Mapping children’s experience in urban spaces

Photo by: Plan- og byningsetaten og A-lab. An outing with a group of youths in front of a mall. 

A-lab was engaged by the planning and building authority to map out how urban spaces in Oslo are expedited for children and youths. The mapping is intended to strengthen the knowledge within the different branches in the municipality. The findings from the report can be used as a reference and a building block for other works as well such as site analyses and municipal plans.

This project was very meaningful to work with. Although the voices of children are legally secured within the law, they are often an underrepresenting voice in these processes, and we wanted to delve into how this group uses urban space and their thoughts on these places.

Kids are users of all the different spaces in the city, not just the playgrounds and accommodating areas for schools and kindergartens. The mapping thus worked from the municipal’s mapping of urban spaces. This report covered a large amount of these different urban spaces.

What was mapped?

We explored the urban space’s ability, from these following themes: play and activity, area of usage, user groups, inclusive urban space, nature, physical environment and local climate, facilities, accessibility and urban space network and safety.  

Participation

Parallel with the mapping of urban space, we also engaged in participation workshops with teens from thirteen boroughs. Throughout these workshops knowledge was exchanged with a total of 67 teenagers and kids. The aim with the workshop was to get a sense of what they believed would make good urban spaces.

Key findings

The mapping and the conversations with kids showed that hard urban spaces (such as squares), are least expedited for teens, independent of geography, while softer urban spaces (such as piers) were better tailored for teens. There are more hard urban spaces in the city center and more softer ones further out from city center.

Another finding was how size matters. We found that majority of teens must go great distances in order to reach big urban spaces. These spaces, as it was discovered during conversations, are very important for them as it provides variety in activities. Thus looking at size in terms of social  capacity is something that should  be considered when working with expediting urban spaces for kids. As to answering the question of the study, “is Oslo a kid-friendly city?”, the findings from the report suggests that there work left to be done. The report is available here and has now been sent to political assessment.