I recently joined a roundtable at Manchester Metropolitan University hosted by the Institute of Place Management and the Institute of Children’s Futures, exploring how children and young people can help shape our high streets, town centres and urban places.
The discussion made me think about what I have seen as a placemaking consultant and during my time as a High Streets Task Force Expert working with towns and cities across England.
It feels to me that while we are getting better at talking about children and young people in placemaking, we’re still not very good at designing places with them.
I’ve seen some really positive examples, including new playgrounds designed for teenagers alongside those for small children, recreation spaces that recognise the needs of teenage girls, who are often overlooked in design decisions, and initiatives such as The Teenage Market – created by our own High Street Consultancy partner Joe Barratt – which give young people opportunities to build skills and make some money in their town centre.
Absent from the conversation
If mixed-use developments are genuinely intended to create communities rather than simply property assets, children and young people need to be considered as users of those places, not visitors to them.
Emma James
I’ve also seen plenty of examples where young people are almost entirely absent from the conversation.
One thing that struck me was that during countless workshops delivered through the High Streets Task Force it was rare that young people were actually in the room. We would spend hours discussing the future of town centres with businesses, landowners, local authorities and community groups, while the people who would inherit those places in ten or twenty years’ time were often missing from the discussion entirely.
At the same time, not all young people are the same. Too often we talk about “young people” as if they are one homogeneous group. The needs of a five-year-old are very different from those of a fifteen-year-old. The experiences of girls and boys can differ significantly. Disabled young people, neurodivergent young people, young carers and those from different cultural backgrounds will all experience places differently. If we really want places to work for everyone, we need to understand the diversity of childhood and teenage years.
Managing, not welcoming
Families enjoying Mayfield Park. Photograph by Mark Waugh and Richard Bloom
For this article, I want to focus specifically on the role of private developers and privately owned public spaces (POPS).
There are some excellent examples. Mayfield Park in Manchester, delivered through a public-private partnership, has rightly been celebrated as the city’s first new public park in decades.
Yet while that achievement deserves recognition, it also raises a more uncomfortable question: why had it taken decades for a city of Manchester’s scale to create a significant new public park?
More commonly, discussions about children and young people in privately managed spaces tend to focus on issues such as skateboards, ball games and teenagers gathering in groups, often resulting in overzealous security responses and complaints from other users.
As someone with teenage boys myself, I often find the reality is much simpler. Most of the time, all they really want is a decent basketball hoop, Wi-Fi and some cheap, filling food.
This disconnect feels important in that too often we design places around managing young people rather than welcoming them, and we focus on the risks they present rather than the value they bring.
Yet if mixed-use developments are genuinely intended to create communities rather than simply property assets, then children and young people need to be considered as users of those places, not visitors to them.
Learning from Great Northern Warehouse
Sandpit at Great Northern Warehouse
For the last decade I have worked with Great Northern Warehouse in Manchester city centre. Over that time, one of the biggest shifts has been recognising that city centres are no longer places people simply visit. Increasingly, they are places people call home.
With essential backing from owners The Peterson Group, asset managers Trilogy Real Estate, and managing agents Workman, we have been able to implement some child- and youth-focused initiatives that I am incredibly proud of.
As more families have moved into the city centre, the conversation has gradually shifted beyond catering solely for adults to considering what a place has to offer a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old. This is something that Great Northern started to explore.
Five years ago, Great Northern installed a giant sandpit and play area in its public square. It was initially introduced as a temporary experiment, but it quickly became one of the most loved features on site. Today it remains a permanent part of the public realm, with sandpit provision included in its future redevelopment plans.
Evidence suggests it has played a role in developing fundamental skills in thousands of children while creating a more welcoming and active public space. The wider social value programme at Great Northern generated over £4.1 million in social value between 2018 and 2022, with more than 5,800 children and young people participating in free play and wellbeing activities.
