‘My neighbourhood would be a better community if the street was not a main road’: a multilevel perspective into children’s everyday mobilities

Given the well-documented challenges linked to car-based mobilities and their disproportionate effects on children, understanding the travel patterns of families with children continues to be a critical line of inquiry. Drawing on the qualitative responses within surveys from 296 children aged 9–18 and 84 parents living in Melbourne and Adelaide, Australia, this paper investigates children’s everyday mobilities for accessing their daily educational activities (both school and extra-curricular) through the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP). By distinguishing the three analytical levels of MLP, namely landscape, regime and niches/novelties, the paper unpacks the multidimensional factors and their differing roles in shaping the prevalence of private car use and obstacles to the transition towards sustainable mobilities. The paper concludes with a list of recommendations aimed at overcoming the barriers identified through this analysis. The recommendations are intended to integrate both insights from the empirical data and relevant literature on MLP, in order to highlight implications that are both evidence-informed and theoretically grounded.