#citychat: Designing Child-centered Public Space

On Thursday, January 28th at 4:00pm Eastern Time (3:00pm Central Time, 1:00 pm Pacific Time) MIT CoLab (@MITCoLab) will host a Twitter chat on child-friendly public space and urban placemaking.

Mmofra Place Park in Accra, Ghana. Photo Credit: Mmofra Foundation

This chat will take a global look at the role that public space design, programming, and management in urban environments can play in spurring civic engagement and ameliorating social challenges, particularly those faced by children.

@MITCoLab will interview a set of panelists working on designing, managing, implementing and supporting placemaking and public space projects in regions across the world, including: Accra, Ghana; Bogota Colombia; various parts of Southeast Asia, Uganda and Australia, and globally. Panelists include: @Mmofra_Ghana, @playgroundideas, @PPS_Placemaking, and @Combo2600. Some are hyper focused on a particular site and plot of land, others engage in different phases of numerous public space projects.

Redesigning a Public Space in Bogota, Colombia. Photo Credit: Combo2600.

All panelists will discuss their experiences focusing on children in their work, the social contexts they are responding to and the strategies they’ve employed to navigate critical challenges in these contexts.

Participants in this #citychat are invited to discuss examples of child friendly public spaces and placemaking projects in the cities they live, work, or play in. Come to this #citychat and engage the panelists with your questions; discuss both the challenges around creating child friendly public spaces and placemaking projects and the ways communities and institutions around the world are and solving for these.

It’s easy to join the Twitter chat. Just follow #citychat on Twitter from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST on Thursday, January 28th. Even if you don’t have a Twitter account, you can watch the conversation unfold here.

Heart of the Community Placemaking Project in Providence, Rhode Island. Photo Credit: Project for Public Spaces.

Update: If you missed this #citychat, you can find a transcript here.