Search

Inclusive access to transport is an important determinant of health for older and disabled people. Despite transport policy increasingly focusing on wellbeing and equity outcomes, transport professionals’ understanding of and approaches to delivering accessible transport remain poorly understood. Transport professionals (N = 175) from a range of government and private sector organisations in Aotearoa/New Zealand completed a web survey. Questions covered respondents’ views on what might make inclusive access a more prominent transport policy objective; their approach to accessibility for older and disabled people in their work; and the extent to which they engage with older and disabled people in transport practice and design. Analyses suggest that inclusive access is a complex issue for transport professionals. There was a range of perspectives on why it is not more prominent in transport policy, or why outcomes are not better for older and disabled people using transport. In-person engagement between transport professionals and older and disabled people is infrequent. We argue that these findings are reflective of inclusive access being vaguely defined and poorly measured in transport. Consequently, compared with transport policies such as road safety which have clearly measurable outcomes, improved equity of mobility is reliant on design standards and transport professionals’ awareness and training. It is recommended that inclusive access in transport policy is improved with measures that link policy and design choices to outcomes, ultimately benefitting the health of all people, and that of older and disabled people in particular.

Medium-density housing (MDH) is posited as a solution to providing greater housing affordability. Yet, higher-density housing is often considered unsuitable for children. Our study investigates the...

Transport infrastructure critically influences how people live their lives, structuring mobility and mediating access to the resources central to health and wellbeing. While the links between infra...

Place-based community networks provide a resource that can be drawn on to protect and promote the wellbeing of residents. We investigate the role of social networking sites (SNSs) in community form...

The overarching aim of our research is the social and environmental sustainability of cities, with a focus on ensuring the rights and needs of the children who live in them are considered in policy and planning arenas. How do we, as researchers, work ethically and effectively with children to foreground their voices and produce robust evidence to inform policies and processes which promote their wellbeing in child-friendly cities, and in line with Sustainable Development Goals? Children have the right to be heard, and their views taken seriously, in policy and planning arenas. Conducting ethical and effective child-centred research requires balancing considerations of children’s rights to genuine participation and their rights to protection at all stages of the research process. This balance requires methodological flexibility and a situated ethical approach, where researchers and participants together determine appropriate research pathways. In this chapter, the authors reflect on ethical and methodological insights gained during a decade of conducting urban-related research with children. The various projects used different methods and provided different lessons; but common to all was an understanding of the importance of relationship-building, of supportive and engaged adults, and of methods which were respectful, age/culturally appropriate and ‘fit for purpose’. These factors are crucial to ethically enable the foregrounding of children’s voices, the collection of robust data and effective dissemination of research with children.

Professor of Māori Studies, Angus Macfarlane opened the 18th International Medical Geography Symposium (IMGS) in Queenstown, New Zealand. He offered the image of the braided river as a symbol of the potential co-learning possible between the ‘streams’ of Western science and Indigenous knowledge (Macfarlane et al., 2015). Braided rivers are a distinctive landscape feature of Te Waipounamu (New Zealand's South Island). Their scale and power have led them to be deeply significant to Ngāi Tahu, the tāngata whenua (people of the land). These mighty rivers, complex systems of constantly shifting shingle and gravel channels (Williams, 2017), have become part of Ngāi Tahu cultural identity and ūkaipō (sense of place) (SPREU, 2018). MacFarlane's He Awa Whiria model sees Western and Indigenous knowledge systems as distinct streams, able to combine through braiding, all the while retaining the uniqueness of each stream.

Graphical abstract, Highlights • School travel policy and practices predominantly focus on road traffic safety. • Support from local government was the anchor of school travel policies and practices. • Safe pedestrian crossings around school may facilitate active school travel. • Biking and public transport to school was inequitable by school socioeconomic status. • An intersectoral approach is needed to support active school travel., Active school travel contributes to children’s physical, mental and social wellbeing. The prevalence of children’s active school travel, however, has been declining in many developed countries. Gaining insights into school culture and environments in relation to school travel behaviour is crucial to inform interventions. Using a multiphase mixed methods approach, this study aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of how school policies and practices supported or inhibited school travel behaviour in Auckland, New Zealand. Data were drawn from Neighbourhoods for Active Kids, a cross-sectional study of 1085 children aged 8–13 years between February 2015 and December 2016. School representatives were interviewed regarding their policies and practices related to school travel behaviour and traffic around school, and the data were analysed thematically. An overarching theme, sub-themes and categories were contextualised for quantitative modelling using objectively measured school variables (school socioeconomic status, active school travel programme, built environments around school). Mixed effects multinomial logistic regression models were employed to determine associations between school travel mode and objectively measured child (sociodemographic characteristics, traffic safety perceptions) and school variables. Safety was the core concept of school travel policies, procedures and programmes. Significant differences in child variables, school socioeconomic status, and cycle lanes and traffic lights around school were found between children who actively travelled or used public transport to school and those driven to school. Overall, this study demonstrated the important role of school policy and procedures and the potential application of an intersectoral approach for interventions to support changes in school travel behaviour.

