Where We Grow up does Really Matter: Best Practices for Child-Friendly Cities Applied in Tarlabasi(Istanbul)

The article innovative aim is to introduce a research made to suggest some simple ways to improve the planning and design strategies for ensuring the highest sustainability level in child-friendly cities. The environments surrounding us strongly affect our perception of belonging to a place, and our social, mental, physical health. Therefore, designing and planning friendly environments for people of all ages should be perceived as one of the most important responsibilities for planners and politicians. At this point, in order to make cities friendlier for its inhabitants, it is considered useful to focus on the most vulnerable classes of people living in urban environments, such as children, because a city that is friendly for its kids will be welcoming also for anyone else. As a matter of facts, a child-friendly city is usually a urban environment that is suitable for most of its inhabitants and this is even more important in the most critical situations, such as the poorest slums of a developing city, like Istanbul, and its most fragile neighborhoods, like Tarlabasi. The research results highlighted thatTarlabasi has unique spatial child-friendly characteristics, despite its physical, social, and economic disadvantages, and these conditions can be dramatically improved with some very simple and affordable projects.