“Living with Nature”: Improving Urban Green Spaces for Children’s Play

Landscape architectural practice can be influenced by national policy, guidance and funding programmes. This happened in England with respect to the design of children’s outdoor playgrounds when in 2008 the Labour government of the time, as part of its newly launched Children’s Plan and Play Strategy decided to initiate a funding programme to support the refurbishment of existing and provision of some new outdoor play spaces. Associated with this funding programme was the development of a design guide, Design for Play and a second document about risk in play (Managing Risk in Play Provision). In 2010 a general election resulted in a change of government and these policies, guidance and a range of related planning guidance notes were removed and the issue of children’s outdoor play was no longer on the national political agenda. One project which continued with the different approach to play space was “Living with Nature” where playgrounds in Sheffield in the north of England were part of a strategy for improvement. The paper will discuss the background to “Living with Nature”, some of the processes of working with the communities, examples of the product or outcome of the project, specifically improved play areas, and aspects of the legacy of the project. Hopefully, the experiences could help to provide an international view about creating child-friendly cities and communities, especially in the background of China’s 14th Five-year Plan, which makes creating child-friendly cities one of the main targets of development.