A Lawful Space For Play Conceptualizing Childhood in Light of Local Regulations

A Lawful Space for Play: Conceptualizing Childhood in Light of Local Regulations
Author(s): Maria Kylin and Stina Bodelius

Source: Children, Youth and Environments , Vol. 25, No. 2, Child-Friendly Cities: Critical
Approaches (2015), pp. 86-106
Published by: University of Cincinnati
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7721/chilyoutenvi.25.2.0086
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Children, Youth and Environments 25(2), 2015
A Lawful Space for Play:

Conceptualizing Childhood in Light of Local
Regulations
Maria Kylin
Stina Bodelius
Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management
Alnarp, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Citation: Kylin, Maria and Stina Bodelius (2015). “A Lawful Space for Play:
Conceptualizing Childhood in Light of Local Regulations.” Children, Youth and
Environments 25(2): 86-106. Retrieved [date] from:
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=chilyoutenvi.
Abstract
The number of children living in Swedish urban areas is increasing at the same time
as spaces for children’s everyday movement and play are diminishing. In response,
the government recently commissioned national regulations and guidelines for
planning and designing children’s outdoor environments. The effectiveness of the
guidelines and methods for assessment of children’s places are under debate. This
paper presents a case study of a local municipality’s child space guidelines. We
argue that it is crucial to develop qualitative standards for spatial distribution,
design aspects and play values in order to plan and design inclusive, child-friendly
cities. Nonetheless, quantifiable, measurable standards for children’s designated,
allocated places may provide a means of safeguarding children’s rights in
contemporary political and spatial planning contexts.
Keywords: children’s places, urban planning, legislation, guidelines for play
 2015 Children, Youth and Environments

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A Lawful Space for Play: Conceptualizing Childhood in Light of Local Regulations 87
Introduction
Trends and Tendencies for Children’s Places in a Contemporary Swedish

Urban Context
In Sweden, as well as in other countries in Europe, contemporary trends indicate
that young families with children decide to remain living in the city as opposed to
moving to suburban areas (Karsten 2014; Nordström 2012; Statistics Sweden
2005). At the same time, planning ideals and urban growth have changed; instead
of expanding the city via suburban growth, the trend is to “grow inwards,” with infill
the order of the day. The consequences are different and denser neighborhood and
community structures, smaller courtyards, heavier traffic, and rising land prices in
central locations (Kristensson 2003; Björklid and Gummesson 2013). Studies show
that this has a negative effect on children’s access to inclusive spaces that
encourage their own agency and freedom of movement (Kyttä 2003; Björklid and
Nordström 2012) and makes it harder for them to act and be seen in the public
realm (Wooley, Hazelwood and Simkins 2011). It also implies that there are fewer
“spaces left over from planning” where children can independently shape their own
places.
Another noticeable contemporary trend in Sweden is that specific, separate places

traditionally allocated for children’s play are being questioned and claimed by
different societal actors. There are examples of schools and pre-schools being built
without schoolyards or accessible outdoor environments (Laval 2014; Nordström
2014), and at the conference “Competition for Space” (Skolhusgruppen 2013), it
was noted that young people’s requirements for outdoor space often are crushed
between different land-use needs that are underpinned by economic interests. A
recent example is a government inquiry for innovative urban development that
included the feasibility of building new housing estates on existing traditional
playgrounds (Boverket 2015a).
At the same time that both allocated and inclusive spaces for children are
diminishing, research and well-established experience shows that children’s access
to many different kinds of spaces and places are crucial for a sustainable everyday
life. Arguments to support this position come from a wide range of viewpoints and
research, such as health issues connected with obesity (Björklid and Nordström
2007; Socialdepartementet 2000) and in social terms where changing spatial
structures affect children’s agency in shaping community dynamics (Karsten 2005).
Open space research has highlighted how the distribution of space and the
structure of the city affect children’s everyday lives (Ward Thomson and Travlou
2007). Moreover, several municipalities in Sweden claim to be, or express the
ambition of becoming, the most child-friendly municipality in Sweden. A number of
municipalities—such as Gothenburg and Malmö—have also made efforts to establish
departments and offices that work to facilitate children’s influence on planning and
urban development.
To sum up: Access and availability to both inclusive and allocated spaces in urban
environments for children and youth looks bleak, despite well-established research,
facts and benevolent rhetoric. While lacking national regulations and guidelines for

