MAKING TIRANA CHILD-FRIENDLY: CO-CREATING A NETWORK OF SUSTAINABLE CHILD-FRIENDLY ROUTES

Abstract

Children have the right to grow up in an environment where they feel safe and included. It is important for a healthy city to allow various generations to meet and interact daily. As young citizens, they have the equal right to be part of the cityscape and to access basic services and public spaces, all these fundamental rights based on the Convention of the Child Rights. But this is not always the case on our cities. Especially in Tirana, children are deprived of most urban spaces, as they have not been taken into consideration during the urban design process. This thesis aims to bring out the playfulness in our urban city and make place for children into it. To make them feel integrated into the chosen urban context, it is important to understand the current conditions of their day-to-day spaces. An analysis of relevant literature concepts will be conducted to gain knowledge on how we can create a network of urban spaces that are safe, socially and physically more inclusive and sustainable. The analysis focused on identifying the principles of a successful child-centric city, co-creation, and participatory methods to understand children’s perspective as young citizens and sustainable design solutions for improving independent mobility. Today, just from an urban-scale observation of Tirana the majority of open spaces have the same expression. Children recognize them because they have seen them before. Only a ten-minute walk from the city centre, the site was chosen due to its contrasting urban fabrics and lack of safe open spaces that cater children needs. Two meso-zones are selected according three main criteria including school zone, iv mixed used street and historically underserved neighborhood. The purpose of this study is to provide an answer to the research question of how the selected urban context can support a network of spaces, beyond playgrounds, that are purposefully designed to create a system of “children’s infrastructure” that is sensitive to the physical and mental development and changing needs and behaviours of children as they grow. Within the framework of this thesis, it is proposed a set of solutions that capture the results from literature, desktop and on-site analysis and participatory questionnaire where the urban playscape is reconsidered. By doing so, we will be able to reintegrate children into the urban space and transform it into a vibrant space that celebrates flexibility and livability.This thesis suggests at the end a set of interventions that could be adapted to similar contexts, and with the help of Children’s Participation, evaluates its generalizability of research-based data and designing methods, to provide continuous methods and referential design strategies for building child-friendly networks in urban Tirana.