A cultural-historical study of affordances for agency when children play in the city environments in Rome

Children in the Antique Rome showed their agency when playing in the city environment, in other words, the environment afforded them to play and develop their agency. Today, the city is still the same, but childhood is different. We investigated how children play and perform their agency in the city environment today, after the restrictions of Covid19. 60 play episodes were observed by naturalistic observation and analyzed qualitatively. The results show that affordances for agency realized by three distinctive ways, and it also was not performed. The results are useful for childhood and play researchers, educators and playground designers.