The perception of impairments often relies on dominant, ableist presumptions about what disability ‘looks like’. This article builds from in-depth research with 35 young people who are Deaf or blin...

There is growing recognition within housing preference studies that younger housing consumers are more amenable to compact dwellings. Yet, there remains uncertainty around the drivers of th...

IntroductionNeighbourhood environments can have significant and enduring impacts on children’s physical, psychological and social health. Environments can impact health through promoting or hindering physical activity, active travel, and healthy eating in addition to opportunities for social interaction, cognitive development, rest and relaxation. There is a paucity of research that has examined neighbourhood and health priorities, strengths and needs from the perspectives of the community, and even less that has focused on the perspectives of children within communities. The aim of this article is to describe the research protocol for a project to gather child-identified needs and strengths-based solutions for promoting child health and well-being in urban neighbourhood environments.Methods and analysisThis participatory research project is designed to partner with children in school settings in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. An abundant communities approach will be used with children to identify needs and strengths related to neighbourhoods and health. Specific methods including collaborative, creative, play-based methods such as concept-mapping activities and co-creation of final dissemination material on the key messages are described. Plans for researcher reflections, data analysis and dissemination are also detailed.Ethics and disseminationThis research has been approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee. Results will be disseminated through child and researcher co-created output, a technical report and academic journal articles. By using evidence-based child-centred approaches to knowledge generation, we anticipate the research will generate new localised insights about children’s preferences and needs for healthy neighbourhoods which will be shared with stakeholders in planning and practice. The detailed session protocol including critical researcher reflections is shared in this manuscript for application, development and refinement in future research.

Taking a socio-technical systems approach, the aim of this chapter is to describe the barriers and enablers to innovative street projects that promote wellbeing. We explore these barriers and enablers through the lens of five proposed, current, or delivered niche street re-design projects or programmes in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through a thematic analysis of project and programme information, the key themes of leadership, funding, policies and procedures, organizational norms, community and delivery tensions, and social environment emerged. These themes were used to analyse the extent to which the projects and programmes succeeded as niches and influenced the wider system. While there was varying success across the projects and programmes in influencing the wider regime and social landscape, the analysis found that niches need to be supported within government planning systems as a way of managing investment risk and testing future scenarios. The lessons provide direction for those seeking to expedite transport system change so that positive health, safety, environmental, and social outcomes can be realised.

Resilience appears within diverse literatures across the physical and social sciences, pervades social and ecological systems models and has been mobilised in the quest to change environmental practices at local and international levels. Yet common language is needed to enable cross-disciplinary conversations. We discuss a novel interdisciplinary process identifying shared terminology and developing a framework to facilitate the integration of physical and social science understandings of urban infrastructure and resilience in urban systems. Drawing on bicultural knowledge traditions unique to Aotearoa/New Zealand, we reflect on resilience as a system property having ecological, social, economic and technical dimensions that influence wellbeing and sustainability outcomes. .

Te Ara Mua - Future Streets is a controlled before-after study of neighbourhood infrastructure changes that aim to make walking and cycling safer and easier and reflect cultural identity in Māngere, Auckland, New Zealand. The project intervention was delivered through an innovative and challenging partnership between the research team and funding/delivery agencies. The purpose of this paper is to explain the underlying concepts behind Future Streets and the process of delivering an area-wide community street retrofit. Project documentation were reviewed so that the key concepts, steps and activities in project delivery could be described. Variations from planned delivery, the reasons for these variations, and broader delivery successes and challenges are also briefly discussed. A substantial community engagement process informed design objectives, which in-turn informed retrofit designs. The street modifications have been implemented and a different streetscape now exists for key routes in Māngere, giving greater affordance to walking and cycling and a more attractive urban realm. The initial response to the modifications from the community are generally positive although the loss of parking in favour of protected cycle lanes is causing concern for some. A range of difficulties in delivering the intervention included unclear governance, different researcher/practitioner cultures, unrealistic timeframes, project funding uncertainties, and regulatory barriers. Nevertheless, Future Streets is positively influencing new delivery projects and transport policy, and for next steps process improvements should be employed to make demonstration projects like Future Streets easier. Closer cooperation between the science and transport sectors are needed to test and progress transport approaches which have the potential to positively influence urban form, and the health and wellbeing of residents of towns and cities.

