Investing in social housing neighborhoods through marginalized children’s voices: a framework for supportive outdoor environments

Abstract

The neighborhood environment plays a crucial role in supporting children’s well-being and holistic development. Yet, in urban contexts where planning is largely adult-centric, access to safe and inclusive spaces remains unequal, particularly for children living in poverty. In Malaysia, residents of Program Perumahan Rakyat; (PPR), a social housing initiative, face spatial constraints and limited access to child-friendly outdoor environments. The children’s voices are often excluded from designing processes, despite their reliance on local environments for daily activity and growth. Incorporating their perspectives into neighborhood design is essential to reveal children’s everyday constraints, risks, and opportunities that are often invisible within adult-centred decision-making. Therefore, this study explores the needs and preferences of children aged 7 to 12 from three PPR neighborhoods in Kuala Lumpur using a qualitative approach, including focus group discussions and children’s drawings. A total of 23 children participated. Findings led to the development of a child-informed framework with six core pillars: Maintenance, Autonomy, Variety, Inclusivity, Nature, and Sensory (MAVINS), which reflect children’s voices for an ideal outdoor neighborhood environment. The MAVINS framework offers practical guidance for urban planners, housing authorities, and policymakers to design more inclusive neighborhoods that uphold children’s rights and support their holistic development. This study contributes to the discourse on child-friendly urbanism and highlights directions for future research. By foregrounding children’s voices as legitimate design knowledge, this study offers an child-oriented framework for child-friendly urbanism and transferable insights from a Southeast Asian social housing context to international debates on inclusive neighborhood design.