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The press agencies serve up this type of news with a somewhat mundane frequency. I have just read, for example, a recent news item from China. Today, a day like any other, they are studying turning a rural area near Beijing into the first ecocity in this vast, dynamic country. The article explains the innovations and improvements that are to be introduced and which will transform the place into a paradigm of doing things well… Quite a symbol of sustainability. A tram system will be used to reduce people’s dependence on private vehicles, and all this so soon after the typical private vehicle in China moved on two wheels, thanks to human traction! China, then, will have the most sustainable city. This would be a sufficiently interesting title in itself if it were not because over recent months the media have also hyped up other examples in the same way that they talk about the case of this Chinese city. Masdar, in Abu Dhabi, is a particularly eccentric case as it is in the middle of the desert and is being promoted by one of the main oil producers. There is also the credible case of Freiburg in Germany, or Portland in the USA, which has been chosen as the most sustainable city in the country that has the well-deserved title of the “the world’s most wasteful country”.

The phenomenon of lists is not just found in the case of cities. Let’s have a look at advertising. The car with lowest emissions, we read in the advert on page 7, and on page 19 we find another vehicle that claims its slice of environmental commitment. Efficiency is now stressed as a selling point in some white goods shops. Our trusted salesman can look us in the eye, without blinking, presenting one product after another: the most efficient fridge in the world, the most economical dishwasher… Even the energy companies and oil companies have taken up the baton to present their products in a race that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, often with a hint of unnerving gesticulations of schizophrenia.

Our liking for lists is a response to a marketing strategy, that much is clear, and also tells us a little about humans in the early years of the 21^st century. Competitive, materialistic, fast and volatile. But that thought is worthy of another article, or perhaps a whole encyclopaedia.

Let’s go back to the lists. The thing is that all this fuss about which is the most sustainable city, the most efficient washing machine, the most economical car, etc. has both a positive and a negative side. The positive side is that excellence in the field of sustainability is a coveted marketing value; it is a brand that interests tourists and which seduces investors and creates business opportunities. The negative side is the hubbub that surrounds it, the worst educational tool. Confused labelling creates distrust, not curiosity; the sum of superlatives means that we look at these proposals with irony, not with the desire to find out more details. It is a shame, because pulling out this kind of list should guarantee that interesting practices and reflections are discovered. The example of Freiburg mentioned above seems to be cut and dried, but the cases of Wanzhuang, near Beijing, and Masdar, in Abu Dhabi, are very different. Which tools are available to help us see beyond the official and institutional propaganda, which most certainly carries some weight in these two cases? How can we filter out the messages for investors that the two news items probably contain? How can we separate the wheat from the chaff? Thorny stuff…

Does it make sense to turn to these lists in search of learning values? It maybe doesn’t make much sense to entrust this task to these “top ten” lists. At the end of the day this should fall to the educational community, academic publications, government and producers and manufacturers through the use of stickers and labels, etc.

In fact, this thought leads us into a trap. Surely the media and what they print also have immense educational and learning power? Of course they do. They have this power, but it is more difficult to control it and adapt it to curricula. They ultimately mould the way in which we see things and how we interpret them. Pretending nothing has happened is a strategy that is as comfortable as it is ill-chosen.

The classification of objects or cities should be interpreted properly. The journalism world has for some time fed off the “spectacularization of information” and the lists of “the cleanest”, “most polluting”, “most efficient” and a long etcetera are becoming increasingly more common. They help simplify things and make them more attractive, which is important when in a news item. The first job for the educator and the student is to heighten their critical view. This is an essential task within the entire educational cycle. Not just so they know how to “read” classifications, but rather know how to interpret news in general. In this case knowing how to analyse things is the first step in learning.

Finally, we discover that in effect some of these lists are sufficiently interesting and certainly have learning value. This will not be the case of Wanzhuang or Masdar, but it will, for example, be the case of Portland. The US portal sustainlane.com has offered a very interesting virtual space for some time now. It is a blend of social network and information repository. In 2006 the list mentioned above was published, classifying the city of Oregon as the most sustainable in the United States. The advantage in this case is that the people behind the classification explain the criteria used in an intelligent and somewhat exhaustive fashion in an attempt to be transparent.

