Urban Planning – Challenge @AMAIS

Children of all ages, abilities, gender, social category, cultural backgrounds, should have access to public playgrounds and be able to enjoy them. In many countries, public playgrounds aren’t yet designed in a way that they respond to the diverse needs of the users. Some of them have universal design elements, but the playground is rarely designed as a whole to be inclusive. The lack of accessibility of the playgrounds affects the development of children with disabilities, but also their parents/chaperone (temporarily ablebodied or with disabilities), by restricting their rights to using public facilities.

The situation is no different in Romania. That is why, in October 2022 we tested the Urban Planning Challenge with the AMAIS team in Bucharest and participants with and without disabilities from their regular activities. The challenge was tested with three groups of 3 participants (students, 17-25 years old) and one AMAIS volunteer.

We have selected three public playgrounds situated in the 6th District of Bucharest. Then visited them with each team. They had the possibility to the test how easy it was to get there, if they understand the rules of the playground, if they could use the equipment and analyse what is missing. We also discussed with users of the parks to see how their experience is.

After the visit we brainstormed together on how we could improve the accessibility of the parks. Some of the solutions revolved around having more expertise in public administration and some on how we cand get the user feedback more involved in the design process. All in all in was a really interesting and creative session.