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handling children’s needs in different planning contexts, several municipalities drew

up their own local guidelines for planning and designing allocated places for
children. In 2014 the government commissioned the Swedish National Board of
Housing, Building and Planning, together with MOVIUM (a think-tank directed by
the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU) to suggest national
regulations and guidelines to be used in planning, designing and managing urban
environments for children (Boverket 2015b).
Objectives of the Paper

The paper has two objectives. The first objective is to present a case study of local
municipality guidelines used for planning and designing allocated places for
children. Parts of the case study presented below were used by the National Board
of Housing, Building and Planning to help develop national guidelines (Kylin and
Bodelius 2015). The second objective is to use the case study to raise and discuss
some of the obscurities in current planning contexts that have to be understood in
order to effectively create national regulations and guidelines for planning and
designing an inclusive city for/with children.
The ambition is not to cover the whole complex interaction between the different
fields that affect the materialization of cities, such as politics, economy and
planning ideals, but rather to highlight some points that can raise awareness of the
issue of diminishing spaces for children in contemporary planning contexts. These
reflections are made from two perspectives that give complementary and
overlapping suggestions of how diminishing spaces for children in the city can be
tackled. The first concerns the fact that the ways childhood and children are
approached and socially constructed mirrors and affects the places that children are
(not) given in the city. The second perspective touches on the fact that the planning
discourse in Sweden faces different conditions today than a few decades ago.
Background
Changing Approaches to Childhood

Childhood can partly be discussed in biological terms, but childhood is also a social
construction affected by interpretations made in a cultural and historical context.
(Holloway and Valentine 2000). In this paper the concern is how the prevailing
interpretation of—or an oblivious approach to—the concept of “childhood” in spatial
planning contexts can influence and affect the place that children are (not) given in
urban environments and in cities.
Several studies show that the right to “take place” in a landscape, urban or rural,
has to do with power and social justice and is an everyday experience (Setten and
Brown 2013). Egoz and colleagues (2011) argue that the “right to landscape” can
be used as a framework for negotiating physical rights of individuals, communities,
powerless and marginalized. Children represent a voiceless group which differs, for
example, from ethnic minorities in that everyone has been a child. If children’s right
to “take place” can be said to mirror spatial planning’s capacity to “give children
place” then it is interesting to study the changes of allocated spaces for children in
relation to how childhood has been interpreted in different planning contexts.

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Historically, children were not assigned separate and special places in the city until
the mid-19th century, but as children became dissociated with being laborers in the
family economy, the concept of childhood changed, as did the places for children in
the city (Dahlgren and Hultquvist 1995).
The study of childhood as a social and cultural construct is a growing field. Archard
(2006), among others, points out that children, in accordance with the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), can be seen as “carriers of the right to
protection,” or “empowered agents with the right of participation.” During the 20th
century there has been a shift from objectifying children to seeing them as subjects
with participant rights. However, the CRC’s mixed messages of children’s “rights”
and “protection” creates tensions depending on the interpretative prerogative and
context in which the concept of “childhood” is used (Rasmusson 2009).
In this paper we examine how different understandings of childhood affect the way
cities are structured and planned. Should adults take all responsibility for children’s
needs and protect them by ensuring safe (allocated) places? Or should the child’s
right be the focus, requiring that children’s participation and own place making are
taken seriously? Some of the challenges include that children’s own place making
may be far from adults’ understandings of safe and esthetically nice places (Kylin
2003). Further, Kjörholt (2013) points out that children’s right to participate as
individual subjects has implications for market-oriented politics associated with
particular ideological notions of individualization, notions which have the effect of
separating children from an inter-generational social order, and thus the
materialization of an inclusive city.
Changing Conditions for Swedish Spatial Planning

Around the turn of the last century, the difficult conditions for children in Swedish
cities began to attract attention. Kindergartens for the less affluent and allocated
playgrounds began to be developed (Nolin 1999). From approximately the 1940s to
the 1980s Swedish planning focused on the construction of the welfare state, with
an emphasis on social and family rights (Hall 1998). A number of policy documents
emerged that acknowledged the importance of the social aspects of urban
development in housing areas, neighborhoods and open spaces.
One interesting aspect from this time is the focus on children’s need for outdoor
space. In 1967 a committee was appointed by the government to investigate how
the urban environment could be structured and designed to accommodate
children’s outdoor activity, based on principles of developmental psychology. The
committee put forward guidelines for the dimensioning and design of children’s
outdoor play areas in a publication called “Barns utemiljö” (Children’s Outdoor
Environments) (Wohlin et al. 1970). The intention was, among other things, that
the guidelines would be the basis for municipal planning programs, and thus serve
as a legal “protection” of children’s outdoor environments. The guidelines included
several structural and qualitative recommendations for the spatial distribution of
open spaces for children’s activity at the neighborhood and community level, while
also providing a number of quantitative guidelines for separate places specifically
designed for children’s requirements. The guidelines that made an impact were

