Tim Gill on Building Child Friendly Cities

About this episode

A city that is good for children, is good for everyone. A concept that has begun to gain more traction as cities look to new urbanism principles to apply to their respective cities. It’s one Tim Gill, author of Urban Playground: How Child-Friendly Planning and Design Can Save Cities, has been championing since the nineties. Based in the UK, he has laid a foundation for a career in research on the topic and was the former director of Play England, a children’s play council. In Tim’s book, he asks questions like “what type of cities do we want our children to grow up in? Car-dominated, noisy, polluted, and devoid of nature? Or walkable, welcoming, and green?” He emphasizes that “as the climate crisis and urbanisation escalate, cities urgently need to become more inclusive and sustainable”. His book helps us “look at cities through the eyes of children while strengthening the case for planning and transportation policies that work for people of all ages, and for the planet”. When reviewing Tim’s book ahead of this episode, we found ourselves projecting my own childhoods onto much of what he shared in his work—an experience I think anyone might share upon reading. He invites us to