ChildFriendly Cities Manifesto, Stipo et. al., 2004

Take time to peruse this fascinating document generated by Stipo, urban strategy advisors in the Netherlands, who created a team consisting of urban planners, designers, education designers and public space artists to study the need for Child Friendly Cities.

Aldo van Eyck would be so proud.

Excerpts:

Our vision: a young and vibrant cityscape. A city that is good for and full of children, is good for everybody...children should have a (visual) place in the cities public place.

Our vision, combined with the basic trends require a new and rich approach. An approach away from the usual short term solutions. Short term solutions like creating places to hang out for youngsters on the edge of the living zone, where they don’t bother us – but where youth mostly don’t want to be (in Dutch “hangplekdenken”). And short term solutions like the formal mini-playgrounds for smaller children (in Dutch “wipkipdenken”).

We (planners and artists) introduce a concept in which we add a layer of playful, tempting and challenging learning opportunities to public space, and to the objects that are already there anyway.

For the Urban Children Environments, we can imagine names like:
hidden inner city adventure (areas with possibilities for creative use of space in inner cities, like ‘TunFun’, using doorways, semi-public alleys, etc.)
tree house area (areas with possibilities for reconsidering the available green public space, creating possibilities for informal playing grounds)
industrial exploration (areas with possibilities for using temporarily empty buildings, made safe and ‘forbidden’ for youngsters)
parking / play field (areas with possibilities for using parking places for playing kids during office hours)
roof top freedom (areas with possibilities for creating safe playing spaces on rooftops)
kerb adventure (areas with possibilities for using street elements like kerbs and artificial holes for plays like stoop ball and play marbles)
alone close by (areas with possibilities for use of semi-public space in concepts of new collectivity where youth can play close to home but independent)
underground cool (areas with possibilities for using space underground for play grounds, new sports, urban exploration, etc.)
forbidden fruits (areas with possibilities for “facilitating” forbidden places appealing for youth to discover).