I am thrilled to share the news that I am heading to Australia in mid-October for two weeks of talks and workshops across the country.
The events start in Perth on 17th Oct, and take me to Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney before finishing in Brisbane at the end of that month. See the end of this post for a listing.
Continue readingPosted in Mobility, Outdoor play, playground, Public policy, Public space, Risk, Urban planning
Tagged Adelaide, Australia, Brisbane, Canberra, child-friendly cities, child-friendly urban planning, Melbourne, outdoor play, Perth, playground, Risk, Sydney
I am very pleased to announce not one but two online events on Weds 24 and Thurs 25 Feb 2021 to mark the publication of my book Urban Playground: How child-friendly planning and design can save cities. Each webinar features lively formats and diverse sets of expert participants, and both are free and open to anyone who signs up.
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I am delighted to share news that my forthcoming book Urban Playground: How child-friendly planning and design can save cities, is available to pre-order from the RIBA website here.
The book opens with an overview of urban planning and children, setting out why the topic matters. A working definition of child-friendly urban planning (familiar to readers of this blog) is set out in Chapter 2.
Chapter 3 looks in detail at Rotterdam, the city that has arguably devoted more time, money and energy to the approach than any other, and whose investment is grounded in hard-nosed economic priorities.
The geographical scope is expanded in Chapter 4, with case studies and precedents from a dozen or so cities around the world, from post-Communist Tirana to post-industrial Antwerp, from tropical Recife to Nordic Oslo, from historic Ghent to high-tech Vancouver (also taking in my home city of London).
Continue readingPosted in Child-friendliness, Mobility, Play spaces, playground, Public policy, Public space, Urban planning, Urbanism
Tagged Bernard van Leer Foundation, child-friendly cities, child-friendly urban planning, children's independent mobility, transport, Urban planning, Urban Playground, urbanization, Winston Churchill Memorial Trust
It is not hard to see why early childhood should be a hot topic in Tel Aviv. The city has a booming cohort of young, aspirational parents, and recent unhappy memories of economic decline and falling populations. But why it should latch onto public space – rather than childcare – is less obvious.
The key to the story is a serendipitous, opportunistic partnership with the Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF). I have visited three of BvLF’s leading Urban95 cities now (the others being Tirana and Recife). My hunch is that the initiative has had a greater catalytic effect in Tel Aviv than in any of the other cities it has worked in. I visited the city at the end of February 2020 to find out more. Continue reading
In case you missed it, the richest person on earth earlier this week announced the world’s biggest fighting fund for the climate crisis. He has not said much about how that $10 billion will be spent. So in a rare display of immodesty, I am going to offer a proposal.
Is child-friendly urban planning and design a ‘rich city’ pursuit? Or can it gain traction in the global South, where most of the world’s urban children will soon be living? I spent a week in Recife, Brazil exploring this question.
Rethinking Childhood 