How kids can help design cities Mara Mintzer
Our society routinely makes decisions
without consulting
a quarter of the population.
We’re making choices about land use,
energy production and natural resources
without the ideas and experiences
of the full community.
The car, an inanimate object,
has more say over public policy
than this group of citizens.
Can you guess which group
I’m talking about?
It’s children.
I work in urban design,
and not surprisingly,
most cities are designed by adults.
Urban planners, architects,
developers, politicians,
and occasionally, a few loud citizens.
Rarely do you consider the voices
of a group of four-year-olds,
barely tall enough to reach the podium
at city council chambers.
But today, I want to ask you this:
What would happen if we asked children
to design our cities?
(Laughter)
Back in 2009, I was introduced
to a small group of people
who wanted to start a child-friendly
city initiative in Boulder, Colorado.
I come from a family
of civil rights advocates,
and I had spent my career until that point
working with low-income
children and families.
But I had never heard of a child-friendly
city initiative before.
So I figured its purpose would be
to address some of the frustrations
I had encountered as the parent
of a young child.
Perhaps we would advocate
for more changing tables in restaurants.
Or create indoor play spaces
for those cold and rainy days.
In other words, make the city
more hospitable to children and families.
It wasn’t until after
I committed to this project
that I realized I had it all wrong.
We wouldn’t be designing
better cities for children.
Children would be designing
better cities for themselves,
and for the rest of us, too.
Now, I bet you’re skeptical
about this idea.
And honestly, I was, too.
I mean, there must be a reason
the voting age is 18.
(Laughter)
How could children possibly
understand complex ideas
such as the affordable housing crisis
or how to develop
a transportation master plan?
And even if they had ideas,
wouldn’t they be childish?
Or unreasonable?
Do our cities really need a park
made out of candy?
(Laughter)
Or a bridge with water cannons
that fire water onto
unsuspecting kayakers below?
(Laughter)
While these concerns sound legitimate,
I realized that not including
children in city planning
was a bigger design problem.
After all, shouldn’t we include
end users in the design process?
If we’re building a park
to be largely used by kids,
then kids should have a say
in the park’s design.
So with all of this in mind,
we formed a program
called “Growing Up Boulder,”
and my job is to work with children
ages zero through 18
to come up with innovative
city-design solutions.
How do we do this, you might ask?
Let me give you a real example.
In 2012, the city of Boulder decided
to redesign a large downtown park,
known as the Civic Area.
This space is bounded
by a farmers' market on one end,
Boulder Public Library on the other end,
and by Boulder Creek,
which runs through the middle.
The space needed a new design
to better handle the creek’s
inevitable flash floods,
restore a sense of safety to the area
and support an expanded farmers' market.
So from 2012 through 2014,
we engaged more than 200
young people in the process,
ranging from preschool
through high school students.
Now, how did we do this?
Let me explain.
First, we visited children
in their classrooms
and presented the project:
what it was, why their ideas mattered
and what would happen
with their recommendations.
Before we could influence them,
we asked children to record their ideas,
based on their own lived experiences.
Then we asked children to go
on a field trip with us,
to document what they liked
and didn’t like about the space,
using photography.
Through green picture frames,
students highlighted
what they liked about the space,
such as college students,
tubing down the creek.
(Laughter)
Then they flipped those frames over
and used the red side
to highlight things
they didn’t like, such as trash.
Our sixth-grade students
studied the Civic Area
by researching sites
with similar challenges
from around the world.
Then, we invited the kids
to combine their original ideas
with their new inspiration,
to synthesize solutions
to improve the space.
Each class invited adult planners,
city council and community members
into the classroom, to share and discuss
their recommendations.
Boulder’s senior urban planners
stepped over blocks and stuffed animals
to explore preschool students' full-size
classroom recreation of the Civic Area.
Adult planners marveled
at the students' ideas
as they shared a park
constructed out of a jelly bracelet.
It was supposed to be an ice-skating rink.
And then, public art constructed
from animal-shaped plastic beads.
And while this may seem ridiculous,
it isn’t so different from the models
that architects create.
Now, fast-forward four years,
and I am pleased to report
that many of the children’s ideas
are being implemented in the Civic Area.
For example,
there will be improved
access to Boulder Creek,
so kids can play safely in the water.
Lighting in previously dark underpasses,
so high school students can walk home
safely after school at night.
And separated biking and walking paths,
so speeding bikers won’t hit young people
as they stroll by the creek.
My daughter and I even skated on a new,
child-requested ice-skating rink,
last winter.
So, were all of the kids' ideas
implemented at the Civic Area?
Of course not.
Democracy is a messy process.
But just as a reasonable
and well-informed adult
does not expect
all of her ideas to be utilized,
neither does a nine-year-old.
We’ve now been using
this process for eight years,
and along the way, we’ve found
some incredible benefits
to designing cities with children.
