The Play Street: A Community Treat for Psychosocial Replete

<p dir="ltr">Play Streets involve temporarily closing residential streets to through-traffic to provide a safe space for community members to play and socialise, yet there is limited research on the psychosocial impacts that Play Streets may have. This thesis contains two research studies exploring the association between Play Streets and psychosocial outcomes; a scoping review of the grey and peer-reviewed literature (Chapter 2), and a mixed-methods evaluation of a Play Streets program held by the City of Charles Sturt in Adelaide, South Australia, involving the analysis of pre-existing survey data and semi-structured interviews (Chapter 3). The scoping review in Chapter 2 has been submitted for publication and is written as it will appear in a journal, which allows for a more comprehensive report of the study presented in Chapter 3. While the scoping review found that social outcomes were more frequently reported in the included literature than psychological outcomes, Play Streets offered numerous benefits to community psychosocial health and wellbeing. These findings were extended by the mixed-methods evaluation of the City of Charles Sturt’s (CCS) Play Street program (Chapter 3) which identified that improvements to social interaction and connection were the underlying processes that gave rise to many of the psychological benefits identified by the Play Street literature. Further, the evaluation of the CCS’s Play Streets also found that coordinating Play Streets is generally not stressful, but organisers can become stressed when they feel unsupported. Support from local governments and neighbours were identified as key factors to prevent organiser stress and burnout. The implications of this thesis include informing local governments of the potential of Play Streets to advance several national and international health and wellbeing frameworks, identifying the importance of adequate organiser support for the sustainability of Play Streets, and expanding the literature on Play Streets and their psychosocial impacts.</p>