1 March 2021
Data-Driven Strategy Development for Children's Play in the City — Derya İyikul for TESEV
TESEV has published Data-Driven Strategy Development for Children's Play in the City as TESEV Briefs 2021/2, written by Derya İyikul and translated from the Turkish original by Emine Ayhan. The brief argues that playgrounds produced under a protectionist, safety-first policy have converged on a single standard type — colourful equipment on rubber surfacing, fenced off for the exclusive use of children — which serves neither early childhood and their caregivers nor the older age groups it was nominally designed for. Against this, it makes the case that planning for children's play requires data, and that local governments in Istanbul currently hold little more than the size and location of their parks.
The brief sets out the Istanbul Play Master Plan, initiated by Superpool with İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality within the Urban95 Programme, which shifts the question from a city with playgrounds to a playable city. At its centre is the Playgrounds Evaluation Form Derya prepared out of her Urban95 work and her 2019 ITU master's thesis on the playgrounds of Beyoğlu, intended for field application across roughly 400 İBB parks and evaluating each under four headings — location, accessibility, general features, and play value — with analysis and mapping to follow with TESEV. The closing recommendations extend beyond the park boundary: streets, playgrounds, and squares counted as playable space, loose parts and landscape in place of catalogue equipment, and cooperation across the municipal units responsible for green space, transport, and children.