The project’s defining concept was that a child should be able to find their way home from school on their own,’ writes Dinah Bornat in All to Play For: How to Design Child-Friendly Housing. Bornat is describing Highgate New Town, an estate of 275 homes built by Camden Council in the late 1970s, designed in-house by architects Peter Tábori and Ken Adie.  Source:Dinah BornatAll to Play For: How to Design Child-Friendly Housing In today’s complex world of viability assessments and value engineering, commissioning such a large project with a ‘defining concept’ that focuses on children seems almost whimsical. And yet it worked. Almost 50 years later, homes in this 1970s estate, built as council housing, are highly desirable. The wide internal pedestrian ‘streets’ that run through the estate directly to nearby schools, shops and parks create places to play, to hang out and to bump into neighbours. ‘You can sit just outside your home and still be part of the street,’ says one resident, adding that during the Covid lockdowns, ‘as neighbours walked past, they would nearly always say: “Aren’t we lucky?”’  Bornat and her practice, ZCD Architects, have analysed numerous housing developments in the UK and abroad to discover what it is that makes some places work for children. These evidence-based spatial reviews have been distilled into a set of principles, set out in All to Play For, along with illustrative case-studies. However, before going into the ‘how’ of child-friendly design, the book starts with the ‘why’.Advertisement Source:Dinah BornatAbove and top image: One House Four Homes competition submission by ZCD Architects for homes that can grow with the family Play is fundamental to children’s development – physical, mental and social. The right to play is one of the articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the UK is a signatory. However, whether or not policy-makers consider play a topic worthy of their attention depends on the wider political context. In the last 15 years, play has been entirely absent from policy-making in England (although Scotland and Wales have done better). The current version of England’s National Planning Policy Framework only mentions children once, in passing. There is no national play strategy. This political neglect wasn’t always the case. As Bornat explains, following the Second World War, considering where and how children could play was an intrinsic part of the narrative of rebuilding the country. ‘Attitudes towards play fitted within the political and social context at the time,’ she writes, ‘representing the freedom societies had fought for and optimism for the future.’ Source:Dinah BornatHeat map of the Christchurch Estate, Hackney, east London All to Play For starts with social history, then considers what makes a good place for children to grow up in and how to involve them in the design process, and, finally, provides practical guidance for creating housing that works for children. By putting the history first, Bornat makes it clear that whether or not society plans, designs and builds places where children can thrive is, overwhelmingly, a political choice.  As the case studies demonstrate, designing for children creates places that work for everyone – and creates value. Yet despite the fact that Highgate New Town demonstrably works, it would be difficult to build it today because the whole estate has been designed to meet children’s needs. Bornat calls for an urgent rethink of ‘the perceived wisdom that creating separate, equipped, designated play areas for specific ages of children is the way to encourage “playing out” and foster the wellbeing of young people … Currently it is only “designated play” that is quantified and valued in many local plans and housing guidance.’ Source:Paul RiddleGascoigne Estate Phase 2, Barking, east London The book finishes by considering how to make high-density housing and the limited space it provides still work for children. ‘There are difficulties with sharing space at a high density, such as noise and maintenance, and these cannot be ignored,’ writes Bornat. ‘Yet not providing shared space or restricting it for children’s use, for example with age-based equipment and “no ball games” signs, does more than prevent children using these spaces; it effectively traps them indoors.’Advertisement We live in an age when the mental and physical health of children and young people is alarmingly poor, with consequences for the NHS and the economy. Ensuring all new developments are deliberately designed to support children’s wellbeing ought to be a priority. However, with a government fixated on brute economic measures, such as growth in GDP, it is perhaps not surprising that children’s needs (and their right) to play freely near home continues to be neglected. Julia Thrift is director of healthier place-making at the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) All to Play For: How to Design Child-Friendly Housing, by Dinah Bornat. RIBA Publishing, PB 172pp, £38 2025-04-23 Simon Aldous comment and share