With 35% of Belfast’s population aged 25 or under, Belfast City Council recognised the need to place the youngest in the population at the heart of city planning. With support from the Resilient Cities Network (R-Cities), and working closely with Belfast City Council, Arup developed a framework and design strategy that creates a more healthy, inclusive and child-friendly city centre in Belfast.
Arup’s team of urban design, landscape architecture and urban resilience experts created a design strategy for Belfast that responds to the specific needs of the city, while prioritising children’s needs. We involved children from 6-18 years of age in the design process, to understand their perceptions of and needs from the city. And we built a system by which grassroots initiatives are given a chance to thrive.
The design strategies proposed include physical interventions that address existing constraints in the city centre and create an environment where families and children can live, work and play. These include new and affordable housing, green open spaces, traffic improvements and sports facilities. And through this process we developed the Urban Childhoods Design Toolkit to add child- and family-friendly interventions to masterplanning and design processes.