Urban Thinkscape: Playing to Learn in Public Spaces

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

Objective
The United States has an education problem. With limited community resources, high poverty rates, and few opportunities to read with a caregiver or to play spatial and mathematical games, children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are often well behind their more affluent peers by the time they start school in language development (Hoff, 2013), spatial skills (Levine et al., 2010), and early numeracy (Jordan & Levine, 2009). Most of the efforts to close these gaps have focused on school-based reforms. However, only 20% of children’s waking time is spent in the classroom. A significant portion of the other 80% of children’s time is spent in community public spaces—a setting that is often underutilized and where opportunities for learning are often overlooked. In these spaces, adults are often using their phones or giving their children phones or tablets to occupy them (Radesky et al., 2014). How can we transform places where people gather or wait into hubs for playful learning? Bus stops offer one opportunity to test this idea. In the Urban Thinkscape project, we asked whether it might be possible to reimagine a bus stop (and adjacent area) as a learning opportunity instead of merely a place to wait for a ride.

Perspectives
Urban Thinkscape marries the Conscious Cities movement in design with research from the science of learning. Started by architect Itai Palti and neuroscientist Moshe Bar in 2015, the Conscious Cities movement aims to create intuitive, responsive, people-centric cities using cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and technology. Researchers involved in Conscious Cities are investigating the ways in which learning and development are influenced by the built environment (Brekke, 2016). Play has been identified as one way to bring people together to use public spaces and interact in ways not done previously (Sumerling, 2017). Designed in collaboration with Conscious Cities movement leader Palti, Urban Thinkscape places exciting learning opportunities directly within cityscapes in the places where people regularly go.

Significance
Urban Thinkscape is designed as a rich placemaking initiative created to increase caregiver-child discourse and engagement with activities, which are designed to promote self-regulation, language, mathematical, and spatial skills. Urban Thinkscape allows us to think of learning beyond the classroom. It uses the city itself as the agent of change in an effort to narrow the achievement gap between low- and middle-income children.

Author

• Brenna Hassinger-Das, Pace University