We’re wedged between enormous slabs of concrete. Between facades that are tall, glossy, perfectly smooth… Even the sound of children sometimes disappears without an echo—because there’s no void left to carry that echo. There was a time when we thought what we called “the city” was the street, and what we called the street was life itself. Now the city feels more like a corridor we simply pass through; a circulation diagram that links enclosed parking garages to elevators, to security gates. So where do children fit into this diagram? At the edge of the map—off to the side, in a corner that has been “deemed suitable.” And of course on signs as well: “Children’s Park.” How easily we say it. Park. Play. Child. Three words, and we soothe our conscience.
There’s little greenery left for us. If any remains, it’s only a tiny trace at the edge of our sight. If it remains, it remains in a pot on the windowsill. Sometimes it survives as the make-up of a housing complex landscape: two strips of lawn, three stunted trees, and, in the middle, a noble olive tree… a layout that looks “well-kept,” yet feels like plastic the moment you touch it. Children touching soil, getting to know mud, being able to bend and twist a branch without snapping it, feeling the weight of stones in their hands, standing at the edge of a pit and saying “if water filled this, it would become a lake”… These have turned into luxuries of the city. And what I call a luxury is, in fact, the most basic human state: to make contact, to explore, to try, to fall, to get back up. For a child, play is exactly that. Yet we sterilized play. We packaged play. We delivered play like a product that comes with a warranty certificate (See Figure 1).
Fig. 1. Winter conditions in a children’s playground, Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu Park, Erzurum (23 March 2024)
Worse still: as we reduced green space, we narrowed play as well. Cities grew, childhood shrank. I could phrase that sentence like a poet, but this is not about poetry; it’s about a choice we repeat every single day. Huge projects, huge roads, huge interchanges. “Crazy projects” everywhere, and it’s as if we’ve all gone a little mad, becoming fanatics of capitalism… And what’s set aside for children in our cities is usually “leftover pieces.” A gap is found on the plan; into it go two swings, a slide, and a brightly colored surface… Then comes the line: “We did it for the children.” It gets marketed as a prestige project. Is the child’s right only as large as whatever is left over after our own comfort? While the city’s most expensive square meters are reserved for cars, billboards, and shopfronts, the place that falls to children is often a patch with no shade, no protection from the wind; a space that turns to ice in winter and burns in summer.
Creativity Needs Uncertainty
The presence of a park doesn’t prove that everything has been done right. As the number increases, justice doesn’t necessarily increase. In fact, sometimes as the number goes up, the content becomes even more uniform. The same play set, the same color, the same plastic… One almost wishes the system produced the children in factories too: copy-and-paste children… as if the same childhood is being lived in every neighborhood. Yet what we call play is the child rebuilding the world in their own language. A stick becomes a sword, stones become “money,” a slope is declared a “mountain,” a shrub is named a “forest.” Creativity needs a bit of uncertainty. It needs a bit of emptiness. It needs flexibility, so the child can write their own scenario. But when we build “play areas” for children, we often impose the “play scenario” as well. Slide here, swing there, spin here, get off there… And that’s it. The play ends. The child doesn’t end, but the play ends.
We can talk about this as a “design” issue. Yes, a design issue. But the real issue is where our heart and our mind choose to stand in the city. Who are we building the city for? For the car, or for the human? And when we say “human,” do we also mean the child, the most fragile form of being human? How does a child take part in the city? How does a child read the city? A city designed at an adult’s eye level turns into a huge sense of unfamiliarity in a child’s world. The curb feels too high, speed frightens, noise drowns things out, the crowd crushes.The child becomes a guest in the city. And even being a guest has a time limit. After a while, the feeling of “home” fades. That’s when the street stops being the child’s street; the street becomes only a line you pass through.
The same play set, the same color, the same plastic… Sometimes I catch myself thinking: if only this system also produced its children in factories… copy after copy… as if the same childhood is being lived in every neighborhood. But what we call play is the child rebuilding the world in their own language.
We lost the streets. And as we lost the streets, we lost play as well. That’s why we took refuge in children’s parks. We replaced the street with the park. But the park was never the same thing as the street; it only made sense together with the street. Going to the park used to be a ritual; something would happen on the way. Now the park is not a destination, but a compensation. A place we take a child just so “they can get outside.” In winter, we can’t take them anyway. In the rain, we can’t take them anyway. In the evening, we can’t take them anyway. The child becomes like a being whose life in the city is restricted according to the seasons. Yet what we call a season is, for a child, a learning ground: the sound of the wind, the scent of a flower, the texture of a leaf, the warmth of the sun. We brought the seasons indoors too. We handed the child’s relationship with nature over to the light of screens. And then we complain that “the new generation is too digital.” We gave them the digital. We took the soil away.
Defending children’s rights in the city is, in many ways, defending a right to place. The child’s right to belong to the city… And that doesn’t end with building a park. It also means safe streets a child can walk on, routes they can cycle, the possibility of going to school alone, the courage to knock on a friend’s door, a small pocket of “spatial freedom” in the neighborhood that feels like it’s theirs. If these are missing, a park on its own becomes nothing more than consolation. And if a park exists but its content is monotonous and it suffocates creativity, then the park still isn’t enough. Because a child is not only releasing energy; a child is also building meaning. Play is as much a way of thinking as it is physical movement.
