Urban Playground

How Child-Friendly Planning and Design Can Save Cities

Tim Gill

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000222166
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

What type of cities do we want our children to grow up in? Car-dominated, noisy, polluted and devoid of nature? Or walkable, welcoming, and green? As the climate crisis and urbanisation escalate, cities urgently need to become more inclusive and sustainable. This book reveals how seeing cities through the eyes of children strengthens the case for planning and transportation policies that work for people of all ages, and for the planet. It shows how urban designers and city planners can incorporate child friendly insights and ideas into their masterplans, public spaces and streetscapes. Healthier children mean happier families, stronger communities, greener neighbourhoods, and an economy focused on the long-term. Make cities better for everyone.

Chapter 1 URBAN PLANNING AND CHILDREN

"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

— Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa¹

In the spring of 2019, a legal decision was reached on a tragic case that could become a milestone in British urban policy making. Ruling on the death of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, who died after an asthma attack six years previously, the High Court accepted new evidence of links between her symptoms and unlawful levels of air pollution near her home (she lived near the South Circular, one of London’s busiest roads).² The resulting new inquest could leave Ella Kissi-Debrah as the first person in the UK for whom air pollution is the stated cause of death.

Just a month before this court case, a more domestic story hit the UK news. It emerged that children living in subsidised housing in one London development had been physically barred from a playground that was literally outside their windows, because it had been built for the exclusive use of wealthier, home-owning families.³

As these two vignettes show, the adults who shape cities – architects, planners, developers, and also politicians and decision-makers – have a massive impact on the lives of children. Yet children are all but invisible to them. Within the UK’s planning system, for example, newts and bats are deemed more worthy of attention.⁴

The truth is that the vast majority of urban planning decisions and projects take no account of their potential impact on children, and make no effort to seek children’s views. On the rare occasions where children are involved, all too often the results are unhelpful, unilluminating and make little or no difference. Processes can be trivial, tokenistic, or idle wheels that, even if creative and enjoyable for participants, have no way of exerting any wider influence. All too often, this is down to a simple lack of respect for children’s rights or abilities. But it may arise from a failure to think through the process, or from genuine obstacles to effective engagement.⁵

At the same time, the global urban population is not only growing, it is growing younger. Today, around 55% of the global population is urban. This is predicted to rise to 60% by 2030 and 86% by 2050.⁶ By 2025, 60% of the world’s children will live in cities.⁷ In 2005, 43% of all urban dwellers were under the age of 18 – up from just 27% in 1955.⁸ And by 2030, as many as 60% of the world’s total urban population will be under 18 years old.⁹ Almost all urban population growth – and hence most of the urban children of the future – will be in the Global South.

Figure 1.1. How children’s ‘right to roam’ has shrunk over four generations

Childhood has undergone profound changes since the Second World War. In many parts of the world, just two generations ago children typically enjoyed high levels of freedom to play and get around their neighbourhood from an early age. Fast-forward a couple of generations to the children of today, and their horizons have shrunk almost to within the shadows cast by their homes.¹⁰ This shrinking of children’s horizons is nicely illustrated in Figure 1.1, showing the ‘roaming range’ of four eight-year-old children from four generations of the same family, who all grew up in the same city.¹¹

To highlight this change is not to hark back to some golden age of childhood. It is a spur to reflect on the changing nature of childhood, and to ask ourselves what this might mean for the children – and the cities – of the future.

The reasons behind the change are complex. But urban planning is undeniably a big part of the story. First and foremost, traffic growth has transformed the domains of urban childhoods. Over the last hundred years or so, traffic has emerged as a mortal threat to children who wish to get around their neighbourhoods, and a justified fear for parents who want to allow them to do this. Over the same period, the shift to car-centric neighbourhood planning has only reinforced the logic of declining childhood freedoms and indoor, sedentary lifestyles.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN URBAN PLANNING GOES WRONG FOR CHILDREN?

