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What kind of environment promotes children’s independent mobility and well-being the best? Anna Broberg, COO and co-founder of Maptionnaire, joins Mustafa Sherif for the Urbanistica Podcast to discuss how planners can make cities more suitable for children and teenagers.
Listen on your favourite platform!
How to make cities suitable for kids and teenagers?
Anna also shares a few tips for making cities more suitable for children — and anyone — all based on her PhD research and more than ten years at Maptionnaire:
1. Plan for the abundance of affordances and varied mobility possibilities that stimulate children to play, move around, search and find
2. The multifacetedness of the environment is good for kids — and for everyone, really
3. Have all age groups in mind: don’t build just for the elderly or for the youth. Create shared spaces, for example, adults should have something to do in a playground. The elements of good urban environments are not so different for different age groups
4. Don’t forget teenagers — currently, they’re often excluded from the public space, it’s not planned for their use. That’s why we have teenagers spending time at metro stations. How can city structures incorporate their desires to socialize and spend time together?
5. Inclusivity is a non-negotiable
6. One of the most important skills is engaging with different populations in planning processes, doing outreach about the project, and using these insights.
7. Meet academics at events (like ISOCARP or Urban Future.) and discuss their findings and recommendations. This collaboration is important to nurture.
Allow for unexpected things to happen! We need variable environments, the multifacetedness of the environment is what is good for kids — and for adults as well.
— Anna Broberg for Urbanistica Podcast
You’ll find in the podcast:
- What moved Anna to study children’s mobility
- How planning affects children’s active transportation and well-being, and how the situation is in Helsinki
- What is SoftGIS methodology — the antecedent of Maptionnaire — and how it inspires children’s creativity and helps scholars understand their perceptions of the built environment
- What the exchanges between academia and planning practitioners can bring for both groups
- How Finnish and Swedish planners approach digitalization of engagement
Longing for more content for your ears? Here is a list of the top 10 urban planning podcasts. Enjoy! 🎧
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