Child Friendly Cities

Abstract

Like many other cities in Europe, Wroc?aw in Poland aims to improve the livability of children by implementing sustainable urban mobility measures, but fails to be successful. Due to an ongoing outflow of families from the city to the periphery and region, a vicious circle of an ongoing increase in car use has occured which increasingly threatens the livability of children. Because the travelling distances have increased, many children are not able to overcome their distance constraints anymore, which forces them to travel by car. That is why in this project the need for children to travel by car to school has been measured and reduced, to create a situation in which future measures to improve the livability of children can be effective. The analysis shows that from the 75767 children in the age between 3 and 15 years old that were living in Wroc?aw at the end of 2005, 12573 ( 16,6%) were reliant on the car to travel to school. This means that in case every car trip would carry 1,5 child, 16.000 daily car trips need to be made, which explains the high demand on space for cars in the city. By the implementation of strategic interventions, the amount of daily car trips that need to be made between the homes of children and schools can be reduced with 7.000. This means that many future sustainable urban mobility measures can be implemented effectively. However, to relocate schools and to provide new schools, the precondition needs to be met that housing will be developed in areas where the exploitation of schools is not (yet) profitable. Unfortunately, Wroc?aw’s planned housing development areas are not similar to the areas where development is preffered. The consequence is that many interventions in the spreading of schools, which are mainly responsible for the reduction in daily car trips, in practice cannot be realized. This means that not only the current reliance on the car is likely to remain in tact, but even more important that the future reliance on car use is likely to increase. And thus, future sustainable urban mobility measures are likely to become ineffective as well, which makes it likely for the livability of children in Wroc?aw to remain threatened. To become a child friendly city, Wroc?aw needs to implement an integrated strategy of sustainable urban mobility measures and land use development, which is based on the spatial requirements of children. Because the development of housing in the city has been market driven, the specific demand that children put on their living environment has not been protected. As a result, many housing areas have been developed where children are not able to overcome their distance constraints and therefore need to travel by car to school. To prevent a further increase in the need for children to travel by car, Wroc?aw needs to take a more active role in the development of housing in the city, whereby clear choices need to be made for the location and design of new housing projects. As a starter, Wroc?aw would do good to change its planned housing development areas to the areas where development is preffered. This will strategically reduce the need for children to travel by car and thus stimulate future sustainable urban mobility measures in the city to become effective.