The aim of the Metamorphosis project was to transform car-oriented neighbourhoods into child-friendly places to increase the quality of life for all citizens, and thereby act as ‘beacons’ for other cities who wish to follow. Indeed, the core value of the project relied on the premise that the presence of children in urban public space is a major indicator of a people-oriented and sustainable neighbourhood (Gehl, 2013).
The project applied an innovative and participatory approach, which encompassed the direct involvement of children as crucial players in each phase of the project – from planning through implementation, evaluation, and dissemination. During each phase of Metamorphosis children’s perspectives, suggestions, and ideas were highly valued as essential contributions to create more children-friendly cities. The partners of the project consist of seven European Partner cities, i.e. Alba Iulia (RO), Graz (AT), Meran (IT), Munich (DE), Southampton (UK), Tilburg (NL), and Zurich (CH), which sought to pursue the objectives of the project through the support of six further national research and consultancy partners.
The objectives of Metamorphosis mainly related to:
o transforming car-oriented into children-friendly neighbourhoods, leading to behavioural change and increasing citizens quality of life;
o implementing the vision-building process needed for such transformation;
providing research-based answers to issues related to neighbourhood transformation;
o achieving creative breakthrough innovations for streets, squares and other public spaces in neighbourhoods and urban districts, as for instance in the development, design, governance and planning procedures;
o developing and implementing children-friendly mobility solutions;
o evaluating take-up, involvement, process and impacts using innovative evaluation methodologies;
o using innovative transfer instruments to facilitate the transfer of know-how acquired, from city to city and country to country, also beyond the duration of the project.