Children have as much “right” to the city as adult citizens, yet they lose out in the urban spatial justice stakes. Built environments prioritizing motor vehicles, a default urban planning position that sees children as belonging in child-designated areas, and safety discourses, combine to restrict children’s presence and opportunities for play, rendering them out of place in public space. In this context, children’s everyday appropriations of public spaces for their “playful imaginings” can be seen as a reclamation of their democratic right to the city: a prefigurative politics of play enacted by citizen kids. In this article, we draw on data collected with 265 children in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, to consider how children’s playful practices challenge adult hegemony of the public domain and prefigure the possibilities of a more equal, child-friendly, and playful city.

Transforming vehicle-focused street infrastructure to support a shift to active travel modes can pose a complex interdisciplinary challenge requiring innovation and collaboration between residents, researchers and transport design and policy practitioners. Te Ara Mua-Future Streets is a street redesign intervention study that aims to slow traffic, change driver behaviour and make walking and cycling easier and safer in Māngere, a suburban neighbourhood in Auckland, New Zealand. It is a collaborative project between a research team, local community and the city's transport agency. Community engagement, evidence-based design innovation and outcome evaluation are primarily the responsibility of the research team while responsibility for infrastructure funding, procurement and delivery lies with Auckland Transport. Notwithstanding a shared commitment to the project's vision of street design innovation for health gain, the collaboration and implementation process has been challenging. Drawing on analyses of interviews conducted with researchers and transport agency personnel at two time points, the paper documents the collaborative process – factors that threatened to derail the design and delivery of innovative street design and those that ultimately enabled construction of a non-business-as-usual, neighbourhood scale intervention. Differences in the professional norms and practices of transport engineers and researchers, contrasting organisational cultures and approaches to risk, and lack of organisational readiness and capacity challenged the collaboration. Sharing insights on factors that had jeopardised the collaborative processes became a catalyst for change, and, coupled with the determination of individual researchers and engineers, enabled the collaboration to move forward to complete the intervention and identify mechanisms to facilitate knowledge exchange in future transport and health, researcher-practitioner collaborations.

Disabled young people have lower levels of participation in community life than nondisabled peers across a number of domains, including sporting activities, with profound implications for health, wellbeing and life course opportunities. Playing sport is a defining feature of identity for many young people in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Participation in sporting activities provides opportunities to develop competencies, to have fun and to compete, while also providing a sense of inclusion and peer group belonging. However, despite policies promoting inclusion of disabled young people in school and club sport, ableist attitudes and practices still function to exclude individuals who do not fit able-bodied norms. Drawing on recent 'assemblage thinking' in health and cultural geography, this paper explores the material, social and affective dimensions of 'enabling' and 'disabling' sporting assemblages, drawing on interviews with 35 disabled young people (12-25 years), parents and key informants. Many reported instances of demoralising exclusion in mainstream sporting activities. Some turned to adaptive sporting codes, designed for inclusion. In our exploration of participants' embodied experiences of enabling and disabling assemblages we employ assemblage theory to examine how social, affective and material forces and processes converge to either enable or constrain participation in local sporting activities. We close with a brief assessment of the implications of our analysis for ongoing efforts to promote inclusion for disabled youth in physical activity.

