Building Cities for Children: Streets That Slow Down, Play, and Teach - Image 1 of 9© Gwangju Biennale Foundation

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https://www.archdaily.com/1032935/building-cities-for-children-streets-that-slow-down-play-and-teach

Historically, the concept of childhood as we know it today simply didn’t exist and, until the Middle Ages, children were viewed as miniature adults. According to historian Philippe Ariès, it was only from the 17th century onward that childhood began to be understood as a distinct stage of development, requiring specific care, education, and protection. However, this evolving recognition has not been consistently reflected in the design and organization of urban space.

Modern cities, shaped predominantly by economic and productivity-oriented paradigms, have been designed with the adult worker as the default user. Within this framework, children are frequently overlooked in planning processes. When included, it’s often through segregated spaces like fenced playgrounds, designated areas, or surveillance circuits that restrict more than they integrate. This leads to a fundamental question: what kind of city are we creating when we exclude those who most need to explore, learn from, and connect with their surroundings?

Building Cities for Children: Streets That Slow Down, Play, and Teach - Image 2 of 9Designing Streets for Kids. Image Courtesy of NACTO-GDCI

Designing streets and cities for children means prioritizing the most vulnerable users. From their point of view, positioned just 80 to 120 centimeters above ground, with developing sensory awareness, the urban environment appears as a tangle of textures, sounds, shapes, and colors that deeply shape how they experience the world. What seems like a functional, predictable route to an adult may feel confusing or even threatening to a child — or, if carefully designed, full of wonder.

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A paved sidewalk, for instance, becomes more than a place to walk. It can transform into a narrative surface: a game board, an exploratory trail, a space where the body learns and the imagination awakens. Every element of the street takes on new meaning. Manhole covers turn into portals, car headlights resemble abstract faces, and urban furniture invites jumping, climbing, or hiding.

Building Cities for Children: Streets That Slow Down, Play, and Teach - Image 3 of 9Designing Streets for Kids. Image © City of Tirana

The Designing Streets for Kids guide, developed by the Global Designing Cities Initiative, outlines three key principles for creating streets more welcoming to children by recognizing their unique needs and ways of experiencing public space.

  1. Safety and Health: streets should include materials and design strategies that slow down vehicles, improve air quality, and promote active movement like walking, running, or cycling.
  2. Comfort and Accessibility: streets should offer shade, resting areas, and surfaces suited to strollers, enabling both caregivers and children to move around with ease and autonomy.
  3. Engagement and Learning: spaces should be engaging and educational, incorporating color, texture, games, and interactive elements that entertain and teach, turning everyday routes into journeys of discovery.

Building Cities for Children: Streets That Slow Down, Play, and Teach - Image 8 of 9Designing Streets for Kids. Image Courtesy of NACTO-GDCIBuilding Cities for Children: Streets That Slow Down, Play, and Teach - Image 9 of 9Designing Streets for Kids. Image Courtesy of NACTO-GDCI

To achieve these goals, the guide offers practical recommendations that include both physical redesign and meaningful community engagement. A key measure is the reduction of speed limits on local streets to 30 km/h, achieved achieved through design-based approaches such as narrower travel lanes, raised pedestrian crossings, and strategically placed landscaping to influence driver behavior. Sidewalks should be wide, continuous, and accessible, ensuring safer, more comfortable journeys.

Nature plays an essential role in this process. Trees and greenery help reduce urban heat and provide shade, but they also help children form connections with the living world around them. Areas surrounding schools, daycare centers, and hospitals should be prioritized, especially during peak hours. These should be designed as spaces of care and attention. The guide also highlights the importance of including children and caregivers in the planning process, incorporating their lived experiences to build safer and more inclusive streets for everyone.

Building Cities for Children: Streets That Slow Down, Play, and Teach - Image 6 of 9“Pop-Up! Street Furniture” from LMN Architects © Trevor Dykstra

When streets are made more accessible, playful, and integrated into daily life, they help reduce stress for children and those who care for them. Movement becomes more enjoyable and safer. At the same time, rich sensory experiences and spontaneous social interactions support cognitive development, elements that are essential to childhood. These changes also encourage more active lifestyles and reduce reliance on cars, supporting healthier routines and greater independence. By transforming streets into spaces of connection and collective expression, such interventions strengthen community pride and a sense of belonging, and the result is not just a more efficient city, but one that welcomes with greater sensitivity and care.

Examples of this approach are already emerging around the world. In Barcelona, the Protegim les Escoles program has redesigned areas around schools using vibrant graphics, colorful paving, planters, and tactile surfaces. These changes reduce traffic and improve air quality, while turning the walk to school into a fun and stimulating experience. In Paris, the Rues aux Écoles initiative has transformed over 300 streets near schools since 2020. Many are now closed to motorized traffic, creating calmer zones filled with benches, plants, games, and visual cues that encourage curiosity and independence.

For the third edition of the Gwangju Folly Festival in South Korea, the architecture firm MVRDV collaborated directly with local children to create an urban installation reflecting their ideas, dreams, and perspectives. The result was a vibrant, multifaceted structure made of colorful elements that can be climbed, explored, and inhabited in many ways. The installation emerged from a participatory process, treating children’s imagination as a legitimate tool for urban design.

Building Cities for Children: Streets That Slow Down, Play, and Teach - Image 5 of 9© Gwangju Biennale Foundation

In Recife, in northeastern Brazil, the Global Designing Cities Initiative partnered with local authorities to redesign streets with a focus on traffic safety, social equity, and climate resilience. As part of the Vision Zero Challenge, the initiative addressed high rates of traffic collisions and frequent flooding, particularly in vulnerable areas. Through participatory workshops and temporary prototypes, the team developed evidence-based solutions, such as safer intersections and permeable materials to mitigate flooding. The project shows how thoughtful urban design can protect childhood, promote active mobility, and create safer, more welcoming routes to school.

Designing streets for children does not require large-scale infrastructure projects; rather, it calls for a fundamental shift in perspective. The thoughtful use of materials can turn ordinary routes into sensory, educational, and emotional experiences. Painted surfaces, wood, rubber, permeable paving, vegetation, water, and tactile elements become tools that slow down the pace of the city, invite play, and enrich everyday urban life from the earliest years. At a time when cities face challenges like climate change, housing shortages, social fragmentation, and mobility transitions, placing children at the center of urban design may be one of the most powerful — and joyful — ways to reimagine collective life with hope.

Building Cities for Children: Streets That Slow Down, Play, and Teach - Image 7 of 9The City of Fortaleza, Brazil, launched a new Cidade da Gente (City of People) project in Dragão do Mar in August 2018. Before, only 32% felt safe or very safe from motorized traffic. After Cidade da Gente, this proportion went up to 86%. Image Courtesy of NACTO-GDCI

Designing through the lens of the most vulnerable users is a foundational step toward creating healthier, more equitable, and inclusive communities. However, an equally important starting point may lie in adopting a mindset grounded in curiosity and openness, one that sets aside preconceived notions and embraces new ways of seeing. The very way children see the world.

This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: Shaping Spaces for Children, proudly presented by KOMPAN.

At KOMPAN, we believe that shaping spaces for children is a shared responsibility with lasting impact. By sponsoring this topic, we champion child-centered design rooted in research, play, and participation—creating inclusive, inspiring environments that support physical activity, well-being, and imagination, and help every child thrive in a changing world.

Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.