JUGAPatraix: the city as playground
Social and urban innovation

JUGAPatraix is a project for social and urban innovation in which we rethink the Patraix neighbourhood from the perspective of childhood in order to transform the public space according to parameters such as inclusion, sustainability and community empowerment. The objective of JUGAPatraix has been to analyse and understand how children aged from 1 to 3 years old interact with the urban elements present in the neighbourhood, so as to perform micro-interventions (urban acupuncture and urban hacking) that diversify and enhance children’s relationships to public space through play. JUGAPatraix was mostly funded by the grants awarded by Valencia City Council to innovation projects responding to Valencia’s 2021 Missions.

The process began with a phase of observation, documentation and analysis where play-based methodologies were adapted to the context of the project, involving the school, families and wider neighbourhood, in order to understand how children aged 1 to 3 see the city. At this stage in life, children’s urban experience is completely experiential. Journeys on foot offer a space for experimentation, discovery and presence. Children do not conceive of journeys simply as a route from A to B; rather the path itself is the destination – a route to playing. The results of this analysis are compiled in an initial report called Through the Lens of Childhood.

The design and construction phase of the playable interventions was based directly on the lessons learned in the initial phase. The design was elaborated in two ways: on the one hand, elements were co-designed by Fent Estudi Coop. V and Makea Tu Vida Coop. V. ; on the other, suggestions were collected as part of the “PlayStreet: a jugar a la calle!” contest aimed at students from Valencia’s Polytechnic University.

Installation of the various interventions was supported by the urban play and childhood festival, JUGAfest Patraix (11 to 20 November 2022), and involved several activities that explored learning generated by the project itself. JUGAfest aimed to promote the use of public space, giving children the opportunity to test play equipment, and showing the rest of the neighbourhood how these spaces can be viewed differently and repurposed.

Throughout the process a series of online conversations were organised with people who work on issues relating to childhood and play in an urban context, resulting in valuable contributions to the JUGAPatraix project. You can view them by clicking on this link.

The goal of JUGAPatraix is to reclaim pavements, streets and daily journeys as a play space that improves and enriches children’s learning and well-being through spontaneous and free play. It aims to show that grand transformations of the public space are not always necessary, by placing the emphasis on strategic interventions to reduce the frenetic pace of life so typical of urban environments, and generate places where we can simply be, allowing us to recover the community component of our neighbourhoods.