An old African proverb counsels that it takes a village to raise a child. Yet, current statistics indicate that children in high-population urban settings are not getting what they need to flourish. The outcomes are reaching a crisis point. Fortunately, teams of visionaries around the world have made it their lives’ work to help solve the challenges in urban planning that can turn the tide on children’s quality of life in cities.
According to the World Economic Forum, 70 percent of the world’s kids will live in cities by 2050. Its estimates also show that around one in seven adolescents battle mental health disorders. Diving deeply into these issues by making mental health a priority in conscious and deliberate placemaking, progressive city planners aim to mitigate the pressures of urban living through supporting rather than hindering the mental homeostasis of such children.
Several researchers have been investigating the subject for some time. One such scholar, Dr. Pamela Collins, and her team, have made an invaluable contribution toward how planners tackle the issue. “Overall research points to urban living as a risk factor for poor mental health,” she said in a speech at the University of Washington School of Public Health.
Looking at practical suggestions for how cities can facilitate improved mental health for youngsters, Dr. Collins suggests focusing efforts on diverse communities first. By getting healthcare providers, urban planners, educators, and city leadership together to invite young people into open dialogue on what their needs are, healthy links are established among all stakeholders. “Young people around the world are talking about their mental health. And they have a lot to say,” Dr. Collins continues, pointing out the importance of being receptive to their messages.
Her research has brought to light a few interesting factors at play within the urban dynamic. The young participants indicated that a lack of physical and emotional safety and connection was one of their main concerns living within densely populated urban settings. As a result, having a safe space to go where they can be heard without judgment while relaxing into who they are—places where they can connect with peers close to home—was at the top of their wish list. This core need was followed by the need for continuity—knowing that such spaces would always be there and that they would not be destroyed in favor of other developments.
Improved access to mental healthcare was another common need they brought to her attention. To achieve this, Dr. Collins advises making mental healthcare affordable and more available while actively changing the culture surrounding its adoption. She also underlines the importance of ensuring that such services are culturally aligned with the people they serve and that these services are delivered free of discrimination.
Another need children experience is for connection to nature, for safe outdoor spaces where they can have their personal space but also connect with others with a sense of security. This brings us to what Tim Gill, an independent scholar, writer, and consultant on childhood, terms the “shrinking horizons of childhood” in his book, No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society. In an interesting conversation on the subject put forth by The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), Gill shared some fascinating data on the “roaming rights” of children over four generations growing up in the same general area of Sheffield, UK. The map illustrates the region that the great-grandfather could explore in 1919—basically all the streets of Sheffield in a roughly 6-mile radius. With the coming of age of the grandfather, the range shrank consistently over the next few decades to where he could roam within only a 1-mile radius in 1950. In turn, his daughter had half a mile to explore in 1979, while the great-grandson was limited to a 300m walk to the end of the family’s road in 1997. Which raises the question of what the fifth generation would be confined to these days.
While some find Gill’s work controversial, he does ask a few very relevant questions. Focusing on the precious developmental years between starting school and becoming teenagers, Gill broadly argues that too little freedom to explore their capabilities unhindered results in severe issues in adolescence, by which time correction of problems like anxiety and depression may be more difficult to solve than anticipated.
As valid as Gill’s thesis may be, one must keep in mind why children’s roaming zones shrank in the first place. Beyond the social ills borne of overpopulation and other factors, urbanization comes with multiple inherent dangers of its own, from cities being built for cars rather than people to the lack of social cohesion caused by outdated design. In a conversation with Lior Steinberg—co-founder of Humankind, urban planner, and activist in favor of returning cities to people—Gil Penalosa, Canadian founder of Cities for Everyone and founding chair of 8 80 Cities, explores the post-WWII history that saw playgrounds for children becoming afterthoughts in the wake of growing industrialization and economic development.
Some of these, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, designed by Aldo van Eyck, Steinberg points out, were a part of the concrete urban landscape—unfenced, unapologetic, and in some contrast to the piecemeal corners of city blocks fenced off for protection from the automobile takeover of city streets that have become the norm. “The result is quite sad. We are building quite boring places that are separated from public life, and this is where children are allowed,” Steinberg said on the importance of including children of all ages in society and its daily routines and rituals.
In many ways, children in our cities live with the results of outdated city planning models driven by traffic and other concerns that had their roots in a past era. And the evidence of the damage is undeniable, rendering Penalosa’s words poignant, wise, and timely when he says, “Now is not a time for anyone to be a spectator.”
Actively involving children in the decision-making process does indeed appear to be a key factor in effecting lasting improvement. Many are working hard to be a part of this solution. One such initiative, the Smart City Expo World Congress, which will be held from November 4th to 6th this year in Barcelona, Spain, will look at how youth can proactively help transform how cities are designed—a modern way of solving a too-old and incredibly serious public health and social concern.
Returning, for a moment, to the work and thesis of Tim Gill, one could argue that the solution could be to provide children with more opportunities to learn to navigate and embrace risk as a healthy part of a normal, wholesome childhood, once very real dangers like traffic are legitimately mitigated. “More than once we have concluded that trends in education and child policy have been going in the wrong direction and we have set out to help develop new thinking and support others in advocating a change in approach,” he writes. Perhaps, with the help of progressive urban planners advocating for more humane spaces, this decades-old message will finally find public expression in healthier urban futures for the precious youngsters who hold those tomorrows.
