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As cities across Europe grow and populations flock to urban areas, inclusive urban planning becomes a requirement. Public spaces, transport systems, streets and sidewalks must be accessible not just to the able-bodied adult majority, but to the entire community, including our youngest residents. Children, often overlooked in planning decisions, experience cities in unique ways, but streets that feel safe, walkable, and welcoming for children are typically better for everyone.
Child-friendly planning, particularly when it comes to mobility networks, is emerging as a crucial strategy to build safer, more sustainable, and more liveable cities for all residents and visitors. By taking children’s specific needs into consideration, cities experience positive knock-on effects as they can promote active mobility, foster robust community life and social connections, and plan for decreased carbon emissions. As explained by Bettina Junker, CEO of UNICEF Switzerland and Lichtenstein in the 2020 handbook Planning and designing child-friendly living spaces:
“A child’s perspective often brings to light issues that adults do not recognise as such. More green spaces and more recreation and relaxation areas also give adults space to breathe. If we tackle the challenges facing children and young people posed by densification, over-protection and urbanisation, for example, then we will be taking an amazing opportunity to create more attractive spaces for everyone.”
What is child-friendly urban design?
Child-friendly urban design goes beyond standard notions of accessibility and functionality to recognise children as independent city users with their own mobility needs, sensory experiences and spatial relationships. Rather than focusing purely on safety or efficiency, child-friendly design emphasises comfort, engagement, freedom of movement and opportunities for play. Some key principles of child-friendly design include:
- Safe and accessible mobility: Children must be able to move independently without fear and with absolute minimum exposure to danger, whether on foot, by bicycle, or using public transport. Additionally, these spaces must be clean, unpolluted and give children the opportunity to orient themselves freely.
- Human-scale environments: Streets and public spaces should be scaled to children’s physical proportions and perception, reducing insurmountable barriers whenever possible. This can translate to streets with slower traffic, shorter distances to cross streets, and features like low benches or water fountains.
- Designing for active lifestyles: A walkable, bikeable city helps foster healthy habits from an early age and provides opportunities for children to interact organically. Places that encourage active lifestyles like playgrounds, parks or bicycle lanes, also encourage socialisation through spontaneous or planned encounters with peers.
- Autonomy and exploration: Good design offers spaces where children can explore without constant adult supervision, fostering confidence, healthy testing of personal limits, and resilience.
Several cities across Europe are leading by example, integrating child-friendly principles into their urban planning, particularly in mobility networks.
Paris: Rues aux Écoles and the 15-minute city
In recent years, Paris has become known for its encouragement of active mobility, liveable cities and the 15-minute city concept. Under Mayor Anne Hidalgo, the city has pushed forward an ambitious vision of a future Paris. One key pillar is the creation of Rues aux Écoles (Streets for Schools), where roads near schools are closed to car traffic during school hours or permanently redesigned for pedestrians and cyclists. The city has also worked to add vegetation and greenery around the schools, helping curb the Urban Heat Island Effect. In an interview about the initiative, David Belliard, Deputy Mayor of Paris on Public Space, Transport and Mobility explained:
“With a lot of cars in a dense city, there is a risk of serious and fatal accidents. And therefore, for several years now, we have been engaged in a movement to significantly reduce the place of cars in the city to improve air quality, reduce noise pollution, but also to improve safety. With the reduction of traffic around the schools we want to turn the area in a real oasis, both inside and outside.”
Linked to the broader concept of the 15-minute city (which Paris has also championed), in which essential services are accessible within a short walk or bike ride, these school streets enhance child safety, improve air quality, and reclaim space for play and community life.
Bratislava: starting with children
Bratislava is taking a comprehensive, multi-layered approach to becoming a more child-friendly city, largely spurred by initiatives like the annual Bratislava Summit 2025: Start with Children Conference. Taking place 13-14 May, the event focuses on learning from and collaborating with leaders in the movement to reshape cities and the mobility environment for children. Exploring topics such as better housing for families, support for caregivers, risky play, and technology in early development; there will also be two sessions devoted to urban mobility: Shared mobility for families and Cycling for better health, both moderated by EIT Urban Mobility.
Through a collaboration between the Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava, Bratislava City Hall and UNICEF, the City for Kids project is devoted to creating safer streets around schools to encourage active play and freedom for children. By engaging with students, parents and teachers, they were able to implement solutions that directly addressed the specific barriers families faced when trying to engage in active mobility. From adding bike lanes and creating safer crossings, to organising zones devoted to school drop-offs, the pilot phase impacted 7,700 children across 20 schools.
Additionally, the city’s strategic plan, Bratislava 2030, integrates child-friendly principles into major infrastructure investments, showing how such design benefits all residents, regardless of age.
Barcelona: Superblocks and FURNISH for kids
Barcelona’s Superblocks (Superilles) project, exemplifies child-centred urban transformation. By reorganising traffic to restrict cars within certain clusters of streets, Barcelona has reclaimed space for pedestrians and cyclists, while also nurturing informal community activities. Within Superblocks, streets become public spaces dotted with playgrounds, benches, and greenery – safe spaces for children to play without the danger of fast-moving cars.
In 2020, the Municipality of Barcelona launched the Protegim les escoles (Let’s Protect Schools) initiative, targeting the areas around more than 200 schools as a high priority strategy to provide the city’s schools with safe, comfortable and healthy public spaces, that act as meeting places for children, their families and neighbours. By 2030, the project aims to provide all 585 schools in Barcelona with safe and comfortable, child-friendly surroundings. In line with this, the FURNISH project emerged as an opportunity to step beyond this initial intervention.
From September to December 2021 the FURNISH project generated a series of Mobile Urban Elements, implemented in the city of Barcelona and with the support of its municipality, in front of two public schools. The project brought together a consortium of actors composed of CARNET, a local future mobility research hub, ELISVA, University of Design and Engineering of Barcelona, Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and the Barcelona City Council.
Ljubljana: a car-free urban centre
Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers an example of how large-scale car restrictions can positively transform city living for all, especially children. In 2007, the city centre was pedestrianised, closing off nearly all private motor vehicle traffic within the core. As a result, the city has a highly walkable and bikeable centre where children can move around safely and independently with minimal risk. Additionally, wide sidewalks, dedicated bike paths and numerous green public spaces encourage outdoor activity and informal social meeting spaces, key for the development of children. The city also operates a free electric minibus service, Kavalir, to assist mobility for those who need it, ensuring that accessibility remains a priority.
Designing for children, designing for everyone
Child-friendly urban planning is no longer a niche endeavor, but rather a tool to create more accessible, safe, liveable and sustainable cities. Cities and urban planners that prioritise the unique needs of children can transform streets from corridors for cars to places where residents and visitors of all ages (and abilities) gather and play. The examples of Paris, Bratislava, Barcelona and Ljubljana show that urban mobility planning with children at the core can create more vibrant, diverse and active opportunities to move through and enjoy our cities.
