Rivière, Clément

What is a “child-friendly city”? - 2023.


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The interest shown by many municipalities in the “Ville à hauteur d’enfants” (child-friendly city) approach sheds new light on the exercise of adult domination, drawing attention to the tendency for children to withdraw from urban public spaces. This approach invites us to think about children’s reappropriation of these spaces by questioning the place of cars, promoting autonomous mobility and free play, and helping children to really participate in the development of cities. However, we must be careful not to turn the “child-friendly city” into a territorial marketing tool, and to keep in mind the heterogeneous nature of urban childhoods, which encourages us to always think about cities from a “children-friendly” (plural) perspective.