tactical urbanism programming to create opportunities for children’s outdoor free play and community gathering. Keywords: Outdoor play, streets as public space; tactical urbanism; community building, health and wellbeing

Opening neighbourhood streets for community-building and children's outdoor free play

Street play interventions have the potential to socially benefit children and all community members within a neighbourhood, which have increasingly been taken over by vehicles. The StreetPLAY pilot program implemented in the city of Toronto by Earth Day Canada is the first-of-its-kind in Canada. Surveys in the neighbourhood were analyzed to explore the social benefits, associations between demographics and perceptions, and potential for replication in similar urban neighbourhood contexts. The results from independent sample t-tests and ANOVA tests indicate community member’s age and status as a parent was statistically significant to perceptions of community connectivity following StreetPLAY programming. The findings from this research confirm the social benefits to the community and contribute to novel Canadian research on play interventions; they are a quick and inexpensive form of tactical urbanism programming to create opportunities for children’s outdoor free play and community gathering. Keywords: Outdoor play, streets as public space; tactical urbanism; community building, health and wellbeing

Poor people’s beliefs and the dynamics of clientelism

Why do some poor people engage in clientelism whereas others do not? Why does clientelism sometimes take traditional forms and sometimes more instrumental forms? We propose a formal model of clientelism that addresses these questions focusing primarily on the citizen’s perspective. Citizens choose between supporting broad-based redistribution or engaging in clientelism. Introducing insights from social psychology, we study the interactions between citizen beliefs and values, and their political choices. Clientelism, political inefficacy, and inequality legitimation beliefs reinforce each other leading to multiple equilibria. One of these resembles traditional clientelism, with disempowered clients that legitimize social inequalities. Community connectivity breaks this reinforcement mechanism and leads to another equilibrium where clientelism takes a modern, instrumental, form. The model delivers insights on the role of citizen beliefs for their bargaining power as well as for the persistence and transformation of clientelism. We illustrate the key mechanisms with ethnographic literature on the topic.

Mobile Phone and Practice of Youth-Adult Partnership in Malaysia

The technological aspect of human relations, in the context of youth and adult partnerships, has not yet been addressed. For this reason, using the Youth-Adult Partnership (Y-AP) framework, this book chapter examines the role of mobile phone communications in the development of six constructs — authentic decision-making, natural mentors, reciprocal activity, character, compassion, and community connectivity. In this chapter, the Y-AP constructs, in tandem with the mobile phone, act as a series of human-technology interactions that can be used by youth workers to understand the dynamics of the relationship between youth and adults. The main role of this chapter is also to provide a structure that can provide guidance and understanding of the role of Malaysian youth workers when dealing with technology as a forum for collaboration between youth and adults.

Artificial Bee Colony-Based Influence Maximization Approach for Social Coding Portal GitHub

Influence maximization is the main source of virality of any social media post/marketing activity. In recent trends, influence maximization has moved towards analytic approach instead of just being a suggestive metaphor for various social media paradigm. In this article, ego-centric approach and a bio-inspired algorithm is applied on social coding community, Github, for influence maximization. First, developers' and projects' egocentric network-based studies are conducted to find out influential developer and project based on varying social media measures. Second, artificial bee colony (ABC) bio-inspired algorithm is used to select social bees (i.e., developers set and projects set in rapid convergence towards an optimal solution to achieve influence maximization). Algorithm result ensures the best solution in terms of social community connectivity path optimization in less run time while finding most influential social bees.

The Simon/Tanger Outlet Mall Health Impact Assessment: Resulting in Active Transportation through Community Connectivity

Background: One of the goals of the Health Impact Assessment (HIA), The Simon/Tanger Outlet Mall Health Impact Assessment was to assess potential health implications in providing opportunities for active transportation to the Simon/Tanger Outlet Mall in Berkshire Township, Delaware County, Ohio by community connectivity. Methods: This case study was conducted by using the Health Impact Assessment model and incorporated community input through survey methodologies, assessment protocols, best practices, and peer-reviewed literature. Results: Many of the risk factors for chronic diseases can be traced on how communities have been built. Several pathways have been identified in the research linking built environments with travel patterns, physical activity levels, body mass index, and associated health outcomes. Residential density, land use mix, and neighborhood connectivity have all been consistently associated with multiple outcomes related to good health. By making neighborhoods more walkable, we not only can create converging health benefits, but environmental benefits and more equal access to jobs and opportunities. Emerging research on the presence of sidewalks, cycling infrastructure, street design, and building placement and site design have been linked to various health and health-related travel behavior outcomes.[1] Conclusions: Continuing modifications to the built environment provide opportunities, over time, to institute policies and practices that support the provision of more activity-conducive environments, which improve the community’s health.