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those tied to requirements for receiving government loans. The economic downturn
experienced by Sweden during the 1970s meant several proposed guidelines had
limited impact. Parts of them reappeared in 1989 under the title of “Allmänt råd
fran socialstyrelsen” (General Advice from the National Board of Health and
Welfare) (Norman-Bjarsell and Kylin 2014).
Cars and Strömberg (2005), among others, point out that the driving forces during
this period of Swedish planning history were politicians and professional planners
with a strong vision of community based on equal social and family rights. During
this time the municipal and state authorities developed a stronghold on the whole
planning process, including the right to decide when and where developments
should be carried out, and what qualities the developments should have. A new
“Planning and Building Act” (PBA) was introduced in 1987; one of its objectives was
to clarify the responsibilities of the state and the municipal authorities. The new
PBA marked a regime change, from a time where quality aspects of urban
development were regulated in detailed legislation, to a time where general
formulations in the PBA were considered to be simply a framework, with
responsibility for interpreting qualitative aspects left to the building sector and the
municipalities. Private interests with a focus on economic values were thus given a
bigger role, enabling them to become a driving force in community planning.
Shortly after the introduction of the PBA, the CRC was ratified in Sweden (1989).
This also marked a change in approach toward childhood, emphasizing not only
children’s right to protection, but also children’s right to have their say and have it
respected. Nonetheless, at the same time, private interests were gaining an
increasing role in the planning context. According to several researchers (Cars and
Hedström 2006; Aven et al. 2004; Sager 2009), the formal and constitutional
power of the municipalities was undermined by private actors with a focus on
securing private investments. As the driving forces in contemporary planning
discourse become more oriented toward a market economy, the group “children,”
like every other group, has to be expressed in terms of economic values. This
becomes problematic when children themselves do not have any real economic
power, and suggests an apparent risk that children’s participation will not be taken
seriously. International studies have also found that children’s participation in the
public environment today is prevented and obstructed by social restrictions,
physical barriers and legal measures (Wooley, Hazelwood ad Simkins 2011).
An illustrative example is the new housing development “Hammarby sjöstad” in

Stockholm, where a recent study by Becker (2015) demonstrated that even
allocated spaces for children were excluded due to economic considerations. A
sharp critique of this development was offered by the auditor of the City of
Stockholm, who wrote: “Children are not as profitable as building houses,” and
pointed out the urgent need for a new type of planning where general public
community needs also are taken into consideration (Tottmar 2014).
New housing areas, neighborhoods and public environments are planned and built
in response to private economic forces; at the same time, the formal and
constitutional responsibility for ensuring that laws and policies are implemented

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rests with the municipal authorities and county administration boards. Against this
background, it is interesting to reflect on how the different driving forces in spatial
planning influence the design and planning of the city for children: is it an inclusive
city where children have a freedom of movement, with rights to use all places and
to make their own places, or a city where children only have access to protected
allocated places planned by adults for children?
The Case Study
Objectives and Questions

The first point of departure for our case study was the fact that the primary
responsibility for enforcing juridical measures for implementing the main national
laws involving places for children lies with the municipal planning organs and the
county administration boards. The laws give ample opportunity for interpretation
and each municipality has formed their own tools and guidelines for local
administrations to use. No overview of these tools and guidelines or their
implantation had been compiled. However, when the government commissioned the
Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning to suggest national
regulations and guidelines, an overview was required.
The second point of departure for our case study was the fact that existing
municipal guidelines generally were formulated by employees—often planners—to
be used as everyday tools that fit into the prevailing practical planning context.
Through analysis of these tools we will raise some of the issues that are obscured in
this prevailing planning context and explore the underlying question: Why has the
availability of both inclusive and allocated spaces for children and youth diminished
in urban environments, despite well-established research, facts and rhetoric that
support these spaces?
The main questions we put to the municipal authorities in the study were:
 Do you have any guidelines for schoolyards, pre-schoolyards and play areas?
 What kind of guidelines?
 Which actors/interests formulated the guidelines, and what findings/sources
did they base the guidelines on?
 Which department/s within the municipal authority is tasked with working on
children’s allocated places?
General Regulations and Laws

