Ask an adult what they remember about being three years old, and it’s likely they won’t recall much. That disconnect can be a problem for advocates of child-friendly cities. If people can’t relate to three-year-olds, they’re less likely to support projects that benefit small children and their caregivers. That’s why Rodrigo Ramalho, head of the Department of Education and Physical Activity in Torres Vedras, Portugal, uses periscopes. Made of cardboard and mirrors, these simple devices allow adults to view their surroundings from the height of 95 centimetres, the average height of a three-year-old. “Parking meters are huge at 95 centimetres,” recalls Filipa Baptista, a founding member of the Portugal branch of the International Play Association (IPA). A giant stuffed bear in a storefront was “terrifying.” Both Ramalho and Baptista say this literal shift in perspective can be transformative. “If everyone could have that experience,” says Baptista, “our work would be so much easier.”
When work is play: Child-friendly interventions spread across Portugal
Seeing through a child’s lens to transform urban play.
For Baptista and Ramalho, their work is play. Ramalho facilitates outdoor play in Torres Vedras, and Baptista works in communication for IPA Portugal. The two, who are married with two kids, share a foundational belief that access to outdoor play is essential for childhood development. It’s an opinion cosigned by the United Nations, which ratified the Children’s Bill of Rights in 1989. Yet in Portugal, where they live, access to the outdoors is diminishing. Children spend up to ten hours a day in school, longer than most European children, and except for a short outdoor recess, they’re sitting down. This schedule creates dangerous associations: indoor space is for sedentary activities like learning while the outdoor spaces are for play, which is optional.
For young children, play and learning happen in tandem. When kids are stationary, creativity, adaptation, and thinking decrease, but when those same children engage in free play, they develop emotional, social and cultural skills. In his book Free the Children, Carlos Neto, a professor of Human Motricity at the University of Lisbon and the Portuguese representative at the international IPA, calls for a radical rethinking of how school space is used. Instead of limiting outdoor activities to recess, he advocates seeing both indoor and outdoor spaces as “part of the educational project.”
In Torres Vedras, Ramalho’s programming activates Neto’s philosophy. With support from the city mayor, Laura Rodrigues, his office has trained preschool and kindergarten teachers on the importance of outdoor free play, redesigned concrete playgrounds to be more natural, challenging, and flexible spaces, and developed new free play locations throughout the city. One of Ramalho’s favourite interventions is placing collections of loose objects, like cardboard boxes or tires, in parks where they inspire imaginative play. Another city-wide program called “The King Demands” encourages children and families to appropriate public spaces for recreation. Though he encountered some initial resistance to his ideas, Ramalho says turnout has been strong. “We are trying to give more autonomy and more freedom for the children,” says Ramalho. His efforts benefit caretakers, too. When kids gather, so do grown-ups. “You can see a lot of parents talking with each other, sitting and relaxing with the children playing near them,” Ramalho says.
Baptista and Ramalho came to this work while raising their own children. When their son was born, they lived in an apartment. “As a mother, it was very hard for me to see how hard it is for kids to play naturally,” Baptista recalls. Shortly after, they moved to a house where he could easily access the outdoors. Around the same time, Ramalho was promoted from his job as a physical education teacher and sports coach to work for the city government. In 2020, he attended the Urban95 Academy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, an opportunity he calls, “the most interesting experience of [his] professional life.” That training affirmed his ideas about childhood development and pushed him to expand his programmes further. Inspired and motivated, he talked about his work with Baptista. Two years later, she attended the Urban95 Academy on behalf of Mafra, a neighbouring city where she was working at the time. “It was a huge experience for me,” says Baptista, noting that it was at the training that she first encountered the child’s view periscope.
Ramalho and Baptista’s ideas are often whimsical–designing building stations with sticks, saws, and twine, constructing with cardboard, splashing in mud–but the problems they’re addressing are absolutely serious. A generation ago, parents had to call their kids in for dinner after a long day of play. Now, parents struggle to separate their kids from screens and get them outside. Obesity is rising, and social play has plummeted. “[Kids] play much less now than 10 or 15 years ago,” Ramalho says. “They play only inside their houses, completely alone. That’s very dangerous for them and for us as a society.”
A particularly stark area of loss is risk assessment. The hazards of outdoor play are often instructive. Activities like tree climbing not only help kids learn, they also teach crucial life skills such as evaluating safety and ability. That’s especially important in Torres Vedras, which is on the coast. The beach is a beloved place to play but the surf can be dangerous. The ability to assess risk and make informed decisions saves lives.
These days, momentum for child-friendly programming is spreading beyond the city’s boundaries. In 2022, Torres Vedras won a European Innovative Teaching Award from the European Commission and has since become a leader in Portugal’s “Playing in the Educating City” initiative, a working group that has promoted nearly 60 play projects in Portuguese cities. As a photographer and graphic designer, Baptista believes documenting these projects and sharing them widely will spur even greater change. “When people start seeing children in the street again, they are going to remember the old times,” she says. “There’s so much hope in this work.”.
Anya Groner’s award-winning writing explores the changing environment’s impact on community and equity. Her journalism and essays are featured in Guernica, The New York Times, The Oxford American, Orion Magazine and The Atlantic.