How Glasgow Found its Inner Child

Since in 2023, Scotland has required local authorities to evaluate the quantity, quality, and accessibility of play spaces for young people (aged 0-17). Though Currie had no professional background in play, she’d run assessments before, including the Scottish Place Standard Tool, which surveyed residents about where they lived. “I’m all about working with people,” Currie told me. “My mantra is local people are the experts. They know what it’s like to live in a place.”

In partnership with the Center for Civic Innovation, Currie created an age appropriate survey, called the new Play Sufficiency Assessment. The survey began by asking participants what the word “play” means to them, and asked children and young people where they felt creative, safe, and took risks. The Education Department incorporated those questions into the academic curriculum and brought them into schools. The team ended up with more than 5000 responses from teenagers and 2000 from primary school students, a 1714% increase in participation compared with more traditional methods.

“Consultations can be really boring, if we’re being honest,” noted Councillor Ruari Kelly, who was elected in 2017, “but Etive and her team use activities like neighborhood walks and building activities to make it fun.” That’s especially important in wards like his, where more than half of all families with children are run by a single parent. “You have to actively go and meet them where they are. They tend not to have the time to be checking a council website for the latest consultation or involved in the community council.”

Currie’s first survey, which she made widely available through a story map of the city, showed how overcrowding and poor maintenance dissuaded young people from using play spaces. Her inclusive approach won her and her team the Royal Town Planning Award for Scotland, which she celebrated at St Paul’s High School with the students who piloted her first survey. Her team also caught the attention of the Urban95 Academy, an initiative created by Van Leer Foundation to help city leaders, planners and urbanists understand how their work can enhance childhood development. Alongside Councillor Kelly and policy advisor Joe Brady, Currie participated in the executive education programme and attended the Urban95 Academy residence week in London. Over a five-day training, the trio reflected on their own experience of play as children and met with city planners from around the world to learn about how urban design can promote childhood development.

Councillor Kelly, who is the father of two young children, said he went into the Urban95 Academy with specific projects in mind, but left with an entirely new perspective. Take green space, which the city has been building for years. Those spaces don’t always meet the needs of babies, toddlers, and caretakers. Without fences, for example, green space can be dangerous for toddlers, who have a tendency to run off. After the academy, he’s been promoting green spaces inside shared courtyards as a safer alternative. Grown ups can watch children from their windows and the buildings themselves protect children from cars. This kind child-centered thinking can be incorporated into every aspect of city government.

“Urban95 taps into something deep inside people,” Brady told me. “You know how we always talk about finding your inner child? Urban95 encourages you to be that child.” During one session, Brady recalled how, as a child, he never went on “playdates.” Kids just gathered on the street and there was no need for grown ups to organise activities. Today, that freedom is gone. Highways run through the city, fracturing neighborhoods, and the streets are filled with cars. But the city doesn’t have to be so hostile to babies and caregivers. With careful assessment and planning, Brady believes Glasgow is “a city of endless possibilities.”

Upon returning from the Urban95 Academy in July 2024, Currie, Brady, and Kelly hosted Glasgow’s first ever child-friendly city summit. The aim was to shift the city government from being risk-averse to being open-minded and child-oriented. They also encouraged collaboration across departments and breakdown siloed work habits. 80 people attended, including senior officers from across the council, partners from the third sector–charities, non-profits, and community organisations. Attendees were divided into groups, each named for a traditional Scottish game. They used space hoppers to bounce to interactive workshops and went through participatory exercises that the team first encountered at the Urban 95Academy. “The vibe on the day was amazing,” recalls Brady. “We really tapped into something.”

Susanne Millar was appointed Chief Executive of Glasgow’s city council not long before the summit. As a mother, grandmother, and foster mother with 37 years of experience in social work, she already has a deep personal and professional interest in the well-being of children and families. The summit energised her. Glasgow was already committed to eradicating childhood poverty, and this new approach towards early childhood development and urban design integrated naturally with that goal.

Local government can be unwieldy. Predictable problems like shrinking budgets and bloated bureaucracy can slow down projects, but focusing on children and caregivers, Kelly said, helps push through the politics to unite stakeholders. “There’s very few people who say, ‘I don’t want to make things good for children.’” Millar agrees. Child welfare is a priority shared across political parties.

Timing for this endeavor has been ideal. Glasgow’s government operates on a five year cycle. Councillor Kelly’s election in 2017 coincided with the Scottish National Party gaining control of the Glasgow City Council, the first change in governing party in forty years. The shift was seismic, says Brady. The city government is now engaging more frequently and directly with residents. In 2022, Glasgow’s city council voted to become the United Kingdom’s first feminist city. Child-friendly planning is a practical implementation of that goal. These days, with Millar at the helm, the council is collecting granular data about childhood poverty and coordinating innovative location-specific changes. The approach, says Millar, is working. Officials are slowing down and listening more to residents, who, in turn, report feeling valued and supported.

Glasgow’s previous development plan has been criticised for being labyrinthine, with no mention of children or poverty, but the city is now creating a new ten-year plan. This one, which will be adopted in 2027, has been slimmed down for accessibility and incorporates child-friendly building guidelines, with an emphasis on spaces that encourage a mixture of formal play, natural play, and messy play.

The play assessment is evolving as well. Currie is finalising new iterations aimed at toddlers and caregivers. She’s met with the heads of nursery schools to strategise how best to collect data from toddlers and she’s simultaneously creating a massive survey for caregivers. Adults like to give input by voting, she reflected, whereas the kids want to “get dirty and muddy and be out on site and measuring things out.” The results she gets will provide information on what’s working for young families and what isn’t. It will also function as a baseline against which future success will be measured.

In the past, city officers focused on courting developers to come into the city while overlooking the needs of young people and their caregivers. These days, city officials believe there’s no need to choose between developers and children. “If you want to attract big investors like Barclays,” says Brady, “you want to make it a nice city to live in.” Afterall, adds Currie, “Who doesn’t want the city to be lively with children having fun?”