Today various plans and policy documents provide together, in general terms, a
framework of general regulations for municipal authorities and county
administration boards concerning the shaping of children’s outdoor environment in
Sweden. Eriksson (2014) shows that the CRC is mentioned in ten out of 26 general
municipal land-use plans, and half of the municipal land-use plans mention the
concept of “children’s perspective.” However, none of these general regulations are
legally required to be implemented, municipalities are not legally bound to ensure
that they are followed.

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There are three main laws that regulate children’s places, especially schoolyards
and pre-schoolyards, which municipalities are legally bound to enforce:
• The Swedish Planning and Building Act, which, in Section 8, Subsection 9

reads: “Where sites are used for buildings housing premises for a nursery
school, school or any other similar facilities, a sufficient open space, suitable
for play and outdoor recreation, shall be provided on the site or areas
nearby.”
• The Swedish Environmental Code, which lays down conditions for the
suitability of locations vis-à-vis environmental aspects such as noise or air
pollution.
• The Education Act, which in general terms states that children have a right to
learn about ecology and the need to care for nature. Nowhere is it indicated
where and in what spaces this learning process should take place.
Nowhere in the national legislation are any quantifiable, measurable units for
children’s outdoor environment laid down, nor are any qualitative directives given
such as spatial distribution, design or content. The formulation in the PBA,
“sufficient open space... shall be provided on the site or areas nearby” gives ample
opportunity for interpretation, and as shown in several contemporary examples this
can—surprisingly—be taken to mean 0 m2 of space (Laval and Åkerblom 2014).
Method
Choice of Municipal Authorities

The selection of cities to be used in our case study was based on the 1999 official
list of municipalities in Sweden (Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting 2011) which
categorizes the cities according to factors such as population size and/or
geographical proximity to other towns or countryside. The list comprises nine
different categories, and for the case study we chose three cities/towns from every
category. Our intention during the selection process was to include all categories,
and thereby also a range of municipal authority guidelines. Our objective was to
distinguish whether there were any patterns in how guidelines are formulated and
used in relation to the number of residents and geographical proximity to other
cities. One issue of interest was to identify whether there were any common
patterns in the guidelines between the categories, but we were also interested in
ascertaining if there were variations in terms of whom, and which departments,
were involved in planning children’s places. In the light of the recourses available to
us, and the time limit within which we were working, we judged 27 cities to be a
number that we could manage at the same time as it was large enough to allow
patterns to emerge.
Four of the nine categories are defined by the number of residents: major cities
have a population exceeding 200,000; large towns are between 50,000 and
200,000; other big towns have between 15,000 and 50,000; and small towns have
less than 15,000 residents. In an international comparison, Sweden’s total
population of approximately 9.5 million residents is small. One of the starting
hypotheses was that the number of residents influences the extent to which infill

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(urban densification) is regarded as a suitable policy response to growth. In turn,

the greater the demand for infill, the more necessary it is for municipal authorities
to draw up their own in-house, local guidelines for reviewing and monitoring
children’s outdoor environments.
Three of the municipality categories are defined by building density and/or how
they are positioned in relation to other towns: suburban towns are those which
have 50 percent of the residents commuting daily to a nearby locality. The
suburban towns represented in the study are all located close to a major city. Rural
communities have fewer than five residents per km2 and fewer than 20,000
residents in total. Medium towns have a population between 20,000 and 50,000
and have over 70 percent of the population living in settlements with more than
200 inhabitants. In these cases the starting hypothesis was that a peri-urban
location and peri-urban spatial density determine the rate of population inflow and
thus the need to build schools and pre-schools, something which could also prompt
the establishment of local guidelines to achieve better planned and controlled
development of children’s spaces. On the other hand, areas with a low population
inflow rate and low infill demands would have less need for local guidelines.
The final two categories were defined by employment: industrial communities,