While children are rarely the focus of planners, they arguably suffer the most from poor planning – particularly those in low-income contexts. The environmental threats children face include traffic danger, air and noise pollution, and poor mental and physical health.¹² Their bodies are more vulnerable to pollutants of all kinds, and less well-equipped to cope with weather extremes.¹³ There are also steep social gradients for air pollution and physical inactivity. A 2018 UNICEF report stated that for children, unplanned urbanisation ‘means unhealthy and unsafe environments, limited options for walking and playing, [and] limited connectivity’.¹⁴ These environmental threats scar the lives of millions of children every year. Without action, things will only get worse as the climate crisis and environmental degradation escalate.

Traffic danger

The toll on children from road traffic injuries is devastating. It is the leading global cause of death among people aged 15–29, and the second highest cause of death for children aged 5–14 (above malaria, HIV/AIDS and many other diseases).¹⁵ In the UK, for much of the post-war period, hundreds of children every year were killed by car drivers in residential streets. The fact that the injury figures have fallen in recent decades is – at least in part – because there are fewer children out and about.¹⁶ For traffic injuries, young children in the most deprived areas are over five times more likely to be killed or seriously injured than those in the least deprived areas.¹⁷

"No child should die or be seriously injured while they walk, cycle or play. We must return our streets to our children. They have a right to feel safe on them.”

World Health Organization¹⁸

The threat from traffic is greatest in low- and middle-income countries. But it persists even in nations with exemplary reputations for public health and safety. In Sweden in 2018, for example, road traffic crashes were responsible for one in nine of all deaths of children aged between 5 and 19.¹⁹

Obesity and inactivity

Perhaps the most high-profile child health problem linked to urban planning is child obesity. It increases the risk of many life-threatening diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and some cancers. It is hard to overstate the global spread of child obesity in recent decades. In 1975 less than one child in a hundred worldwide was obese; by 2016 this had risen to nearly 6% of girls and nearly 8% of boys.²⁰ In England in 2018–19, over one-third (34%) of Year 6 children (aged 10-11) were overweight or obese, and nearly a quarter (22.5%) of those in Reception (aged 4–5). Of these, 20% of Year 6 children and 10% of Reception children were obese. There is a large and growing social class gradient in both age groups; children living in the most deprived areas are around twice as likely to be obese as those in the least deprived areas.²¹

Physically inactive children face other health problems later in life, on top of those linked to obesity. These include impaired motor development, worse bone and muscle health, poorer balance, and a greater risk of falls and fractures.²²

The issue has rightly been labelled as a global epidemic, with huge implications for public health and the public purse. For example, in the UK, the treatment of conditions associated with diabetes takes up around 9% of the total National Health Service budget. The cost – nearly £12 billion in 2012 – is set to rise significantly as the disease becomes more prevalent.²³

While child obesity has several causes, declining levels of physical activity are a big part of the picture. And children’s physical activity levels are worryingly low. Globally, over 80% of children aged 11–17 are not as active as they should be.²⁴ What is more, poor urban planning is one key causal factor in this decline.²⁵

Air pollution

Close behind traffic as an environmental threat to children (and partially caused by it) is air pollution. Around 2 billion children globally live in areas where outdoor air pollution exceeds international limits, and almost 300 million live in areas where levels are considered to be toxic. Worldwide, around 127,000 children under the age of five die each year from outdoor air pollution – around 2% of all deaths of children in this age group. Air pollution is linked with many life-changing conditions including cancers, pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases, stunted lung and brain development, airways inflamm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Supporting Partner
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: URBAN PLANNING AND CHILDREN
• Chapter 2: WHAT IS CHILD-FRIENDLY URBAN PLANNING AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
• Chapter 3: TRANSFORMING A FAILING CITY
• Chapter 4: CHILD-FRIENDLY CITIES AROUND THE WORLD
• Chapter 5: MAKING IT HAPPEN: PRINCIPLES, BUILDING BLOCKS AND TOOLS
• Chapter 6: WHAT NEXT?
• Key Reading and Resources
• Endnotes
• Index
• Image Credits