The Impact of City and Suburban Residential Location on Children's Mobility, Relationship to Urban Environment, and Parental Education Strategies.: A Comparative Case Study between Paris and a Suburban New-Town.

This communication aims at better understanding the links between mobility and urban form through an analysis of family lifestyles, with special regard to children's mobility and parental educational strategies. The latter constitutes a mean to examine lifestyles, particularly those who have chosen to settle in a house in a suburban neighborhood. Indeed, suburbs, as environments chosen for raising children (but also because of the associated quality of life and of increasing price land in inner-city neighborhoods), are characterized by a specific urban form that implies long distances to urban services and amenities which increasingly constrains the mobility of all family members, women often becoming the “family chauffeur” (Dowling, 2000). This study analyzes differences between children's mobility (and associated parents' mobility) in two contrasted French urban contexts: a traditional neighborhood in the center of Paris and a suburban neighborhood located in a southwest suburb of Paris, a new-town (ville nouvelle) built in the seventies. This residential area has a restricted local center with only a few stores. Housing is dominated by single-family detached houses. As for most new-towns, an important role is assigned to recreation spaces and playgrounds as well as to road infrastructures with functional zoning serving automobility. The second neighborhood was built in the Haussmanian tradition and is located in Paris 11th borough. It is characterized by dense vehicular traffic, large avenues, intense commercial activity and few playing fields (no play grounds for children). The data were collected from a qualitative survey of 53 children (mean age: 11) and their parents, around two major themes: 1) spatial representations (the cognitive representation of a daily trip by children and the evaluation of the environment by the parents with regards to safety and children's well-being); 2) children's mobility and its conditions. Results show the influence of the residential location and its associated urban form on parental attitudes towards children mobility, especially as it related to the construction of children's first relationship to the city. In the suburban context, teenagers' autonomy tends to be acquired through a logic of territories corresponding to their needs for fixity, socialization and visibility while in the city, it is rather a logic of diversity where their spatial courses and promenades rule their learning of mobility. (References: Dowling, R. (2000). Cultures of mothering and car use in suburban Sydney: a preliminary investigation. Geoforum, 31, 345-353.