<
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-26/bratislava-pushes-child-friendly-design-to-tame-sprawl-boost-livability>
"The center of Bratislava doesn’t necessarily look like a place that needs a
child-friendly makeover. A handsome city of just under half a million
straddling the River Danube, Slovakia’s capital already has a gentle,
stroller-friendly heart, full of car-free 18th century lanes and tree-lined
promenades that, on sunny afternoons, teem with kids chasing each other or
crying over dropped ice creams. Trams, buses and trolleybuses haul families to
and fro, while easily accessible woodlands on hills and river banks are visible
from many points across the city.
Still, Bratislava is launching a city-wide effort to focus its planning and
development around the needs of children, in the hopes of delivering a city
that’s greener, cleaner and safer — as well as speeding progress on contentious
issues such as reducing car access or managing suburban sprawl. “A city that’s
friendly toward children is friendly toward everyone,” Mayor Matúš Vallo told
Bloomberg CityLab.
In May, the city assumed a leadership role by staging a conference on creating
more child-friendly cities. Organized by the city in partnership with
Bratislava’s Metropolitan Institute, which was set up in 2019 to guide urban
policy, the event brought together mayors, planners, architects, designers and
activists from around the world to share expertise and inspiration on how to
make urban space more inclusive of children.
The event also marked an opportunity for Bratislava to showcase its nascent
child-friendly adaptations. So far, these consist of pedestrian-friendly street
and crosswalk redesigns, public spaces that are both better protected from
traffic and less prone to silo children into fenced-off areas, and a rotating
roster of “play streets” that allow children to temporarily appropriate parts
of the city usually reserved for cars.
But the shift needs to be partly psychological, too, says Metropolitan
Institute director Petra Marko. “It’s really important that we start the
transformation of the day-to-day streets — the public transport stops, the
places people use and experience from their doorstep to their place of
schooling, their place of work,” she said. “Of course, there are still a lot of
gaps and we are working on closing them as fast as possible, but the
transformation is not just physical. It’s also about developing a positive
relationship to our city and to the places that we use on a daily basis.”"
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-child-friendly-design-indigenous-national-parks/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