First of all, kids think
differently from adults.
And that’s a good thing.
Adults think about constraints,
how much time will a project take,
how much money will it cost
and how dangerous will it be.
In other words,
“Are we going to get sued?”
(Laughter)
It’s not that these
constraints aren’t real,
but if we kill off ideas
from the beginning,
it limits our creativity
and dampens the design process.
Kids, on the other hand,
think about possibilities.
For kids, the sky is the limit.
Literally.
When we worked with middle-school students
to design teen-friendly parks,
they drew pictures
of skydiving, hang gliding,
(Laughter)
and jumping from trampolines
into giant foam pits.
(Laughter)
Some of this sounds far-fetched,
but the commonalities among the activities
revealed an important story.
Our adolescents wanted
thrill-seeking opportunities.
Which makes perfect sense,
given their developmental stage in life.
So our task, as connectors
between inspiration and reality,
was to point them towards
activities and equipment
that actually could be
installed in a park.
This is exactly what parks
in Australia have done,
with their extensive zip lines
and their 30-foot-tall climbing towers.
When kids dream up a space,
they almost always include fun, play
and movement in their designs.
Now, this is not what adults prioritize.
But research shows that fun,
play and movement
are exactly what adults need
to stay healthy, too.
(Laughter)
Who wouldn’t enjoy a tree house
containing a little lending library
and comfortable
beanbag chairs for reading?
Or what about a public art display
that sprays paint onto a canvas
each time you walk up the steps?
In addition to fun and play,
children value beauty in their designs.
When tasked with designing
dense affordable housing,
kids rejected the blocks of identical,
beige condominiums
so many developers favor,
and instead, put bright colors
on everything,
from housing to play equipment.
They placed flowers
between biking and walking paths,
and placed benches along the creek,
so kids could hang out with their friends
and enjoy the tranquility of the water.
Which leads me to nature.
Children have a biological need
to connect with nature,
and this shows up in their designs.
They want nature
right in their backyards,
not four blocks away.
So they design communities
that incorporate water,
fruit trees, flowers and animals
into their common spaces on site.
For better or worse, this is logical,
because five-year-olds today
are rarely allowed to walk four blocks
to access a park by themselves.
And nature in one’s immediate
environment benefits everyone,
since it has been shown
to have restorative effects for all ages.
It may come as a surprise,
but we even take into consideration
the desires or our littlest citizens,
babies and toddlers.
From toddlers, we learned
that the joy of walking
comes from what you discover
along the way.
When they evaluated the walkability
of Boulder’s 19th Street corridor,
toddlers spent long stretches
exploring leaves in a ditch
and sparkles in the sidewalk.
They reminded us to slow down
and design a path where the journey
is as important as the destination.
In addition to trees and plants,
kids almost always include animals
in their designs.
Insects, birds and small mammals
figure prominently
into children’s pictures.
Whether it’s because
they’re closer to the ground
and can see the grasshoppers
better than we can,
or simply because they have a greater
sense of empathy for other beings,
children almost always include
non-human species in their ideal worlds.
Across the board, children are inclusive
in their city planning.
They design for everyone,
from their grandmother in a wheelchair
to the homeless woman
they see sleeping in the park.
Children design for living creatures,
not for cars, egos or corporations.
The last and perhaps most
compelling discovery we made
is that a city friendly to children
is a city friendly to all.
Bogota, Colombia mayor Enrique Peñalosa
observed that children
are a kind of indicator species.
If we can build a successful
city for children,
we will have a successful
city for all people.
Think about it.
Kids can’t just hop in a car
and drive to the store.
And most kids can’t afford
an expensive lunch at the nearby cafe.
So if we build cities
that take into the consideration
their needs for alternative
forms of transportation
and for cheaper food venues,
we meet the needs
of many other populations, too.
The more frequent
and more affordable bus service,
so desired by our youth,
also supports the elderly
who wish to live independently,
after they can no longer drive cars.
Teens' recommendations for smooth,
protected walking and skateboarding paths
also support the person in a wheelchair
who wishes to go smoothly down the path,
or the parent pushing a new stroller.
So to me, all of this
has revealed something important.
An important blind spot.
If we aren’t including children
in our planning,
who else aren’t we including?
Are we listening
to people of color, immigrants,
the elderly and people with disabilities,
or with reduced incomes?
What innovative design solutions
are we overlooking,
because we aren’t hearing the voices
of the full community?
We can’t possibly know
the needs and wants of other people
without asking.
That goes for kids and for everyone else.
So, adults, let’s stop thinking
of our children as future citizens
and instead, start valuing them
for the citizens they are today.
Because our children
are designing the cities
that will make us happier and healthier.
Cities filled with nature, play, movement,
social connection and beauty.
Children are designing the cities
we all want to live in.
Thank you.
(Applause)