Multi-Scale Approach in Co-Designing Children- And Family-Friendly Open Public Space in Serbian Cities [abstract]

As in many eastern European countries, Serbia is facing depopulation and rapid population ageing. In such a situation, children and families with children are vital assets. This is especially important for medium-sized and small cities in Serbia, as most of them are demographically shrinking despite the recent rise in living standards. Put simply, economic benefits are not enough to keep people from emigrating – a key element is improving the quality of urban life. The national level has recently launched several campaigns and projects to cope with this challenging demographic trend. One of them in the project “Људи чине граде / People Make City”, led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Serbia, in collaboration with the Ministry of Family Care and Demography. One component of this project addresses the design of open public space in Serbian cities to make it more children- and family-friendly, strategically organised in three steps or levels: national, urban, and local. The national level, completed in late 2024, focused on creating a national handbook on children- and family-friendly co-design process for open public space in Serbian cities. The issue was that there was no real policy relating to this topic – including how to plan, design and maintain open public spaces, such as children’s playgrounds in residential areas, school and kindergarten yards, or urban green and pedestrianised spaces. The handbook was developed to address these issues by promoting “positive” measures drawn from such urban places, including design guidelines for young-age-related urban furniture, which were also missing at national level. The handbook development was carried out in parallel with an intensive participatory process involving different stakeholders in Čačak, western Serbia, as a pilot city (i.e., the urban-level pilot. Participants in the co-creation process included local policymakers and experts, teachers, families, and, finally, children. The result of this step is the first urban study on children- and family-friendly open public space, completed in 2025. In line with the inputs from the national handbook, the study examines all open public places in Čačak and proposes adequate measures for each of them, as well as for the general development of the urban territory. Finally, the study sets priorities for future development. One of these places will be co-designed with local children and implemented in the third step of the project, planned for 2026.