which have more than 40 percent of the residents working in the industrial sector;
and agricultural communities, with more than 6.4 percent of the residents working
within the agricultural sector.
The selection process for choosing three cities within each category was based
partly on references that indicated, for example, that a municipal authority had
worked with guidelines. Employees within the municipal authorities and/or
individuals were asked to provide suggestions to enable us to determine which
municipal authorities had the strongest commitment to these issues, and where
within the authority that commitment was most pronounced. For certain categories
we did not have any such contacts or suggestions, and in these cases a personal
assessment was made as to which municipal authorities were most likely to work
with guidelines. This assessment was based on population size or proximity to an
urban region. The intention for this study was not to achieve a uniform
geographical distribution of respondents across the country, but this may be a
relevant factor to investigate in future studies.
Data Collection
We made an initial Internet search based on the 27 municipalities selected, in order
to determine the availability of any guidelines, policy documents, regulations and
checklists used for planning school-/pre-schoolyards or playgrounds. Those
municipal authorities who did not have the relevant official documents published on
the internet were then contacted by telephone in an attempt to reach the
individual/s within each authority with knowledge of the subject area. Most of the
authorities whose policy documents were not available online sent them to us by e-
mail or post. However, two did not produce any documents, despite the fact that
they claimed to have specific guidelines. In these two cases the analysis had to rely
on the oral information provided, together with a confirmatory e-mail.

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In most cases the documents obtained showed what the guidelines comprise, which
municipal departments are responsible, how the guidelines were established and
what the foundation or source for the guidelines’ quantitative measures was. Where
there was any ambiguity concerning the content, additional contact was made by
telephone to ensure that the information analyzed was as complete as possible. The
information provided varied somewhat depending on how contact was made and
with whom. Some of the municipal authorities were contacted in September and
October 2013, but the majority was contacted between January and May 2014.
Telephone contact of some form was made with all 27 municipal authorities for
short interviews with complementary questions about the guidelines.
Type of Material
All types of documents relating to the monitoring and planning of school-/pre-
schoolyards and playgrounds in the municipal context were requested. This means
we obtained information regarding both “quantitative” and “qualitative” guidelines.
The quantitative guidelines include all those documents that in some way specify
measurable, objective criteria as a guide to planning school-/pre-schoolyards and
playgrounds. Assessment of the qualitative guidelines was more difficult, since
many municipal authorities had formulated a general wish for “attractive
environments” or certain functions, rather than actual qualitative guidelines for
design or spatial distribution.
Results
Guidelines or No Guidelines?
We found that there were guidelines for school-/pre-schoolyards in six out of the
nine categories of municipality. “Large towns” was the only category where all
municipalities had guidelines, followed by “major cities,” “suburban cities” and
“medium towns,” where two out of three municipalities had guidelines. In both
“industrial communities” and “other small towns,” only one of the three
municipalities had guidelines. “Agricultural communities,” “rural communities” and
“other big towns” did not have any municipalities with guidelines. There were some
deviations: Stockholm (major city) and Staffanstorp (suburban town) both seem to
have incentives to establish guidelines, yet they do not have any. It would be
interesting to investigate why this is the case. Another exception was Höör (“other
small town”), which had guidelines despite the low number of citizens.
For playgrounds there is a greater prevalence of guidelines in all categories of

municipality. In the category “agricultural communities” all three municipalities had
some kind of guidelines while the municipalities in the categories “major cities,”
“suburban cities” and “medium towns” all had two municipalities each with
guidelines. “Large towns” and “other big towns” had one each and “rural
communities” and “other small towns” did not have any guidelines. The correlation
between size/inflow and the guidelines is not as obvious when it comes to
playgrounds.

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A Wide Range of Measures and Sources

Our study also found that there is a wide range in what are seen as appropriate
quantitative measures for a good school-/pre-school yard or playground. Amongst
the municipalities that have quantitative guidelines for school-/pre-schoolyards,
some consider a space allocation of 50 m2/child to be appropriate for pre-
schoolyards, while others believe that 25 m2/child is sufficient. For schoolyards, the
corresponding guideline values range between 10 and 40 m2/child, while for public
playgrounds the value specified for the maximum distance between the child’s
home and the nearest playground ranges between 300 and 500 m.
The sources from which the various figures given by different authorities for
suitable space allocation per child are derived is unclear. The source that most
municipalities mentioned regarding pre-schoolyards was a recommendation from
Socialstyrelsen (National Board of Health and Welfare) from 1989 that considers 40
m2/child to be suitable.
Qualitative and Quantitative Guidelines

