#2 Why Our High Streets Have Erased Children
A conversation between Emma Bearman, Founder at PLAYFUL ANYWHERE C.I.C. and Romy Rawlings FLI FRSA at DeepGreen.
Emma, in playful mode
Emma is the founder of Leeds-based social enterprise, Playful Anywhere CIC, and is passionate about place-centred play. She works at the intersection of play, public space, and civic participation, creating conditions where communities, and particularly children and young people, can shape the places they live. I've been following Emma's activities on LinkedIn for some time and, through exchanges about Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (of all things), I learned more about her unique approach to playful places.
Perhaps surprisingly, our conversation wasn't about 'play on the way', equipment, or the countless child-centric problems we're sadly aware of today. Instead, we covered much deeper territory through Emma's insights and had a fascinating conversation about how and where our approach to child-friendly cities has gone so terribly wrong, and how we might catalyse better outcomes for the next generation. We have no time to waste.
Consume or Go Home
Although children's play is clearly a much broader issue than our town and city centres, there's a growing shift towards child-friendly planning that's long overdue. Urban spaces, and particularly high streets, are the toughest nut to crack for a huge variety of adult, capitalistic, and consumerist reasons. From this position, Emma questions why children still aren't treated as vitally important citizens in our high streets. Why don't we consider children - and nature - as essential components of our town and city centres?
When asked about their local high street, many children's answers reveal something profound about how we've designed our towns and cities. Quite simply, most don't go there and they don't know where to start if asked what would make it relevant to them. The high street, that supposedly democratic public space at the heart of our communities, has systematically erased children from its consciousness.
This isn't accidental neglect. It's the logical outcome of decades of decisions that have prioritised profit extraction, risk aversion, and adult convenience over children's right to belong in public space. The consequences compound across generations, leading to young people who feel no connection to, and therefore no stake in, the future of their town centres.
The Lost Generation of Saturday Jobs
Emma traces her own relationship to public space back to a childhood where necessity bred creativity. Growing up as an only child on a council estate in the 1970s, boredom became her stimulus. She'd walk a neighbour's dog for payment in cake and find ways to make her own entertainment in a world with only three TV channels and no internet. Crucially, she had a Saturday job:
“I had a sense of place on the high street because I worked on the high street, so I could spend my earnings and hang out at the Wimpy as a little treat.”
Sharing childhoods in the same decade, we reminisced about knickerbocker glories and the Wimpy Bender (you probably had to be there…!).
So, what options exist now for that transition into young adulthood? Today's teenagers face a radically different reality where work regulations, though ostensibly progressive, have made it much harder for young people to gain both independence and spending money. The result? Many have been priced out of both earning and spending on their high street. Without economic participation, there's no social participation. Without social participation, there's no sense of ownership. And without ownership, the next generation won't fight for high streets that don't matter to them.
From Citizens to Problems
We've also deliberately erased other legitimate ways young people can have a place on the high street. Teenagers, when they do appear, are generally viewed through a deficit lens, and so often as antisocial problems to be moved along.
This antipathy towards young people reveals something deeper: we've forgotten that young people are citizens with the talents, skills, and insights to teach us how to live differently. Instead of protecting them to the point of exclusion or dispersing them when more than two or three gather, we should recognise that they have much to teach us.
“The irony is stark. We lament empty shops while making it impossible for young entrepreneurs to try pop-up ventures. We complain about anti-social behaviour while designing every element of public space to prevent lingering, playing, or spontaneous gathering. We glare if they’re too noisy, too boisterous, or simply take up too much space.”
The Imagination Conundrum
There's a more fundamental issue: young people lack the language and experience to imagine what might be possible if we were to let them in. Emma notes from her placemaking work that you can’t simply ask them what they'd like to see on their high street because they have no point of reference. They're certainly not aware of the exemplar projects that professionals aspire to.
Rob Hopkins, in his book From What Is to What If, talks about 'longing for the future', but how can you long for something you have no language for? Without lived experience of joy in public spaces, young people can't articulate alternatives to what exists today. They're trapped in a poverty of imagination, not because they lack creativity but because we've given them nothing to build on.
This is why Emma's work focuses on intervention rather than consultation. She deliberately provides playful interventions and experiences, starting conversations by playing and doing. She dislikes providing 'solutions' and believes we must challenge the perception that play opportunities exist only in playgrounds.
“It’s about asking not what equipment children want, but how they want to feel in a space, then creating conditions where they might just lose track of time for several hours doing something they didn’t plan.”
