Children experience street infrastructure uniquely. However, how we design streets doesn’t always consider children’s needs. This blog spotlights two successful street interventions in Fortaleza, Brazil and Santiago, Chile, which made streets more safe, active and sociable, benefitting children and adults. The Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI) Streets for Kids team is a group of urban Read more →
Play
My last post argued that municipal champions have a crucial role in making neighbourhoods more child-friendly. This post gives four examples of how civil society agencies, alliances and partnerships – especially those at national, regional and local levels – can build momentum and action. It draws on over a quarter of a century of personal Read more →
The Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) collaborates with local community groups to transform underutilized risk-prone spaces in Kibera into a resilient and productive network of public spaces. This network of public spaces – comprising toilets, multipurpose halls, micro-enterprises, laundry facilities, play spaces, vegetable gardens, and schools – builds physical, social and economic resilience in informal communities Read more →
Child-centric urban planning is about more than just building playgrounds. Here, Kunal Kumar, Rushda Majeed and Sree Kumar Kumaraswamy outline four ways to make neighbourhoods better for very young children, from creating dedicated spaces for play to improving early childhood care centres. The 10 winning cities of the Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge were announced by the Read more →
In our latest from our Ask an Expert series, we speak with Sudeshna Chatterjee, a globally recognised urban practitioner and researcher about what it takes to enable inclusive, resilient and child-sensitive urbanisation in low-and middle-income countries. Can you describe your journey into children’s environments? I grew up in Kolkata in India, in a neighbourhood with Read more →
What are Open Streets? Why are they important for children, vulnerable groups and cities? What are the key ingredients that make Open Streets successful in cities? On 19 April 2022, Gil Peñalosa hosted an online webinar called Open Streets/CiclovĂas: Meeting as Equals – Public Health Benefits where he and Dr. Olga L. Sarmiento addressed some Read more →
My last blog made the case for child-friendly urban planning as a catalyst for healthier, more sustainable cities. It set out a two-dimensional framework highlighting the role of mobility on the one hand, and a wide choice of things to do (crucially including places to play) on the other. This blog looks in more detail Read more →
If current trends continue, the future of humankind is in cities, and urban childhoods are set to become the global norm. Yet, as they grow, few cities work well for their inhabitants. Too many – in high-, middle- and low-income countries – are polluted, car-dominated and inequitable. How might we improve the built form of cities Read more →
Ahead of this year’s International Day of Happiness, we take a look at what can make cities happy places, and what urban planners and those in power can do to bring more joy and life to cities. Cities are rarely depicted as happy places. In films, they’re either overcrowded and full of stressed people dodging Read more →
What if everything we did in our cities had to work for both an eight-year-old, and an eighty-year-old? That’s the premise behind Gil Penalosa’s work, founder and chair of 8 80 Cities, who has worked in many cities worldwide as an urban planner. Every week he invites guests to speak about cities, parks and green Read more →
We speak to Tim Gill, the founder of Rethinking Childhood and author of bestselling RIBA book Urban Playground: How Child-Friendly Planning and Design Can Save Cities, about how he thinks children should be able to access cities as part of our Ask an Expert series. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? I’m Read more →
We interviewed Pooja Rai, the co-founder and CEO of Anthill Creations, to ask her about her journey to improve the lives of children through building hundreds of playgrounds across India. “Since starting Anthill Creations seven years ago, I’ve learned that mindsets can be changed simply by showing examples,” says Pooja Rai, co-founder and CEO of Read more →