When it comes to making Antwerp more playful and child-friendly, Wim Seghers is the man with a plan. These neighbourhoods are well-defined and well-understood by residents, officials and politicians alike. For children in particular, the neighbourhood is much more concrete than the city as a whole as I saw in my conversation with a group of year-olds in Kleine Muze school, located in a diverse, inner city area of the city.
Hence these neighbourhoods are also at the heart of city planning and service delivery, supported by a vast, user-friendly open databank and a skilled data analysis team. Play space web for one Antwerp neighbourhood. The project team then familiarise themselves with the area, and gather intelligence about it from sources including the police and civil enforcement.
While these are not restricted to young people, the materials tend to focus on children aged 6 β 14 often through sessions in schools. The aim is to get a minimum of public responses for each project.
These proposals are refined through further participation, before being built out. The whole play space web process can take a year or more. One strength is that it can be packaged and defined as a clear task, with a budget. So what difference has it made? Wim also feels that the projects themselves are getting better with practice.
He cites the example of one neighbourhood where football-playing children were constantly being moved on by the authorities. The process picked this up, with the result that football facilities were improved by converting part of a car park into a ball court.
