Deborah Rahmane

What’s life in the city like for a three-year-old?  The everyday experiences of children is a crucial perspective in urban development initiatives, it gives unique insight into the challenges faced by populations with specific needs, promotes equality, and can shape an effective framework for long-term change.

Urban95 is an initiative launched by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation, which seeks to promote the needs and requirements of early childhood as a priority for the urban agenda. Urban95 works with urban leaders, planners, designers and managers by asking: “If you could experience the city from an elevation of 95 cm—the height of a 3-year-old—what would you do differently?”

Now, the question that arises is why the needs of early childhood should be prioritized. Aren’t there many other issues that take precedence over designing public spaces for kids? How does this benefit other sectors in the society, especially the most deprived ones?

First of all, it is important to note that investing in early childhood presents a unique window of opportunity for addressing inequality, breaking the cycle of poverty, and achieving more positive outcomes with a deeper impact for the future generations. Recent research on brain development highlights the need for holistic approaches to learning and growth, recognizing the interrelation between young children’s physical and intellectual well-being, as well as their socio-emotional and cognitive growth. In this context, the urban space becomes an essential element for early childhood development, because it gives children the opportunity to recognize an outer world outside the privacy of their homes, to relate to different people from the community, and to experience a new reality which is completely dynamic and constantly changing.  

As a result, to fully benefit from future opportunities in life and to become productive members of society, children, especially up to the age of six, must be enabled to play safely and to explore the space that surrounds them; to enable this, urban practitioners must enhance a perspective whereby safe and healthy spaces are key indicators of successful design practice. 

What steps need to be taken in order to achieve these outcomes in the public space? In terms of health, one of the main issues that cities around the world face today is that of air pollution, which impacts children to a higher degree than the rest of population. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 90% of the world’s 2 billion children—98% of children under 5 living in low- and middle-income countries, including 520 million children in Africa—breathe air more polluted than the WHO’s minimum recommended standard. More than one in every four deaths of children under the age of 5 is related to environmental risks. If we aim to reduce air pollution, we need to take into consideration the thresholds suggested for children; we must make sure that everyone is taken into account, due to the fact that along with older people, they are in the most vulnerable sector of the age spectrum. 

In order to decrease air pollution levels, one key principle that should engage not just urban practitioners but also the general population is designing with pedestrians in mind and not just cars: enabling pedestrian paths and bike lines across the city, while also promoting the use of public transportation. This change of mindset will not only decrease air pollution levels, but will also create new spaces allowing for encounters among people, and will make mobility through the public space an experience in its own right and not only a means to get from one place to another. 

“It is important to note that investing in early childhood presents a unique window of opportunity for addressing inequality, breaking the cycle of poverty, and achieving more positive outcomes with a deeper impact for the future generations.”

This will have a positive effect on children’s personal development and the way they perceive their surroundings, because it would allow them to have frequent, warm, and responsive interactions with others, in a safe and stimulating physical environment. In the illustrations below, we can see the drastic difference in perceptions between a child who walks to school and a child who is driven to it: 

Source: Daniel Sauter, Urban Mobility Research, Switzerland. 

Consequently, it is important to acknowledge how this experience impacts children with regard to their future development, and how this can affect their functioning in our community and society as a whole, as noted before.

Moreover, designing for pedestrians also contributes to reducing road accidents: the street, the biggest network of public spaces in the city, is in this sense conceived as a place for people, and not for cars. Nowadays, 500 children are killed yearly in road accidents, mainly in low-income countries. As a result, if pedestrians and bicycle users become the main “owners” of the streets, then the control that cars have over the urban network will be reduced and road accidents will decrease dramatically. 

In addition to this, designing safe places for children where they can freely move ensures that other sectors of the population will be able to move freely as well: from old people to caregivers with strollers, from people with disabilities to workers who need to transport merchandise. If the public space in general and the street, in particular, is designed from the perspective of a 3-year-old—clear intersections, well-maintained areas, and clearly differentiated spaces for walking, resting, and playing—then everyone can become active users of the public space without facing risks. 

It is important to note that this change in perspective can be successfully implemented if all sectors of society, and not just professionals from the design field, become aware of this issue and the importance of designing with the needs of early childhood in mind. The public sector, caregivers and their children, community center workers, urban practitioners, architects, and urban planners, and residents, in general, all need to be involved in this process, for it to be successful. 

All in all, it can be said that designing urban spaces for early childhood is important because children are society’s future—but are also its most vulnerable members. If we design cities for children, we are making sure we are at the same time designing cities for all.