Play and the City: Alex Bonham

Join Alex Bonham to explore her fascinating new book on the concept of the Playful City. Alex explores how we need our cities to encourage and facilitate play of all kinds more than ever. If we want a world for our children to play in, we need to have a go at doing things differently...

A city that is enjoyable to live in – that provides welcoming spaces, plentiful resources, and an attitude of ‘yes, you can’ – is a playful city. A city that is good for eight-year-olds as well as eighty-year-olds is a city that’s good for all of us.

By looking at how different cities across space and time have sought to encourage and facilitate play, Bonham shows us how to conceptualise our own contemporary city as a game, and encourages us to become participants rather than spectators.