Pop-Up kids: exploring children's experience of temporary public space

ABSTRACT

With growing interest in temporary public space in Australia and internationally, this article examines the potential role of temporary public space in the lives of children. It considers whether the short-term, interactive nature of temporary public space supports or inhibits children's need for play and connection to community. The author examines the opinions of children aged 5–12 about a Melbourne based Pop-Up Park. The findings suggest that temporary public space provides children with a wide variety of socio-spatial offerings including opportunities for unstructured creative play, connection with community and relaxation. The author concludes with some thoughts about the potential role of temporary public space in the Child-Friendly Cities movement and children's participation in urban planning.

KEYWORDS:

• Children's participation
• temporary public space
• Pop-Up
• tactical urbanism
• temporary urbanism
• play space
• child-friendly cities
• place activation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While temporary public space may take a variety of forms including public art murals and installations. This article specifically focuses on ‘Pop-Up Park' temporary public spaces because in examining children's experiences of urban environments, they provide a suitable basis of comparison to conventionally planned parks used by children.

2. This article focuses on children aged 5–12 years because this covers the age range of primary school children and has specific relevance to the research focus.

3. In this article ‘unstructured play' is defined in terms of a set of activities that children determine on their own, as compared with ‘structured play' which refer to activities led or directed by a person such as a parent or guardian.