Exploring perceptions of barriers and facilitators of children's play in informal urban settings: a socio-ecological perspective

As urbanisation accelerates in the Global South, children’s play and mobility needs remain marginal in planning debates despite international commitments to child-friendly cities. This study investigates the barriers and facilitators of children’s play in Philippi, Cape Town, an informal urban setting shaped by apartheid-era spatial legacies, rapid urbanisation, and persistent socio-economic inequalities. Drawing on an adapted version of Bronfenbrenner's socio-ecological framework and affordance theory, we used participatory, art-based methods to engage children directly in mapping how opportunities and constraints for play interact across home and school spaces, spaces designed for play, and spaces not designed for play. Findings reveal that children demonstrate creativity and resilience, transforming constrained spaces, derelict cars, and risky streets into sites of play, yet their mobility and safety remain precariously negotiated. Affordances were shown to be relational: the value of a playground was undone by unsafe roads, while peers and parents mediated whether opportunities became actualised. Risky play emerged as both a means through which children exercised agency and a reflection of broader patterns of African urbanism, where improvisation under conditions of volatility is at once creative, necessary, and dangerous. The study contributes by (i) extending socio-ecological models to map layered, relational affordances in under-resourced contexts; (ii) connecting children’s risky play to wider debates on mobility justice and urban precarity in the Global South; and (iii) offering principles for practice to guide local and global child-friendly planning agendas, including the need for safe and inclusive play spaces, mobility pathways, and stewardship that balances protection with agency.