The interested reader can review the items analysed and get an idea of the complexity of this venture. In truth, any type of classification is a game, a way of organising reality, always so elusive, always so multi-faceted. It is therefore important to be able to analyse the criteria followed. We certainly recommend you take a look at sustainlane.1

But for sure, the United States is far away. It is far in terms of distance, and far in terms of the consumer culture and the administrative and political organisation. There are some interesting initiatives going on in Catalonia. The Generalitat has its environmental award scheme. The Environmental Forum has set up the Ecocity awards, with state-wide scope. The awards given to Local Environmental Initiatives by Barcelona County Council are used to highlight good practices related in this case to energy and water issues. From a different perspective the magazine Opcions also contributes rigorously and regularly to analysing consumer goods from a sustainable perspective.

Maybe it is not spectacular stuff, given that the Catalans are known for their cautious and careful nature, but it is a good start. The start of what? Of getting to know the lie of the land, for example. Innovative solutions. Maybe some of these towns are close to the school or college… The award is, in this case, an excuse to get to know at firsthand an experience that is worth following, that is worth getting to know.

Educational work could also be more proactive in nature. Perhaps through research credits, students could work in class on a system of indicators that would allow neighbourhoods or areas of the city or town to be classified according to their level of sustainability. Distant from the news mentioned above, with their hidden agendas included, this work could be an interesting way to perceive information and present it in an easy-to-understand and attractive way. The act of creating the list would mean that the student has to manage complexity. But this is not about doing mathematics. However precisely because they are not mathematics, the choice of good practices is more interesting and is even a cause for debate.

As the end result after this work the student will be furnished with greater maturity when faced with headlines that talk day after day about more sustainable cities, cars with fewer emissions, or more efficient white goods.

At least, then, something good will have come out of it.

Oriol Lladó

Environmental journalist

Furthermore, the city that they propose strongly resembles ancient cities. When asked how he imagined the city of the future, the acclaimed Italian architect Renzo Piano replied: “As similar as possible to that of the past”. It isn’t about being romantic or nostalgic, but rather it’s about reclaiming the role of public places in the city, their function as a place for meeting and exchange, a place to express diversity that has gradually been lost up to the present day. The Renaissance city was dreamt up as an alternative to the medieval model of the castle, based on the principle of separation: the powerful and wealthy feudal lords lived within the castle walls, and outside the walls was the village of the serfs and the peasants at the service of the powerful. The city broke with this way of thinking and was built around a main square, a symbol of public space. The governmental palace and cathedral were in this square, and the market was also brought to life here, a symbol of exchange and interaction. The historical city did not have areas separated by different social classes. Its streets were attractive as they were made up of the fine mansions of the nobles, built by great architects, and the humble houses of the artisans. Diversity enriched the city and made it pleasing to the eye. This is the same as ecosystems: an ecosystem will be healthy and full of life if it is complex and joined-up, if each of its parts interacts with others.

For some decades since the Second World War, cities have managed to sell their own character down the river by adopting a model of separation and specialisation. The historical city centres have become depopulated, suburbs have emerged, neighbourhoods have been created for rich and poor, dormitory towns, cultural areas, working areas… In this modern city, thought out for adult male workers, the car has become king. Cars have caused the city to lose its public spaces, clean air, silence, beauty…

Most citizens feel left out in this city adapted to suit working adult citizens. In fact, take a look at the streets of a city, whether large or small, and you will be hard pushed to see elderly people, children roaming freely or disabled people getting about in wheelchairs. These groups of people have been excluded from public spaces and separate, specialised spaces have been created for them, with services for the elderly, disabled or children (from the infant school to the nursery or play centre).

The right to play

Children are the first to lose out in this city as they cannot exercise their most important right, recognised in article 31 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child: the right to play. To be able to play properly, a child needs to be able to go out alone with his friends and experience adventure, discovery, surprise, obstacles, risk. He has to savour the sweet taste of victory and the humiliation of defeat. He needs to get to know new people, unknown places, but most importantly, get to know himself. All of this would be possible if there weren’t adults accompanying them, watching over them. This option has unfortunately become tremendously difficult in the modern world. A child in a developed country will probably spend all of his time between school, homework, extra-curricular classes (languages, sport, music, dance, etc.) and the television or computer, not even having the possibility of living experiences by himself or with his friends. If we continue along this path, tests, difficulties and risk will disappear from the lives of our children. When asked the question “What is play for a child?” the well-known psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto replied: “I would say that it is enjoying fulfilling a desire by overcoming risks”.

