The Daily Observer

A blog of urban issues, travel to obscure places, amateur photography, and blatant self-promotion.

Monday, July 02, 2012

Building cities with children (part 2)

In a previous post, I discussed an experiment that I did while working for the Planning Property and Development at the City of Winnipeg. In this experiment, I asked children to design cities and neighbourhoods in which they would like to live. Although this experiment was a success, it seemed to me that half-an-hour was not long enough to generate really thorough designs of cities. Well, I'm back at it again, and this time the kids have an entire week.

As the director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery Art Camps, I will be running a camp called Construction Zone (pdf), in which the children will get a chance to explore our city inside and out, watch people as they interact with public space, construct their own buildings, and fit them together into an entire neighbourhood. Once the camp starts, I will be posting the results on this blog, or on the WAG blog if they will let me!

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posted by Gabriel Hurley @ 2:52 PM  

2 Comments:

  • At 6:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Good concept. Its great that you took the time to engage people, kids.

    I have a question. While you worked at the department, was there ever a time where your department was asked to imagine a City without rails.

    Just bluesky the concept.

    I am curious because over the years , I asked and I was never able to pinpoint any research material on the subject.

    Either you were hamstrung or no one noticed. I found it peculiar and odd that these types of sessions were not taking place yet we were planning a City of sorts..

    Thanks in advance. Liv

    Perhaps a blogpost of what the Planning department actually did would help people understand why the City evolves as it does and where the power ultimately lies.

     

  • At 1:46 PM, Blogger Gabriel Hurley said…

    I was working for the public consultation part. I was not privy to whatever the Department did with the feedback after they got our reports. In my conversations with citizens, I don't remember anyone mentioning the issue, although I obviously was not the only person doing consultations.

     

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