[This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 11 December 2024]
A trio of stories for you this week! First, the Labour Party Manifesto is championing the ambition to “… raise the healthiest generation of children in our history.”
This follows an inquiry into children and young people by the House of Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee that found the built environment has a ‘critical role’ to play in the creation of child-friendly places. Who knew?
Why then is the dilution of placemaking by over-zealous highway engineers and volume housebuilders, that have ensured child-friendly places are often designed out of schemes at the first opportunity, allowed to continue?
A LAP, LEAP or NEAP in a new scheme that’s tucked away in an unobserved corner of a site to minimise noise to residents and give tick-box compliance to a local plan play policy is essentially meaningless. Meanwhile, the over-provision of car parking is often enabled and junctions and turning heads are designed to accommodate the largest and most infrequent vehicles that will visit a site.
We won’t be able to raise healthy children if they can’t walk to the LEAP because the streets are designed as roads with no continuous pavements at junctions and sweeping radii that enable drivers to take turns at speed… and then park on the pavement.
The inquiry report found that “One in five children aged 8-15 have a mental health disorder – and by the time they reach 15 years old, the UK’s children report having the lowest average life satisfaction compared with their peers in 26 other European countries. Too many of our children are unhappy, and too many are growing up in unhealthy environments that stifle their opportunities to develop well and thrive.”
This. Is. Shameful!
And this at a time when, secondly, the government has closed the Office for Place. The OfP was on track to create digital design tools to help cash and resource-strapped Councils create the very design codes that would support placemaking for children and young people. Is the government actually clear on what it wants and how to create it? Has it read the Equality Act?
And thirdly, I note that in the Nordhavn district of Copenhagen, they are now championing the five-minute city. Yowza! The design philosophy here is “… now that we have all this infrastructure for walking, biking and public transit, is there still some room for cars?” In other words, the exact opposite of how we go about placemaking here in the UK.
Do some people need to drive? Yes. Should they be prioritised at all times over everyone else? No.
I suspect there are a lot of children out and about in Nordhavn. As Jan Gehl says: “… you see many children in a city like Copenhagen… if you see a city with many children and many old people, using the city, the public spaces, then it is a sign that there is a good quality for people in that particular city.”
Enough said. You get what you invite.
#placemaking #walking #cycling #larsriemann #jangehl #nordhavn #mentalhealth