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS In July 2013, New Zealand passed the Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA), which established a legal regulated market for government-approved products containing new psychoactive substances (NPS). One of the aims of the PSA was to separate the market for approved NPS products from unapproved products and illegal drugs. The aim of this study was to explore perceived health risks and social acceptability of government-approved NPS compared to unapproved NPS and other drugs. DESIGN AND METHODS About 834 police arrestees were surveyed about the health risks and social acceptability of regularly using nine drug types, including approved and unapproved synthetic cannabinoids (SC) and 'party pills' (PP) under the interim PSA regime. Statistical analyses included fitted analysis of variance and logistic ordinal regression models. RESULTS Approved SC were considered riskier to health than (natural) cannabis, alcohol, approved and unapproved PP, tobacco and ecstasy, but safer than unapproved SC and methamphetamine. Younger participants (16-29 years) were more likely than older participants (30+ years) to give approved SC a high health-risk score. Approved SC were considered less socially acceptable than alcohol, tobacco and cannabis, but more socially acceptable than methamphetamine, unapproved SC and unapproved PP. Frequent SC users were more likely to rate the social acceptability of approved legal SC higher than other drug users. Approved PP received more positive health and social acceptability scores than approved SC. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The PSA was partially successful at separating approved NPS from other drugs. High health-risk and low social acceptability scores for approved SC may reflect the absence of product testing during the interim PSA market.

This paper investigates children’s experiences of hyperdiversity in public spaces in inner city and suburban neighbourhoods in Auckland, New Zealand. As children walk through, and talk about, their everyday places of play and mobility they sense and reveal material and relational diversity in the places and people they encounter. We examine temporal and affective changes in children’s experiences of familiar places when in the presence of strangers – older youth and homeless people. We draw on walking interview and/or focus group data gathered from children aged 9–12 years living in socio economically and ethnically diverse neighbourhoods. Declining rates of physical activity and independent mobility in children and calls for urban spaces that nurture children’s agency and wellbeing provide the research context. Ideas of enabling places are adapted to explore the way constructs of otherness, inclusion and difference can be fortified through social and material expressions of hyperdiversity in the ...

Introduction. New Zealand's Psychoactive Substances Act (2013) established the world's first regulated market for ‘low risk’ psychoactive products (‘legal highs’). Under an interim PSA regime, 47 existing products were permitted to be continued to be sold. Aim. To explore issues with the implementation of regulatory systems to monitor the safety of products on the legal market under the interim Psychoactive Substances Act regime. Methods. Semi-structured interviews with 30 key stakeholders, including industry, government agency, health and drug service professionals were conducted, transcribed and analysed thematically. Results. In retrospect stakeholders questioned the decision to approve strong synthetic cannabinoid smoking products, noting their health risks because of product formulation, inconsistent manufacturing practices and smoking as the means of administration. Industry actors claimed the decision to approve synthetic cannabinoid smokeable products prevented potentially safer products from gaining market share. The system for withdrawing approved products which were subsequently found to be harmful was criticised for the poor quality of data available, limited engagement with health professionals and the slowness of product withdrawal. Many of the problems with the regime were attributed to the urgency under which the legal market under the interim Psychoactive Substances Act was established and implemented. Conclusions. The selection of ‘safer’ products, implementation of the product monitoring system, and engagement with health professionals may have benefited from more time and resources. An incremental approach to establishing the new market may have made the regulatory management of the new regime more workable. [Rychert M, Wilkins C, Witten K. Issues with monitoring the safety of psychoactive products under a legal regulated market for new psychoactive substances (‘legal highs’) in New Zealand. Drug Alcohol Rev 2017;00:000-000]

Introduction: New Zealand’s Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA) 2013 established the world’s first regulated legal market for “low risk” psychoactive products. Aim: To explore challenges in relation to regulating the retail environment and public communication of the new policy. Methods: Semi-structured interviews with 30 key informants (KI) from the industry, government, health and NGO sectors were conducted, transcribed and analysed thematically. Results: KI overwhelmingly supported the new PSA retail restrictions, but expressed frustration about how the new regulations were managed. They questioned the effectiveness of communicating the policy to the public and media, enforcement of regulations around licenced retailers, engagement with stakeholders in local communities and the speed of developing regulations for the full regime. Many KI pointed out the reduction in the number of shops concentrated demand which increased social disruption and negative media feedback. The absence of price controls...