The Civic Curriculum Opportunity
Amidst this gloom, there's a glimmer of hope. England is introducing a new civic curriculum in schools from age 11, representing an opportunity to encourage young people into true participation. However, this vision could easily be squandered if the curriculum focuses only on voting mechanics rather than genuine, broad participatory power. Will it remain too abstract and lack grounding in lived experience? Will it treat citizenship as something that begins only at 16 or 18 rather than encouraging it at any age?
Emma's vision encompasses something radically different: project-based learning that treats the high street as a microcosm of individual power. We need to question why young people go to their high street, or why not. How can we change their perceptions, so these public spaces become relevant to their lives?
When we understand how powerful children could feel, can we then support them so they grow up in their town or city centres playing, where their ideas have been brought to life? If we achieve that, they're less likely to become teenagers and adults alienated from the high street. They'll expect it to be a place where they can play an active part.
The Wiki Vision
One of Emma's 'wicked problems' is high street ownership and usage, and she dreams of a public wiki to address this. Imagine plaques or QR codes on every empty shop, linking to openly accessible information on ownership, barriers to future occupation, what communities want there, and what's worked historically. Everyone could discover who owns a property and how to contact them.
The technology exists, but what's missing is the will, since many people profit from the friction that exists in the land ownership process. This opacity clearly serves adult interests, whether property speculation, land banking, or extractive development models, but it actively harms children's ability to understand their environment and imagine an alternative future.
Learning from Bradford
Emma points to Bradford as an example of a city that has asked different questions around inclusivity. Their vision has centred on dignity and whether they can create places where those who have the least feel as welcome as those who have the most.
The resulting public realm feels remarkably domestic in scale, more English country garden than hostile urban plaza. Emma noted it's quite strange to visit a city centre and feel a sense of domesticity or experience such a feminine place. There's something soothing about this approach and it provides a real balm at a relatable scale that softens the hard, blunt, brutal edges of a city.
Most importantly, Bradford has achieved this through a long-term vision held firm across political cycles, Theirs has been a sustained commitment to asking the right questions, even when answers are uncomfortable or solutions challenge profit-driven conventions.
The Pragmatic Optimist
So, what's to be done in other cities that urgently need more of this approach? Emma explains she's pragmatic about the challenges and sees collaborating with like-minded people as a potential way forward. She actively seeks out others who understand that encouraging children and young people into high streets is vital to their long-term success. She always questions whether she can offer what's needed in a project and understands there is no simple business model for genuinely transformative work.
“The main problems to tackle are the opacity of high street ownership; procurement systems around our public spaces that favour extraction over stewardship; the absence of revenue funding for ongoing activation and maintenance; and the fundamental mindset shift needed to see children as citizens with rights rather than as risks to be managed. ”
It’s quite a list!
Conclusion: The Present Tense
What keeps Emma going is that, unlike most adults, children are present in the moment. They know how to eke joy out of everything and, given the chance to play, they always lead the way.
Her vision is deceptively simple. If we routinely saw children in our town and city centres taking up space, playing, and having fun, people would see it as a nice place to be. There'd be a lovely hum and the sound of laughter, riotous colour and movement, which would be glorious.
Imagine civic decision-makers having to wade through cardboard and chalk to get to work. Imagine children wanting to make tree houses and realising there are no trees: what could be done about that? Imagine young people discovering storm drains transformed into a beautiful place to splash about in. Of course these things are possible (not least through well-designed SuDS), but it takes real staying power not to lose sight of the vision.
Perhaps we simply need to remember what we've forgotten: that children aren't future citizens. They're citizens right now, experiencing and internalising our adult priorities every single day. And until we design high streets where they belong, we're not just failing them, we're ensuring nobody will fight for these places in future. The question isn't whether we can afford to put children at the centre of our town centres. It's whether we can afford not to.
Coming next month:
Lynda Thompson is a professional questioner and loves ensuring everyone's voice is heard. Like me, she's relentlessly curious (her son describes her as ethically nosy!) and, as a seasoned researcher, she helps organisations make more informed strategic decisions. But what happens to the immensely valuable insights Lynda draws out through her work? Are they always acted upon or too often shelved as part of a box-ticking exercise? Do clients really want the answers they claim to seek?
If purpose driven businesses are ever to have a truly positive impact, the invaluable insight gleaned from their stakeholders (whether employees, customers or decision makers) must be taken seriously. So what needs to change?