Promoting Children's Creativity through Designing Urban Environments

Abstract

One of the principles of developed countries is the existence of a talented innovative work force. Children and adolescents, as the creative assets of the future, are the basis and principle of the cities' dynamism and stability in the future; therefore, providing an open space for the creative talents of children and adolescents to flourish for providing the city's future need for them is necessary. Lack of proper standards for designing and open spaces in accordance with the needs of the children has led to studies regarding the attendance to the basic wishes and needs of children like health, transportation, support and education and the growth and flourishment of the children's creativity, as one of the child-friendly standards of cities has been pointed out.  With the belief that the physical environment must provide the conditions for living and flourishing the talents and capabilities of children through creating appropriate grounds, the goal of this study is to present a design guide in which guidelines are presented in order to improve environmental qualities of urban environments to educate the children's creativity.  In this study, which is of the interdisciplinary and practical nature, the descriptive-analytic approach has been used. Therefore, first through the study of the theoretical basis in the field of flourishing the children's creativity and analyzing it, the effective factors on nurturing children's creativity are found and then, the approaches of the child-friendly city and creative city are studied and analyzed and then, their coefficients in devising the design guide has been utilized. This guideline includes the principles and guidelines of urban design. These principles are comfort and convenience, connection with nature, complicatedness and mystery, creativity and innovativeness, flexibility, social interaction and collaboration with the children.