Children&rsquo, s independent mobility is declining internationally. Parents are the gatekeepers of children&rsquo, s independent mobility. This mixed methods study investigates whether parent perceptions of the neighbourhood environment align with objective measures of the neighbourhood built environment, and how perceived and objective measures relate to parental licence for children&rsquo, s independent mobility. Parents participating in the Neighbourhood for Active Kids study (n = 940) answered an open-ended question about what would make their neighbourhoods better for their child&rsquo, s independent mobility, and reported household and child demographics. Objective measures of the neighbourhood built environment were generated using geographic information systems. Content analysis was used to classify and group parent-reported changes required to improve their neigbourhood. Parent-reported needs were then compared with objective neighbourhood built environment measures. Linear mixed modelling examined associations between parental licence for independent mobility and (1) parent neighbourhood perceptions, and (2) objectively assessed neighbourhood built environment features. Parents identified the need for safer traffic environments. No significant differences in parent reported needs were found by objectively assessed characteristics. Differences in odds of reporting needs were observed for a range of socio-demographic characteristics. Parental licence for independent mobility was only associated with a need for safer places to cycle (positive) and objectively assessed cycling infrastructure (negative) in adjusted models. Overall, the study findings indicate the importance of safer traffic environments for children&rsquo, s independent mobility.

Background Active school travel (AST) is influenced by multiple factors including built and social environments, households and individual variables. A holistic theory such as Mitra’s Behavioural Model of School Transportation (BMST) is vital to comprehensively understand these complex interrelationships. This study aimed to assess direct and indirect associations between children’s AST and environmental, household and child factors based on the BMST using structural equation modelling (SEM). Methods Data were drawn from Neighbourhoods for Active Kids (NfAK), a cross-sectional study of 1102 children aged 8–13 years (school years 5–8) and their parents from nine intermediate and 10 primary schools in Auckland, New Zealand between February 2015 and December 2016. Data were collected using an online participatory mapping survey (softGIS) with children, a computer-assisted telephone interviewing survey (CATI) with parents, and ArcGIS for built environment attributes. Based on the BMST a conceptual model of children’s school travel behaviour was specified for SEM analyses (‘hypothesised SEM’), and model modification was made to improve the model (‘modified SEM’). SEM analyses using Mplus were performed to test the hypothesised/modified SEM and to assess direct and indirect relationships among variables. Results The overall fit of the modified SEM was acceptable (N = 542; Root mean square error of approximation = 0.04, Comparative fit index = 0.94, Tucker-Lewis index = 0.92). AST was positively associated with child independent mobility, child-perceived neighbourhood safety, and parent-perceived importance of social interaction and neighbourhood social environment. Distance to school, and parental perceptions of convenience and concerns about traffic safety were negatively associated with AST. Parental fears of stranger danger were indirectly related to AST through those of traffic safety. Distance to school and child independent mobility mediated relationships between AST and child school year and sex. Conclusions Increasing children’s AST requires action on multiple fronts including communities that support independent mobility by providing child friendly social and built environments, safety from traffic, and policies that promote local schools and safe vehicle-free zones around school. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12966-019-0794-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Introduction Active school travel (AST) is important for child and environmental health. In New Zealand, AST has declined over recent decades and is relatively low compared to many other countries. A plethora of evidence related to children's AST exists, yet a holistic and context-specific understanding of factors related to the behaviour remains elusive. The aim of this study is to triangulate data from children, their parents, school representatives, and objectively-assessed environmental features to generate a model that enables a comprehensive understanding of associates of AST in New Zealand children, how these variables interrelate with each other, and where change can occur. Methods Data were drawn from recent investigations conducted with children, parents/caregivers, and school representatives, and studies examining objectively-assessed built environment characteristics in relation to AST. Findings were summarised, aggregated, and triangulated, with a focus on themes where consistent findings were observed across data sources or respondents (i.e., children, parents, school representatives, geographic information systems (GIS)-derived variables). Links between variables were investigated and integrated into the final model. Results Distance from home to school and ensuring child safety were prevailing factors associated with children's AST. School policies, practices, partnerships and culture play an integral role in supporting children's AST, and in some cases can mitigate environmental barriers. An active community culture, positive neighbourhood social relations, and links between the school and community are important elements to support AST. Conclusion This research demonstrates the complexity of AST and reinforces that interventions for increasing active travel modes need to be multi-faceted and not isolated projects. Cross-sector approaches that are sustained over time are needed to facilitate meaningful change in AST. Strategic resourcing and national targets for AST rates may be effective ways to harness commitment across sectors and ensure actions to address the needs presented are operationalised.

