Exploring Equity in City Planning for Children’s Nature Play

Nature play provides important health and developmental benefits for children. To address concerns surrounding children’s lack of nature connection, cities across the United States (U.S.) implement various strategies to increase children’s access to nature play. Although cities implement these strategies, inequities in children’s nature access, connection, and their corresponding benefits still exist. To gain a better understanding of the ways in which equitable access to nature play is conceptualized and implemented on a local level, we employ an exploratory case study of seven cities participating in the Cities Connecting Children to Nature (CCCN) initiative. A qualitative analysis utilizing cross-case synthesis of program documents and semi-structured interviews was applied. In doing so, we identified city-level strategies that fall within conditions of a Systems Change Framework and themes related to the framing of equity in these approaches. The findings from this study provide practical information and further insight into the implementation and framing of equitable nature play planning strategies.