The Little Northerners indoor play space
Alongside this, an empty retail unit was transformed into Little Northerners, a free indoor play space for pre-school children and their families. Feedback from city centre parents consistently highlighted the need for somewhere warm, welcoming and free to meet other families away from cafes and commercial venues.
A partnership with Table Tennis England introduced Ping Hub, providing free table tennis tables, bats and balls that are used by people of all ages, including children and teenagers.
The site’s Village Hall has also become an important home for youth-led and youth-focused activity. Alongside Quiet Space, a weekly group run by and for neurodiverse teenagers, the space has hosted creative workshops, craft groups, writing courses and community activities for young people. An after-school filmmaking club and a book club for young Muslim women are due to launch shortly.
Youth-friendly places aren’t always about major capital investment.
Emma James
Many of these activities have been made possible through a partnership with local charity Forever Manchester. Working together, we have used small grants from the landlord to support local residents and groups to develop and deliver free community activities in the Village Hall. This has taught us that youth-friendly places aren’t always about major capital investment – sometimes it is about providing space, simple resources and experienced partners who know how to seek out and support local ideas.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, places that attract families also tend to feel safer, more welcoming and more actively used throughout the day. Family-friendly spaces often contribute to reductions in anti-social behaviour simply because they increase positive activity, passive surveillance and a sense of ownership.
Why more developers don’t do it
If the benefits are clear, why don’t we see more examples? The answer is that creating genuinely child-friendly spaces isn’t easy.
There are real costs associated with building and maintaining facilities.
There are legitimate concerns around safeguarding, health and safety, insurance and liability.
There is the challenge of dedicating valuable city centre space to non-commercial uses when rental values are under pressure.
There is the reality that not everyone respects these spaces. Equipment gets damaged. Facilities require constant maintenance. Staff time is needed to manage issues and support users.
These challenges are real and should not be dismissed, but neither should they become reasons for doing nothing.
The group we still struggle with is teenagers
One of the most interesting discussions during the Manchester roundtable centred around young people, particularly teenagers.
While young children are often considered in placemaking, teenagers seem harder to manage. They are often short on disposable income, tend to gather in groups, and are regularly viewed through the lens of anti-social behaviour or general nuisance.
Many spaces are designed either for small children or paying adults, leaving teenagers somewhere in between, but when you think about it, these are exactly the people who will soon become residents of our developments, customers of our businesses and users of our public spaces.
If we create places where young people feel welcome now, won’t this help them to feel connected to those places in the future?
And maybe the answer isn’t always complicated. It could be a good basketball hoop, cheap food for hungry stomachs, somewhere to sit that is designed for meeting friends, and an opportunity to feed their wants and needs into the process.
I reckon that often the things young people want are pretty similar to what adults want: somewhere they feel welcome, respected and able to belong.
Action not just talk
Every development can find its own equivalent of a giant sandpit – an intervention that responds to the needs of local children and young people.
Emma James
The roundtable repeatedly returned to the idea that children’s participation needs to move beyond consultation and become part of governance and decision making. Young people need information, opportunities to participate, and genuine influence over decisions that affect them.
Maybe this presents an opportunity for private developers. While a giant sandpit is not suited to everywhere, and nor are dedicated youth facilities, all developers could definitely start listening differently. Every development can find its own equivalent of a giant sandpit – an intervention that responds to the needs of local children and young people.
Some practical steps might include:
Establishing youth panels that meet regularly rather than as one-off consultations.
Testing public realm ideas with children and young people before investing capital.
Partnering with local schools, youth organisations and community groups to understand changing needs.
Including young people in ongoing evaluation and place management discussions.
Creating temporary pilots and meanwhile uses before committing to permanent interventions.
Measuring success not simply through footfall and spend, but through belonging, participation and repeat use.
Asking teenagers directly what they want rather than assuming adults already know the answer.
Most importantly, developers need to stop viewing children and young people as a specialist audience. They are place users like the rest of us.