When we say that today’s playgrounds kill creativity, some people think we’re exaggerating. “Come on,” they say, “a slide is a slide.” No. A slide is not just a slide. A slide can be an object, yes, but play is not the object itself. Play is the relationship built with the object. If you reduce that relationship to a single template, you narrow the child’s capacity to imagine. In places where everything is predetermined, the child becomes a “user,” not a “maker.” And if they can’t be a maker, they can’t be a maker in the city either. They can’t claim the city as their own. They can’t negotiate with it.They can’t even imagine that a place might change according to them. Yet the city, in essence, is the product of exactly this negotiation: different needs, different speeds, different ages, being able to live together.
Perhaps the heaviest issue is this: we don’t place the child at the center of urban planning; we turn the child into an “afterthought” of urban planning. And then we hang posters that say “child-friendly city.” But a child-friendly city cannot be built with symbols alone. A child-friendly city lives in the language of decisions. It shows up in the lines of the budget. It sits in the priorities of the zoning plan. It is present in the width of a sidewalk, in the placement of a crosswalk, in whether a speed limit can actually be enforced. A child-friendly city allows a child to make mistakes, because a child learns by making mistakes. We, on the other hand, lock the child indoors to bring mistakes down to zero. Yes, mistakes drop to zero; but learning drops to zero as well.
We imagine what is good. A beautiful landscape, good air, a clean environment, and humane people… But we stop at imagining. That is the part that wounds me the most. We don’t call what we imagine a “right.” We don’t call it a “demand.” We don’t call it a “struggle.” As if what is good will come to us on its own. Yet the city doesn’t become better on its own. The city leans toward where the powerful choose to stand. A child is powerless. A child doesn’t vote. A child doesn’t generate rent. A child doesn’t increase the value of a plot of land; in fact, to some, a child “produces noise.” That’s why defending children’s rights is also, in a way, speaking against “power.” It means unsettling things a little. It means being able to say, “Just because it has always been this way doesn’t mean it has to stay this way.”
As Mehmet Emin Daş, I don’t think this is only an aesthetic debate. Landscape architecture is not simply about planting trees; landscape architecture should also be a representative of spatial justice that organizes life. A child’s right in the city should be one of the most fundamental concerns of landscape. Because landscape builds what is public, and what is public is the place where a child ties themselves to the future. If the child becomes invisible in public space, then an adult who will defend the public in the future doesn’t really grow up either. A society whose childhood has been narrowed ends up narrowing its tomorrows too.
So what are we going to do? Will we talk about the number of parks again? About square meters again? Of course we have to measure; what we don’t measure can’t be managed. But alongside measurement, we also need a scale of conscience. In every neighborhood, a high-quality green space that a child can reach within five minutes… I’m choosing the word “quality” very deliberately. Quality means shade, safety, maintenance, seasonal usability, material variety, the presence of natural elements, opportunities for free play, contact with water and soil, and the pedagogical ability to manage small risks. Quality means allowing a child to build themselves. A play space shouldn’t offer only equipment; it should also offer elements that generate scenarios: loose materials (stones, sticks, pinecones), topography, small mounds, hiding corners, vegetative texture, and surfaces that change with the seasons. Spaces that are too sterile, too smooth, too “disciplined” don’t make the child safer; they make the child more fragile.
Increasing green space is not only a matter of “how many trees” either. Green space should be imagined as a network, like a living web. Parks shouldn’t be islands; they should be life corridors that connect to one another. A child should be able to walk from one place to another.
And there is also the language of playgrounds… We often give children brightly colored equipment, yet we offer them a world that is intellectually grey. A play space should invite a child’s imagination; it shouldn’t say, “Here, you can only do this.” Design should increase the child’s questions: “What is this?”, “Where does this lead?”, “How do I use this?”, “What happens if I flip it over?” These questions are the first lessons of urban literacy in a child’s mind. Yet we take urban literacy away from the child from the very beginning (See Figure 4).
Perhaps the simplest, yet most effective starting point is this: listening to the child. Learning what play is from children themselves. Letting go of the adult habit of declaring, “This is what play is.” Trying a play street in the neighborhood. Lowering traffic speed during certain hours of the week. Reconfiguring a street according to the child’s body and imagination. Play shouldn’t be confined to the park. Play should spill out into the street. Because the street is the heart of the city. A city without a heart is nothing but an order of concrete.
Sometimes I find myself thinking: when we imagine what is good… maybe what is good is actually something we remember. It existed before. Autumn existed, summer existed, orange existed. Children’s knees were scraped, but their eyes were bright. Now the knees are clean, and the eyes are tired. Somewhere along the way, we did something wrong. Can we still fix it? Maybe. But first, we need to say one sentence honestly: we, with our own hands, narrowed children’s right to the city. And what we narrowed, we will have to widen again. No one will do it in our place.
Like good bread… a good city also takes labor. A good city is a future earned honestly. A city built with children in mind is not only better for children; it is better for everyone. Because traffic slowed down for a child is safer for an older person too. Shade increased for a child is cooler for an adult as well. Greenery multiplied for a child is everyone’s breath. Defending a child’s right to the city is, in the end, defending the right to life itself.
And I don’t want to leave this right to “one day.” Because childhood doesn’t wait. Childhood can’t be postponed. Childhood is lived today. If it is taken from us today, it won’t come back tomorrow.
(All photographs were taken by the author.)