Another interesting finding from our study was that almost all municipalities
working with guidelines used quantitative measures; they had difficulty in dealing
with qualitative concepts and in determining what qualitative guidelines should
comprise. Of the 11 municipalities that worked with planning guidelines for school
and pre-schoolyards, ten used quantitative measures; and of the 12 municipalities
with guidelines for public playgrounds, ten used quantifiable measures. A number of
the authorities apply qualitative guidelines—in terms of noise and air pollution—
when considering school and pre-schoolyards, whereas for public playgrounds the
focus was on functions, such as “swings” and “sandboxes,” often with a clear
division into different age groups. There are generally couched qualitative
objectives or desires, such as that “the outdoor environment should be attractive,”
have “rich vegetation” or “be inspiring,” rather than qualitative guidelines intended
to govern design or spatial distribution.
Despite this, there are examples of qualitative guidelines being used to shape
design aspects or spatial distribution of school-/pre-schoolyards in three of the
selected cities. In Malmo they work with a play value factor with seven different
categories that evaluates quality on pre-schoolyards (Wallby et al. 2011).
Gothenburg states that all planning documents should be based on a “child impact
evaluation” (Lundquist 2011) and Nynäshamn works with quality criterions based
on research conducted by Boldeman et al. (2005) and Mårtensson (2013).
For the school and preschool grounds, 11 of the 27 cities had guidelines (Figure 1).
All off these 11 had quantitative guidelines, and three also used qualitative
guidelines. The quantitative measurement was mostly expressed as a minimum
m2/child. These values varied between 10 m2/child to 50m2/child. For playgrounds,
12 of the 27 cities had guidelines (Figure 2). These 12 had quantitative guidelines,
most of which also include some generally formulated qualitative guidelines. The
quantitative guidelines mostly comprised regulations for the distance to a
playground, and varied between 300-500 m.

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Figure 1. Guidelines for school- and preschool grounds
Figure 2. Guidelines for playgrounds

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Responsible Departments
The present study also showed that the department given the responsibility for
planning school-/pre-schoolyards and playgrounds varies widely between
municipalities, as do the planning processes employed. Among the municipalities
surveyed here, the number of departments/divisions involved when it comes to
school- and pre-schoolyards ranged between one and eight. However, in the case of
public playgrounds, the responsibility often lies within a single “department of
works” or the equivalent. In some of the municipalities that do not have guidelines,
the employees stated that they were in the process of producing their own local
guidelines, and explained that they felt confused about the best way to go about
this. There was a positive expectation regarding the national guidelines that were in
the pipeline.
Conclusions
Reasons for Producing Local Guidelines

From the case study it is obvious that it is primarily larger municipalities and
municipalities with densification (infill) pressure that have guidelines. In these
municipalities there is perceived to be a “lack” of space, so many feel that very little
or no space can be reserved to meet children’s need for school-/pre-schoolyards.
The municipal departments charged with planning school-/pre-schoolyards
expressed the need to produce quantitative guidelines that can be used to defend
space.
“Other big towns” and “agricultural communities” showed a deviation in that these
municipal authorities felt a need to draw up guidelines for public playgrounds but
not for school-/pre-schoolyards. In the “large town” category all municipalities had
guidelines for school-/pre-schoolyards, but only one for playgrounds. Thus there
appear to be different reasons that municipal authorities set guidelines for public
playgrounds and why they set guidelines for schools and pre-schools. It is also
worth noticing that the categories “suburban towns,” “industrial communities,”
“agricultural communities” and “other big towns” all had generally established a
maximum distance from home to the nearest playground as the guideline for the
location of public playgrounds. One of the reasons for this may be that they need
these guidelines to decrease the number of playgrounds rather than to retain the
present number. This may be a result of economic constraints arising from the
municipality’s size or location, where resources to maintain and manage
playgrounds need to be rationalized. Another interpretation could be that the need
for municipally managed playgrounds is in fact smaller in the countryside, since
children there have more opportunities than city children to play in other spaces.
Varying Quantitative Measures and Unclear Sources

The reasons that the different municipalities considered different quantitative
measures to be appropriate, and the specific values they chose as guidelines, are
ambiguous. Municipalities refer to various sources as their reasons for choosing
certain measures. For example, in another investigation (Normann-Bjarsell and
Kylin 2014), tracing the origin of the recommendation from Socialstyrelsen (the
National Board of Health and Welfare) from 1989 that considers 40 m2/child

