IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rjouxx/v16y2023i4p430-446.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Child, play, and urban space: a historical overview and a holistic paradigm for child-centered urbanism

Author

Listed:
  • Garyfallia Katsavounidou

Abstract

The relationship between children and the city is critical for both. Not only do different built environments shape different childhoods, but child-friendliness is a sign of overall city quality. Extensive research in the fields of environmental psychology and children’s geographies has highlighted the significance of urban space as children’s habitat. Cities, on the other hand, have been designed since modernity largely without taking children’s needs into account. To bridge the gap between research on children and the practice of urban design we need a holistic paradigm unifying discourses on childhood and on play with urbanism itself. I call this paradigm Spielraum. I focus on selected historical cases of child-centered practices including Red Vienna’s housing complexes, Van Eyck’s Amsterdam playgrounds, and the “Stop the Child Murder” movement in the Netherlands. Based on these and other pioneering examples, I propose four rubrics of urban design practice towards a Spielraum city.

Suggested Citation

  • Garyfallia Katsavounidou, 2023. "Child, play, and urban space: a historical overview and a holistic paradigm for child-centered urbanism," Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 430-446, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rjouxx:v:16:y:2023:i:4:p:430-446
    DOI: 10.1080/17549175.2021.2005120
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17549175.2021.2005120
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17549175.2021.2005120?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rjouxx:v:16:y:2023:i:4:p:430-446. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rjou20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.