In 1953 when Peter and Alison Smithson presented their now famous grid with Nigel Henderson’s photographs in Aix-en-Provence at CIAM 9, drawing the attention of their fellow architects to the working-class street, the theme of playing children seemed entirely new to the modernist discourse. The generally accepted story is that the human scale re-entered the debates in urbanism through Team 10.
In particular, Aldo Van Eyck’s designs for local playgrounds spread across the city of Amsterdam, pursuing small-scale spatial interventions that reflected the ongoing Habitat debates of the time. They also showed a revived interest from art groups like COBRA, of which van Eyck was a member, in anti-academic outsider art such as “primitive art” or children’s drawings.

But the role of children played a crucial part in city planning from early on. Before Clarence Perry laid out plans for the neighborhood unit in 1923, he had conducted a study on playgrounds. He became particularly interested in questions of community building and how schools could serve their surrounding community as the very heart of it. When the idea of neighborhood unit planning was implemented by the RPAA (Regional Planning Association of America), children were assigned a dominant role in regards to traffic planning. Because of rising numbers of car accidents involving child fatalities, one of the main targets of Clarence Stein’s traffic planning principle was to avoid as many street crossings as possible for children on their way to school or the playground but use underpasses and bridges instead.
A completely different role was given to children in a statement released by the founders of the Congres International d’Architecture Moderne: “A bundle of elementary truths – if already taught at primary school – could form the foundation for an education on dwelling. This education would result in an upbringing of generations having a healthy understanding of an apartment. These generations – future clients of the architect, would be capable of even instructing him on the solution for the long neglected housing problem.” 1
(Hilpert 1984:97)

In many ways the educational-political matrix guiding projects and assumptions concerning both colonized and children was that they should be “developed.”(CL)

Hilpert, Thilo (Ed.) (1984): Le Corbusiers „Charta von Athen“ Texte und Dokumente: Kritische Neuausgabe. Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn Verlagsgesellschaft mbH.
1 Own translation:
„Ein Bündel elementarer Wahrheiten, auf der Volksschule bereits unterrichtet, könnte die Grundlage einer Erziehung zum Wohnen ausmachen. Dieser Unterricht hätte zur Folge, Generationen heranzuziehen, die eine gesunde Auffassung von der Wohnung haben. Diese Generationen, zukünftige Auftraggeber des Architekten, wären imstande, ihm sogar die Lösung des – allzu lange vernachlässigten – Wohnungsproblems vorzuschreiben.“