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appropriate, found that it derived from the report “Barns utemiljö” (Children’s
Outdoor Environments) (Wholin 1970) as mentioned above. This report contains
the first quantitative guidelines on children’s places to be presented in Sweden, but
did not refer specifically to pre-schoolyards. Instead, the first quantitative
regulation explicitly intended for pre-schoolyards was established in 1975, in
“Statens planverks tillaämpningsanvisningar till Byggnadsstadgan” (the National
Planning Agency’s Supplementary Directive on Building Regulations), where the
recommendation of 40 m2/child was reported to be based on “reliable and good
practice.” It is apparent from this and previous studies that, although requested
from several municipal organs, the suggested quantitative measures in the local
guidelines are not based on proven (medical) evidence.
Difficulties in Formulating Quality and Conflicts between Different

Departments
The concept of “quality” as a criterion in design or spatial distribution can be
defined and discussed in different ways, and is not the focus of the discussion here,
but it is obvious that municipal authorities experience great difficulties in
formulating what “quality,” as a criterion or yardstick for practical use in guidelines,
should mean. In our short interviews with municipality employees, we could detect
frustration at the fact that questions concerning school-/pre-schoolyards and
playgrounds sometimes fall between departments or decision-makers; their
experience is that there is conflict between the different departments responsible
for planning different aspects of the urban environment.
Reflections
An interesting fact shown in this study is the wide range in what were considered
appropriate measurable sizes for different allocated children’s places. Another
conclusion from the case study is that there are big difficulties in handling
qualitative guidelines. In this context we are talking about qualitative guidelines in
terms of design aspects, spatial distribution and play values.
In order to effect national regulations and guidelines for planning and designing
urban environments for children there are several questions that should be
discussed: should quantitative or qualitative guidelines be used? Are there
downsides and/or benefits of the different ways of assessing children’s
environment?
When it comes to the wide range in quantitative values, the question is what
determines the value actually chosen by the municipal authority as its guideline?
Even if the study clearly indicates that none of the quantifiable measures used were
grounded in medical empirical evidence, requests were made demanding research
to provide evidence-based and medically proven quantifiable space requirements
for children’s places. Health issues, e.g. obesity, tend to be invoked as the main
argument for outdoor environments for children. In several ongoing research
studies, efforts are being made to establish links between open space design and
evidence-based health issues (Faskunger 2007). What has emerged so far is that
the findings of the different studies are divergent, and do not provide a firm basis
on which conclusions can be drawn (Ferreira et al. 2006). Nielsen (2014) points out

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the frustration that landscape architects experience in their practice when spaces
for children are negotiated in favor of other needs. In his study he calls for
quantifiable measures based on medical evidence research to defend children’s
places.
In our view it is a misconception that medically proven objective evidence might be

found that could correspond to objective quantifiable requirements in the built
environment. In other words, one schoolyard offering 50 m2/child might have very
different play values from another one with the same spatial ratio, depending on
quality issues such as quality of design and spatial distribution (Figures 3 and 4).
This misconception is exacerbated by the current planning discourse, in which value
is expressed in terms of economic terms. When this thought is brought to bear on
planning for children’s “needs,” it reflects in many ways a view of children as
“objects of investment” (Kjörholt 2013) where input and yield can be objectively
measured and quantified. In addition, far from being objective, the concept of
“needs” has a fundamentally relational character, and partakes not only of
medically proven, evidence-based results but also of economic possibilities, and
social and cultural conditions (Willhjelm 2002).
Figure 3. A schoolyard with many m2/child but little play value
Photo: Elin Normann Bjarsell

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Figure 4. A pre-schoolyard with few m2/child but lots of play value
Photo: Elin Normann Bjarsell
Concerning the difficulties in handling qualitative guidelines, research shows that

so-called “soft values” are routinely passed over in planning contexts. Thorén-
Halvorsen and colleagues (2000) for example, points out that quantitative,
measurable standards and requirements have the biggest impact in spatial
planning, as they are always implemented in the physical environment. Highest
priorities are given to standards for which the guidelines are expressed in terms of
technical demands, such as reducing noise or air pollution, and in quantitative
terms such as providing parking space and roads. Nielsen (2014) shows how the
total playable space covered by pre-schoolyards in Norway has fallen by 20-30
percent since a national guideline formulated in quantitative terms was removed in
2006. Within the same time-frame, the car-parking space at pre-schools fell by no
more than 1.6 percent—one of the reasons for this much smaller decrease being
the strict quantitative guidelines governing parking space.
It is thus not only in planning for children that the “soft” values are difficult to
manage in contemporary planning context. It seems that the municipalities in our
survey have chosen the pragmatic way, since the obvious risk of using qualitative
values to assess children’s places would be that these places lose in the “space
grabbing.” The municipal departments that advocate measurable units at least
recognize children’s need for space. However the downside of seeking to safeguard
children’s place rights by applying and improving quantifiable measures is that it

