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
It seems timely to share a post that child psychology academic Prof Helen Dodd and I wrote for The Conversation in March last year. With many schoolchildren at home once more, millions of parents across the UK are grappling with the added pressure of trying to home-school at the same time as holding everything else together.
“Free play can also help children make sense of things they find hard to understand.” Helen Dodd and Tim Gill
In one sense lockdown may be a little less daunting this time around, in part because of the hope offered by the vaccination programme. That said, many parents will be all too aware of the impact of school closures on their children’s education. They will be desperate to do whatever they can to keep their children from falling further behind.
Posted in Covid-19, Outdoor play, Parenting, play, playground
Tagged Covid-19, outdoor play, parenting, playground
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
Why would a mayor decide that talking about children is the best way to fix a fast-growing, underfunded, polluted city whose people have a deep distrust for politicians? I spent a week in Tirana last month trying to answer this question.
The Tirana context
First, some context. Tirana, the capital of Albania, is a city of around 1/2 million people (double that figure if you include the wider region). Physically, the city has both Eastern Bloc and Southern European qualities. The city centre is spacious and ordered, taking in wide boulevards, grand squares and buildings, and pleasant parks and green spaces.
Skanderbeg Square, Tirana city centre
This post starts by sharing an op-ed piece of mine published in the Philadelphia Enquirer last week to coincide with my trip to the city. It is followed by a postscript with reflections on the visit. I’ve also inserted images of some of the parks I saw.
Spruce Street Harbor Park
Imagine you take a time machine trip to 2037. You step out and start to explore your city. What sights and sounds would convince you that the Philly of the future was thriving?
Posted in Child-friendliness, playground, Public policy, Urban planning, Urbanism
Tagged children's in, parks, philadelphia, playground, public space, Urban planning, USA
A medical study [pdf link] has just been published that looks at hospital emergency department (ED) visits for concussions (or to use the clinical term, traumatic brain injuries or TBIs) to children arising from playground incidents in the USA.
My aim in this post is to give a summary of the study and to scrutinize some of its conclusions. I plan in a future post to discuss its wider implications.
The study used data from a national injury surveillance system to work out injury rates for each year between 2001 and 2013. It also looked at whether or not children were admitted to hospital and the playground equipment involved, amongst other factors, and it analysed the data for trends. It claims to be the first national study on playground-related TBIs since 1999.
Posted in Health, playground, Risk
Tagged ASTM, health, injury, injury prevention, playground, playground safety, public health, Risk, USA
Rethinking Childhood 