Why We Should Design Urban Spaces with Children at the Heart

What if our cities were built not just for adults but with the needs of children at their heart, creating spaces where they can grow, learn, and play safely? Today’s blog post will discuss how and why we should be designing for the needs of children in our cities.

Of the world’s children’s population, 60% are predicted to live in cities by 2025 (Christensen and O’Brien, 2003). Bishop and Corkery (2017) highlight that in public policy, the needs of children are often overlooked, and according to Wood (2016), this is because children do not vote, contribute to society, or pay taxes. This, however, does not mean that children are not a valuable part of society.

So what is the importance of children in a city? And why bother designing for them?

Tonucci and Rissotto (2001) state that “It is shown how children’s participation experiences can lead to the acquisition of a fresh sensitivity and competence by city administrators and technicians. […] These proposals confirm the children’s capacity to identify the city’s problems as they emerge and to propose solutions that are often innovative or useful for all members of the population.”

Brown et al. (2019) paraphrase the Mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa, who states that a friendly and healthy city for children is a friendly and healthy city for all. Children are the most impressionable and fragile part of our society; if we are adequately looking after our children in the city, this should take care of the majority of the city, too. After all, the children of today are our cities’ futures, and to ensure a successful future, we need our children to be successful.

Designing cities for children isn’t just about adding parks. It’s about shaping environments where their imaginations can roam freely, and their futures can thrive.

How do we do this?

I have concluded through research that the three most important factors for children in cities are access to play spaces, green spaces, and ease of independent and safe mobility.

Play

Although play is fundamentally important for children’s cognitive and physical development and well-being (Kemple et al., 2016), designers cannot simply add parks and assume this is adequate design for children. Lack of play will have negative impacts on development, eyesight, allergies, and a lower level of physical activity (Brown et al., 2019). This is why interactive cities are critical for child engagement. This does not have to be a conventional play park but some infrastructure that encourages children to run, jump, climb, and balance. These activities will greatly assist with motor skills and development and, more importantly, understanding risk (Kemple et al., 2016). Understanding risk is a skill that all children must learn. Although, as designers, we can make cities as safe as possible, it is not enough to protect the children of the city; we must also educate them to look after themselves.

Green Space

Safe and healthy space usually comes hand-in-hand with environments with green space. The openness of green space in cities supports the needs of children, such as outdoor play areas and connection to nature. Brown et al. (2019) write that children’s rights are universal and that this means that children’s well-being is a universal concern. They also highlight that children who don’t have as much exposure to nature are more likely to have issues with behaviour and interacting with peers right into their adult lives. Louv (2005, cited in Brown et al. (2019)) describes this as “nature deficit disorder, which is the outcome of an individual disconnection with nature.

Mobility

Freedom of movement, in this sense, can be thought of in two senses. First, a lot of city spaces these days are over-specified. This kind of design can really contain a child’s imagination and restrict them from using spaces as they want, rather than how it is intended. Freedom of movement is also important to children so they can feel safe and navigate their cities with minimal supervision. Although this is currently ambitious, if children can roam themselves, their cognitive, motor, and social skills will develop more quickly. The main way we can get closer to this goal is by improving safety in cities. In the 1990s, Terry Kahn developed the popsicle test to gauge how accessible a city is for children. The test was a hypothetical question: “Would you, as a parent of a 8 year old, let your child go to the shop on their own to buy a popsicle, and could they get it back home before it melted?”.

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