Barnvänliga gaturum i urbana miljöer : sett från ett barnperspektiv och barnets perspektiv

Abstract: There are many places for children to be in our cities, which are planned and built for them. But in the city’s other public environments, children are marginalized due to conflicts of interest, which can create several negative effects linked to children’s development. Unlike adults, children have a small moving range and therefore their immediate environment becomes important, especially in the city. Therefore, the studies examine what a child-friendly streetscape means and what needs should be met based on practitioners’ child perspective and children’s perspectives in order to increase children’s freedom of independent mobility. The perspectives are examined on the basis of the city of Malmö. The study contributes with knowledge that must come from child-friendly environments in a sustainable urban development. It turned out that both perspectives pointed out that child-friendly streetscape must be safe to stay in, in addition, the practitioners links safety to security, which is an aspect that the children in the studies do not yet think about to the same extent. From the children’s perspective, the safe streetscape needs to be fun and exciting, for them to want to walk in it. No matter how safe the streetscape becomes according to the practitioners’ vision of a child-friendly street, it is not in itself what increases the child’s freedom of movement, even if safety is an important factor. There is a need for a varied environment with affordances that can attract children to play and exercise to increase their willingness to be out and about more. The knowledge that both perspectives are needed when the city’s public environments are planned needs to be communicated. Then everyone who works in urban development can break the current planning norm and start looking at the city’s surfaces and its function in new ways.