14.139.86.228 on Mon, 17 Feb 2020 09:26:45 UTC
very quickly narrows down to a focus on places and spaces specifically fenced off
for children, thus falling in line with the seemingly prevailing conception that
“planning for children” means allocating and designing separated special places for
children. The dilemma seems to be that spatial guidelines expressed in qualitative
terms, in particular those that relate to inclusive spaces, get lost in the clamor for
densification and infill, while guidelines expressed in quantifiable measurable units,
i.e. those that are easier heard tend to focus on children’s separated places. The
hard fact is that there is a risk that no space at all will be made available to children
in locations with high land prices with the peril that there will be no space left to
discuss soft values or qualitative aspects of children’s needs. Thus, quantity in
space in some cases also means quality in place.
Today the CRC has a major impact on how we understand and approach the
concept of childhood. To focus on children’s “needs” and “protection” is important,
but in a planning context the downside seems to be that it very quickly becomes an
issue of discussing allocated and separate places that adults plan for children, such
as school and pre-schoolyards and playgrounds. Quantifiable measures fit well into
the planning context in which the notion of objective, quantitative measurable
entities such as health needs and safe environmental factors can be translated into
economic terms at defined locations. Focusing on children as empowered citizens
with rights of participation allows us to take their own experience of the entire city
and children’s own place-making seriously, but can in the current planning context
also entail risks. In a market-oriented planning context that associates place taking
with economical assets the peril is that children’s participation or own place making
will be a question of window dressing.
We argue that national guidelines promoting child-friendly cities cannot be effected

simply by using quantifiable criteria and measurable units, but we realize that
quantifiable, measurable units for children’s allocated and designated places can be
needed as a means of safeguarding children’s rights in the contemporary political
and spatial planning context. Even in an inclusive city, allocated places are
important for children, and we acknowledge the importance of assessing,
developing and monitoring national regulations concerning places, even though the
rhetoric used for advocating such spaces reflects ambiguous definitions of
childhood. It is crucial to develop qualitative values for monitoring spatial
distribution, design aspects and play values in order to develop inclusive, child-
friendly cities.
We also argue that one of the most important steps that must be taken, if we want
to create child-friendly cities, is to expand the understanding of how different
concepts, approaches and constructions of childhood influence the planning context
and thus the materialization of the city. The study demonstrated a conflict between
the various departments responsible for planning different aspects of the urban
environment, which illustrates how problems arise when different views on
childhood collide. If we are to plan for a whole city to be child-friendly, a more
complex understanding of childhood must be implemented across planning
contexts. Viewing the child as an “empowered agent with the right of participation”
is not enough if that participation means only negotiating over diminishing places.

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An inclusive city should instead reflect a comprehensive understanding that

childhood has value here and now—an understanding that includes children as full
citizens whose own places and movements in the city should be fully included in
urban planning and embraced by planners and architects.
Acknowledgements
We thank three anonymous reviewers, Kenneth Olwig and Vera Vicenzotti for comments on
the article. The research was made possible through funding from FOMA (Fortlöpande Miljö
Analys): http://www.slu.se/sv/miljoanalys/program/program-bebyggd-miljo/.
Maria Kylin is a landscape architect with a Ph.D. who holds a position as an

Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and
Management at Alnarp, SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences). Early in
her career, she worked as a consulting landscape architect in private firms and in
municipal organizations. Her research interests focus on children’s use and
experience of outdoor environment and how this knowledge can be applied in
planning practices.
Stina Bodelius is a landscape architect with a master’s degree and holds a position
as an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and
Management at Alnarp, SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences). She has
been involved in several projects concerning children’s places in urban environment
and her main focus is on developing courses and teaching studio courses about
urban planning and design for children and youth.
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A Lawful Space For Play Conceptualizing Childhood in Light of Local Regulations

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