Urban space conference: Where the Sidewalk Ends

Rusty Keeler is an advocate of playful urban space and dangerous play from the United States.

Public playgrounds tend to be boring and predictable, similar from city to city and from country to country. They do not offer the opportunity to take risks, challenge oneself, or learn something new. Paradoxically, we have pushed the most creative part of society – children – into rigid frames, not letting them invent for themselves but building them ships and creatures to ensure their play is predictable and safe for us adults. We create spaces for children, not thinking of them but relieving our own fears and anxieties. As years pass, we begin to talk about how today’s young people do not know how to be independent or cope with life. When, why, and how to move on? Or, instead, back? 

We cannot imagine urban life without the street. It is an indispensable environment in our daily lives. Besides other people, vehicles or buildings, streets offer anticipated and unexpected encounters with urban nature, weather phenomena, sounds, smells and light. These, in turn, affect how we feel and our well-being. Our presentation will focus on how we perceive the street, how streets with different environmental conditions are distributed, and who has access to a good and healthy street space. This will help design streets where people like to be and where they are more likely to walk or cycle than sit in the shelter of a car, protected from air pollution, noise and heat. 

Multifunctionality is the basis of a holistic urban space – a pleasant living environment must be ensured for both schoolchildren and bees. Water is an integral part of every urban street and is ideally a resource, not a problem. For water to be the basis of a holistic street space, we need to give it “room to play” but also establish the “rules of the game”. If the rules are nature-based, that is, respectful of water’s natural flow and role, it is possible to achieve a holistic street space. The presentation will discuss the best “rules of the game” according to research and best practices. 

Compared to city parks, private gardens are much less constrained by the default rules of the “proper form” of urban nature. One will find plenty of creativity here and less outsider praise or disapproval. A private garden could thus be a real haven for garden games. If only gardening work were not the predominant mode for people to spend time in the garden.  Or should we say gardening play? Because home garden is where the grown-up’s desire to escape from the regulated space of working life and do something at their own discretion – even if it is not without rules – meets nature with its rhythms, elements and the initiative of species. In the presentation, we will explore, relying on a study of private gardens in Tartu, how the species found in urban gardens, including the garden owners, are reshaping the human-nature relationships and the perception of the “proper form” of the garden. 

Successful nature restoration in urban settings is only possible when focusing also on inclusion and raising the awareness of citizens. People’s connection and contact with nature, however, is declining. To break the "vicious cycle of biophobia", we need to include both children and adults in the study and restoration of urban nature. In my talk, I will introduce the citizen science programmes of the urbanLIFEcircles project and the concept of “wild play” through the activities conducted over two years during the Marja play street event.