Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods

Abstract

Review: Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods 78 Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods ARUP’s Foresight, Research and Innovation and Integrated City Planning Teams (December 2017) London, 71 pages Available from https://www.arup.com/perspectives/cities-alive-urban-childhood In 1996, the second UN Conference on Human Settlements, widely known as Habitat II, addressed the pressing global need, in an increasingly urbanized world, for towns and cities to place sustainable, livable environments that support universal human rights at the heart of their plans. The Istanbul Declaration (United Nations, 1996), which established the Habitat II agenda, included the recognition that this endeavor must pay particular attention “to the needs of… children and youth for safe, healthy and secure living conditions”; it resolved to “ensure… the effective participation of youth in political, economic and social life.” More than this, as UNICEF (2018) reports, the conference declared that the wellbeing of children is the ultimate indicator of a healthy habitat, a democratic society and of good governance. This idea, that “children are a kind of indicator species,” was later famously taken up by Enrique Peñalosa, mayor of the Colombian capital, Bogotá, who added: “If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.” Peñalosa’s words are frequently cited at gatherings of the child-friendly city (CFC) movement that has developed around the Habitat II agend, and they now can open this succinct, handsome publication from the planning and design specialists, Arup. Although presenting itself as a “report,” the document might be more accurately described as a short guide. It breaks the innately complex, crosscutting issues of its subject matter—children’s rights, urban design and sustainable development—into manageable headings and accessible lists: two “key concepts” (“everyday freedoms” and “children’s infrastructure”); seven “key messages” (e.g. “Decision makers should be opportunistic and strategic, and integrate child-friendly thinking into all aspects of city making”; five “core challenges” (from “traffic and pollution” to “isolation and intolerance”); seven broad “benefits” (from “health and wellbeing” to being a “catalyst for improving cities”); and 14 “recommended interventions” (e.g., “Intergenerational spaces,” “Pedestrian priority,” “Neighborhood mapping”). The main section is illustrated with neat, thumbnail case studies (beginning, inevitably, with Bogotá), helpfully located on a map of the world, and the whole document is liberally garnished with beautiful photographs of children, sharp infographics and a welter of carefully referenced (though not always accurately represented1 ) facts. 1 For example, “…30% more children (in developing countries are) overweight compared to developed countries” (p. 11) is clearly a mistake; the figure refers to the rate of increase. Book Review: Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods 79 Although the document aims its conclusions at “policy makers and city leaders, developers and investors, and built-environment professionals,” many other practitioners may also find it useful as a handy summary of some of the main issues, a resource from which to discover further reading, and—being highly accessible in both style and format—an effective campaign tool. Advocates seeking to engage busy policymakers in a more serious consideration of children’s needs in the planning process could do worse than pull out some of the key points here. Indeed, presenting the document as a whole—with its well-marshalled facts and concise summation of challenges and solutions—may help to make many a policy case for adopting a more child-friendly approach to urban planning. This is the document’s stated purpose, and, with Arup saying it is already their most downloaded publication ever, in this it must be judged a success. There are nevertheless a number of interconnected criticisms that can be made of this report, touching on issues for the CFC movement in general. The first is that it gives the impression that children’s well-being and the safeguarding of their rights is primarily a matter of design, as though the built environment were the main determining factor in children’s quality of life. Arup are planning and design specialists, and so perhaps this perspective is inevitable. They may also argue that the CFC idea was conceived to focus attention on the importance of the built environment for...