This situation leads to serious developmental consequences with dramatic effects that can often be seen during adolescence. Because they have never been able to experience the risks that correspond to three, five or eight year-olds, the desire for risk, challenges and danger builds up. This explodes the first time the thirteen or fourteen year-old girl or boy gets hold of the keys to a house or a motorbike. And we are shocked and surprised by the many young victims on the roads, by the disconcerting number of cases of school bullying, by the increasingly young age that young people start smoking, drinking or taking drugs, and by incomprehensible teenage suicides.

The city of children

We set up the City of Children project seventeen years ago in the light of this situation of unease, neglect and danger. The project aims to get those who govern cities to ask the children for help. We encourage them to adopt this as a new parameter (instead of the model of the adult, male worker) to evaluate and change the city based on the conviction that a city adapted to children is a better city for everybody.1

The idea is to give children the right to speak, ask them for advice, listen to them and take their opinions into account. It also consists of returning autonomy to children, allowing them to fully exercise their citizenship which gives them the right to freely roam the city’s public space. If this were to happen, children would be able to live essential experiences once again, would become more independent and would need fewer toys, less TV and fewer afterschool classes. For less money, children would have more fun and would grow up to be healthier.2

If children can again experience autonomy in the city, walk to school with their friends and not with their parents, play in their neighbourhood, going to places that best adapt to the games that they choose and not just parks created especially for them, we will have achieved an important change. The city will become safer. We, the adults, deny our children freedom because the city is dangerous, but in fact the city is dangerous because it has turned its back on children. The presence of children on the streets and in squares obliges residents to look out for them, to be responsible and supportive. The Safe routes to school programme was run in different municipal areas of the city of Buenos Aires, a suburban area with a high level of environmental degradation and hazards, registering a subsequent reduction of more than 50% criminal activity.3

What do the children suggest?

After more than fifteen years experience with children’s councils and after gathering hundreds of proposals from youngsters, we can confirm that Italian, Spanish and Argentinean children share certain needs and concerns. We will now give three of the most common requests by way of example.

Public spaces

Children do not want specially-designed spaces that always remain the same and where they need to go accompanied by their parents. They want to use real spaces in the city alongside other people, adults, the elderly, and thereby draw out their own spaces and experiences. A space is public if and when it is alive and visited. It is public if it corresponds to the diverse interests of diverse groups and generations of people. It is public if it can be walked or run across, if it is sufficiently safe, so that children, elderly or disabled people feel like they are at home in their own city. It is public if it is attractive. One child said “Just going to school is lovely, but the streets should also be lovely”.

Fewer cars

Children come into great conflict with cars. These take up their play spaces, make the street more dangerous, justifying prohibiting them from going out alone. One child in an Italian city made a suggestion to the mayor: “There are loads of car parks in this city, why don’t we share them? Half the space for cars and half for the children”. The suggestion was met with a condescending smile but the mayor had misjudged. The proposal was wise, and would have improved the city for everybody, not just the children.

The right to play

Children ask to be able to play, and to play for the right amount of time and every day. We do not understand why they have to go to school for so many hours (article 28 of the Convention), then they have homework to do, leaving little time for playing. If a city set itself the goal of guaranteeing that all children could play, we would need to remove all the prohibitions that currently exist in public places and community spaces (these are unlawful after the Convention). We would have to close play areas and allow them to play in public places (pavements, streets, squares, gardens). We should empower children’s self-sufficiency. A girl from Suria, a town in the province of Barcelona, said “Play areas are always flat and we can’t hide” and one boy from Buenos Aires pointed out that “For a square to be good for children it shouldn’t have too much security”.

In conclusion, a girl from Rosario, Argentina, said: “It’s all the adults’ fault. We should set limits on grownups”. A terrible indictment, but if we observe the environmental degradation of our cities, the growing percentage of serious illnesses and the paucity of experiences lived by our treasured children, can we really consider this to be misleading or an over-reaction?

Francesco Tonucci

Director of the International Project of the Italian National Research Council

Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies

2 Children in our cities are being exposed to the serious risk of childhood obesity, mainly caused by a sedentary life at home, in the car and in front of the television. Paediatricians are also in agreement with the project, insofar as it promotes autonomy in children so that they can go to school on their own or play with their friends.

3 According to that stated by the security director of the City of Buenos Aires in a public conference in July 2005.