Hosted in Rotterdam, The Child in the City Seminar brought together 185 experts from 23 international contexts including city planners, design professionals, educationalists, artists, academics all motivated by the same objective: making their cities better places for children to grow up.

Here, Director of Practice Helen Taylor shares insight on some of the key topics discussed at the event.

Child in the City was founded in 2002, directed at ‘the creation of child friendly cities’. The foundation connects professionals around the world and organises seminars and conferences including the most recent in Rotterdam on the theme of ‘Keep on Moving’. In the light of recent climate change related emergencies around the globe, often affecting the poorest communities, the conference started with some sober thoughts-

What if the outdoors is not a liveable space anymore?

Barcelona Council shared their journey of transforming schoolyards over the past four years since 2020. Their intent to mitigate climate change in urban environments, improve physical spaces and relationships between children and positively impact the community around playgrounds. The 187 public schools in Barcelona are mostly hard surfaces and lack space and equipment. Heat and pollution are significant issues, but children spend thousands of hours in them every year. By transforming schools into climate shelters and making them part of the city’s recreational infrastructure, they are harnessing their potential to promote health and wellbeing for the whole community. The team warned that success needs the participation of the entire education community and co-creation processes were set out in a published framework and criteria. Physical transformation is not sufficient alone- it needs a parallel education driven project to be effective. Increased maintenance and shared responsibility are required but taking action in schoolyards is key for a sustainable climate resilient city. 

Christian Reutlinger, Professor of City and Health at University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), reflected on his research on the relationship between children and cities and how a “Bad city” has a negative impact on children’s lives and health. Design for, and ways of thinking about, childhood in the city is social, legal, cultural and normative. In the early days of industrialisation, playgrounds were conceived as a “place of refuge” from unhealthy living conditions. An opportunity to be physically active through playing – and a means to make employable adults!

Children born into these evolving urban environments played in the street until traffic safety drove the playground as a retreat. While the original “Volkspark” (or public park) movement envisaged green spaces, the reality delivered was often practical and functional “metal jungles”, but living in cities provided children with the opportunity to develop skills and promoted independence.

As domestic space has improved in quality, children increasingly spend time there or in “Institutionalised” leisure spaces such as indoor play centres that reduce opportunities for self-determination. While the increase in the use of private space for play reduces social context and exercise, in parallel external social and spatial environments are left empty. Children’s leisure time is being controlled and contained in “a repository to keep children away from adult life and the city”. Even adventure playgrounds have developed to “allow” children to take risks. 

The negative impact of traffic on play was emphasised by Nadine Junghanns of UNICEF Switzerland. 
Traffic means children spend less and less time unsupervised outdoors and there is a direct correlation between traffic and social inequality. Busy traffic streets are not desirable places to live. Street greening is really important in making streets appealing to everyone- including children and elderly people who are particularly sensitive to extreme heat. 

School streets or play streets have sprung up as a temporary way of addressing children’s need for safe clean space to play but, as with the transformed schoolyards in Barcelona, they need facilities and facilitation to work effectively. They also need to be in a location where there is demand, spatially and temporally. In Esch, Luxembourg, one street per week was selected for closure over the summer months and a shipping container of play equipment was delivered to the street with animators responsible for supporting play activities during the closure period. While the initiative had a positive temporary impact on the city streets, the play collaborators have become longer term partners that can build relationships with families and ensure the initiative meets their needs. 

The principle that design alone is not effective was echoed by Renet Korthals Altes, an Architect and primary school teacher, who advocated for co-design, co-construction, and co-maintenance. In collaboration with a network of architects around the world, their joint research on universal design principles embedded in local culture, has led to a draft manifesto for space to play, encouraging open ended design and play affordances as part of our normal environment. The need to give moveable objects in play areas that give children autonomy to create and use their imaginations was a strong theme across the conference, sometimes giving parents and teachers a completely new perception of their children’s capabilities. 

“In the hands of children, objects transform all the time. They bring their imagination and resourcefulness”

In Harris County Texas USA, the Low-income Investment Fund (LIIF), has focussed on the climate risk to childcare facilities where the highest risk neighbourhoods are often the growing ones as they are most affordable to families, and the needs of children are a very good lever for action on climate change. Young people themselves are growing up through an increasing number of climate events and are concerned with mitigation and emergency preparedness. 

The focus of Mark Wales PHD in landscape planning and environmental psychology was on the positive relationship between time spent outdoors and wellbeing in an era when the indoor environment has more and more pull on us. Our relationship with the outdoor environment is changing. Children spoke about the joy of “really being with others”, just spending time together outside when their experience of remote communication means you don’t know if someone is even really listening. Moving makes them feel better. They feel good in the moment, they develop independence, mastery and capacities and a sense of achievement for themselves. 

If you were born in the twentieth century and you close your eyes and imagine what you were doing age five, many of us will picture being outside, exploring, and often without parents or even adults nearby. Children born in the twenty first century do not have those same memories and therefore the value we place on outdoor play and natural environments is at risk of being lost. Spaces for play should be places where children can develop as people, physically mentally socially, and doing that outdoors is critical to the future development of our children and the planet. 

It’s hard to say no to having cities that are good for children.

Child in the City

Scott Brownrigg have been appointed to carry out research for Natural England on the benefits and opportunities of community access to school and college grounds.