Locational analysis of child streetism in urban centers

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Against the background of the growing awareness of the need to provide empirical answers to the fundamental questions of the location of human activities, the construction of social space and the relationship between social space and physical environment, this study examines the locational implications of child streetism in selected urban centres in South-western Nigeria. METHODS: Using simple random sampling, 45 locations were drawn from the three urban centres for the purpose of data collection. The required data was collected through the instrumentation of head count and analysed using Relative Incidence of Street Children (RISC) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA). FINDINGS: The results of RISC show that Oja-oba Central Mosque, Ibadan (247), Gbagi-Dugbe Market, Ibadan and Gbagi-Dugbe Motor Park, Ibadan generated highest incidence of street children. However, the results of HCA show that the problem of child streetism is most severe in Oja-oba Market (Akure); Igbona Market (Osogbo); Oja-oba Central Mosque (Ibadan). CONCLUSION: The study concludes that incidence of street children is greatly influenced by social, economic and physical attributes of locations. The study recommends physical planning measures to combat the menace of child streetism.