Children's Landscapes. The Childhood as Builder of an Urban Imaginary

Abstract

This article develops a series of experiences related to childhood, encompassed under the idea of children's landscapes. The goal is to make visible the enormous influence that children's vision has had and continues to have on the processes of urban generation or transformation. The analysis of these landscapes aims to place childhood at the centre of urban debate, understanding it as a transforming agent of the city, against the extreme rationalism of today's society. We can say that children's landscapes are those experiences or actions that have childhood as a reference in different aspects. In the first place, the article examines proposals that, inspired by children's behaviours and practices, offer alternative strategies for the generation of new urban landscapes. Secondly, some specific spaces destined for childhood will be analysed. Particularly, the examined spaces are those that arose when detecting that the adult public space was not adapted to children and that generated their own and recognizable landscapes for the community. Third, this research examines proposals or actions that present children as transforming agents of urban space, with critical and proactive capacity. These children's landscapes will be analysed from architecture, from their own intrinsic characteristics, topography, the limits, the elements that constitute them, the routes they allow, the framing or framework of action. It will also examine who are the observers and users of them, in order to recover from them suggestive strategies for future actions on the urban landscape.