If you could experience the city from 95cm – the height of an average three-year-old – what would you change? This is the question that the Bernard van Leer Foundation’s Urban95 project seeks to answer on behalf of the children and carers who rarely have a voice in city policy, planning or design.
Working internationally with city leaders, architects, planners and engineers, the foundation’s goal is to encourage cities to create spaces where children can grow, learn, create, imagine and play across all neighbourhoods, reaching as many families as possible. Its motto is: ‘A city that works for babies, toddlers and their caregivers is a city that works for everyone.’
Tim Gill, independent scholar, consultant and global advocate for child-friendly cities, says children suffer the most from poor urban planning. ‘We have a serious problem in that badly planned, car-dominated cities and neighbourhoods that don’t have good public space, walking or cycling connections affect children the most. They are at greater risk of road danger, air pollution and the consequences of sedentary lifestyles, which are all strongly influenced by the physical fabric of the places where children are growing up. And it’s about time we realised the impact of that.’
15-MINUTE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Child-friendly urban planning and design is about shaping the physical features of neighbourhoods and cities so that children are active and visible in streets, parks, squares and other public spaces.
A measure of a city’s vibrancy is often the presence of children and families. With more than a billion children growing up in cities around the world, urban families, especially those living in poverty, benefit from more accessible services, transport and safe, clean green spaces for small children to play and families to gather.
The concept of a 15-minute neighbourhood, where residents can easily access day-to-day needs such as food, childcare, education and outdoor space within a 15-minute walk from their home, is gaining traction internationally, especially since the pandemic.
In Gill’s latest book, Urban Playground: How Child-Friendly Planning and Design Can Save Cities, he outlines how seeing the city through the eyes of a child can transform urban landscapes into more inclusive and sustainable places for everyone.
‘If we ask ourselves what child-friendly neighbourhoods or cities look and feel like, they look and feel like sustainable neighbourhoods. They are green; lots of people walk and cycle in them and they’re compact. We know that within cities our transport system is going to have to decarbonise – there’s no way around that – and it’s not enough to think that electric cars are going to be the solution,’ he says.
‘So the message to policymakers is that if you want to build up a positive vision of the way cities need to change and why this is a desirable future, then think about children.’
VAUBAN: THE ULTIMATE CHILD-FRIENDLY NEIGHBOURHOOD?
Imagine what it would be like to bring up a child in a neighbourhood where you don’t have to worry about them being run over by a car, where you know that it’s going to be easy and acceptable for your child to cycle to school or to walk to their friend’s house. It sounds idyllic, but such a place exists, in Vauban, an eco-suburb in Freiburg, Germany, which Gill has visited. ‘The number of children and adults out in the public spaces was striking and many children and adults were cycling through the area,’ he says.
‘Children were present in almost all the green spaces. There are few, if any, dedicated play spaces; for the most part, play structures and features are integrated into the wider landscape.
‘Younger children were accompanied by parents or caregivers, while older children frequently were not. I saw one parent apparently supervising a group of four children aged around two to three years who were playing in a drainage ditch. Even in spaces where children were absent, there was clear, recent evidence of their extended play, such as toys and chalk drawings.
‘Cars, either moving or parked, were notable by their absence, not surprisingly since most residences are car-free and most roads have no on-street parking and limited car access. If you do own a car, it has to be parked in one of a set of car parks around the edge of the neighbourhood.’
GOLDSMITH STREET COUNCIL HOUSING
On a smaller scale than Vauban, Goldsmith Street in Norwich won the Stirling Prize for architecture in 2019. Architects David Mikhail and Annelie Riches designed the housing with thoughts around social connections and how to encourage children to play outdoors and get to play areas without crossing roads.
Consisting of nearly 100 houses and flats laid out in traditional terraced streets, the project meets rigorous Passivhaus standards of low carbon dioxide emissions, resulting in annual energy bills that are 70 per cent lower than the average households.
A secure alleyway connects neighbours at the bottom of their garden fences and a lushly planted communal area – representing over a quarter of the site – runs through the estate. This provides space for residents to gather and children to play, fostering strong community engagement and social cohesion. There are no cars in this area so children can play freely.
UK DEVELOPMENTS
The Children’s Commissioner for England’s call for child-friendly planning in the 2020 Mean Streets report recommends that planning guidance should specifically include children’s need for ‘safe open spaces and play opportunities’ and that local authorities should consult with children, using the UNICEF child-friendly cities as a role model, and for more local authorities to adopt Play Streets, where residents open their streets for safe free play.
The London Plan, published in 2021, states that ‘education and childcare facilities should be in locations that are easily accessible on foot, by cycling or using public transport’.
It says that when preparing needs assessments, boroughs should consult with children and young people to ensure their existing and future needs are understood.
Hackney City Council is one of the London boroughs at the forefront of adopting a child-friendly approach to planning. Its pilot School Streets initiative shows a 74 per cent reduction in tailpipe emissions on the streets surrounding the 41 primary schools involved in the project. Roads inside School Streets zones are closed during the scheme’s hours of operation, but certain groups, such as residents and emergency services, are eligible for exemption. The initiative is aimed at supporting the 90 per cent of children in Hackney who walk, cycle or take public transport to school to do so safely, and encourage more parents to make the switch to healthier, more active modes of transport.
Leeds is an example of a UNICEF child-friendly city, which has consulted extensively with children on what they want to see in their local areas. Gill, who is an ambassador for the Design Council, has been working on a redesign in the city centre. He says, ‘We’re now in the early stages of taking forward the design, which involves transforming parts of City Square into a woodland glade with trees and water features set among a large pedestrianised area. It’s a big investment in the space, taking away what’s essentially a traffic thoroughfare and creating a flagship space that children and families will want to visit.’
Elsewhere in the UK, the Scottish Government pledged a £60 million investment programme into play areas as part of its last manifesto, which Gill argues ‘can’t just be to replace tired equipment with more equipment in playgrounds’. He says, ‘It also has to help to make neighbourhoods as a whole more child-friendly.’
The Welsh Government has announced £5 million in capital funding to help local authorities respond to the priorities in their play sufficiency action plans, which looks at how child-friendly play opportunities can be implemented and improved.
CHILDREN’S FUTURES
Gill likens our adult experience of lockdown to a ‘speeded-up version’ of what has been happening to children for the past 40 years. In 1971, 94 per cent of children aged seven to 11 in England were allowed to go out alone. In 2010 that had shrunk to 33 per cent.
‘The last two or three generations have seen children progressively lose more and more everyday freedom,’ he says. ‘I think the pandemic has helped to shine a light on people being more aware that this is not what a healthy childhood looks like, which explains the interest in Play Streets, Forest School and outdoor nurseries.’
He invites nursery owners to think about how they can help expand the horizons of childhood by allowing children a bit more freedom and encouraging parents to see the world through a child-friendly lens.
‘This may involve encouraging families to walk or cycle to the setting; looking at transport as a topic; creating a shared space or garden that local families can use outside setting hours; or weekly urban trips with Reggio Emilia-inspired investigations.’
FURTHER INFORMATION
- Bernard van Leer Foundation: https://bit.ly/2XND3YL
- How to build cities fit for children: https://bit.ly/3CjJrGj
- Goldsmith Street videos: https://bit.ly/317YBkf
- Mean Streets: https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/report/mean-streets
- Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods: https://bit.ly/3vQt9lZ
- UNICEF Child-Friendly Cities programme: https://bit.ly/3vMJIPw
- Welsh Play Sufficiency Model: https://bit.ly/3Em9dKB
- Making London child-friendly: Designing places and streets for children and young people: https://bit.ly/2ZnRKlO