In this chapter, we describe the process of engaging children in the re-design of streets and greenways to support active travel in a local neighborhood. After presenting the argument for why it is important to include children in the planning process, a case study from Auckland, New Zealand is presented. Te Ara Mua—Future Streets is a neighborhood-scale controlled intervention study that aims to make it easier and safer to walk and cycle to neighborhood destinations. The human centred design approach deployed in this project meant a fundamental first step was understanding how local residents, adults and children, moved around the neighborhood, but also their aspirations for doing so differently. Children at three local schools, two primary and one secondary, took part in school-based focus groups prior to design development and their concerns and desires for change informed the design negotiation process. Pre-intervention, fears about violence and bullying from older youth and concerns about crossing roads safely limited children’s desire to walk if not accompanied by an adult. Post-intervention, after construction of the new street infrastructure, children felt safer crossing roads but their people-related fears had not abated. The focus groups provided a rich source of experiential data on children’s neighborhood mobility.

© 2018 The Authors This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the associations between active travel to school and the neighbourhood built environment in children and youth by systematically identifying and collating data from New Zealand studies. Data from five studies involving 2844 children and youth aged 6–19 years were included in the meta-analysis. Data on participant demographics and school characteristics were obtained from each study, and built environment features within 400 m and 1 km buffers around home were calculated in a consistent manner using geographic information systems. A one-step individual participant data meta-analysis was performed in SAS. Using stepwise logistic regression, age, school socioeconomic status, distance to school, dwelling density and intersection density (400 m and 1 km buffers) were taken forward from bivariate analyses into a multiple variable model. Active travel to school was positively associated with intersection density (p < 0.001) (1 km buffer) and negatively associated with school socioeconomic status (p = 0.001), dwelling density (p = 0.004) (1 km buffer), and distance to school (p < 0.001), including age, sex, ethnicity and number of siblings as fixed effects in the final model. The findings of this meta-analysis can be used to guide and support the development of policies on school location and catchment, and pedestrian and cycling infrastructure for children and youth to actively and safely travel to school.

Researchers investigating relationships between the neighbourhood environment and health first need to decide on the spatial extent of the neighbourhood they are interested in. This decision is an important and ongoing methodological challenge since different methods of defining and delineating neighbourhood boundaries can produce different results. This paper explores this issue in the context of a New Zealand-based study of the relationship between the built environment and multiple measures of physical activity. Geographic information systems were used to measure three built environment attributes&mdash, dwelling density, street connectivity, and neighbourhood destination accessibility&mdash, using seven different neighbourhood definitions (three administrative unit boundaries, and 500, 800, 1000- and 1500-m road network buffers). The associations between the three built environment measures and five measures of physical activity (mean accelerometer counts per hour, percentage time in moderate&ndash, vigorous physical activity, self-reported walking for transport, self-reported walking for recreation and self-reported walking for all purposes) were modelled for each neighbourhood definition. The combination of the choice of neighbourhood definition, built environment measure, and physical activity measure determined whether evidence of an association was detected or not. Results demonstrated that, while there was no single ideal neighbourhood definition, the built environment was most consistently associated with a range of physical activity measures when the 800-m and 1000-m road network buffers were used. For the street connectivity and destination accessibility measures, associations with physical activity were less likely to be detected at smaller scales (less than 800 m). In line with some previous research, this study demonstrated that the choice of neighbourhood definition can influence whether or not an association between the built environment and adults&rsquo, physical activity is detected or not. This study additionally highlighted the importance of the choice of built environment attribute and physical activity measures. While we identified the 800-m and 1000-m road network buffers as the neighbourhood definitions most consistently associated with a range of physical activity measures, it is important that researchers carefully consider the most appropriate type of neighbourhood definition and scale for the particular aim and participants, especially at smaller scales.

Using a novel case-study of a youth wheelchair basketball team in Auckland, New Zealand, we investigate the experiences of young people with physical disabilities in recreational sports places. We consider the 'enabling places' created by this sport, which can enhance disabled young people's wellbeing and social inclusion. Semi-structured interviews with the team's players and coordinators revealed logistical and societal challenges associated with facilitating youth-oriented sports, as well as those encountered by team members personally. They also identified physical health and social benefits experienced through involvement in wheelchair basketball. The material, social and affective dimensions of participants' experiences of wheelchair basketball elucidate the capacity for the sport, and its team members and settings, to affirm young people's identity and place-in-the-world. We conclude that youth-specific, inclusive sports generate enabling places that enhance young people's social inclusion, wellbeing and life enjoyment.