The creative city is not the one that provides more things to do, but the one that leaves more things to decide

When a space remains open, play finds its own form.

When I was a child, I lived in a neighborhood of Buenos Aires called Recoleta. There, on one of its avenues, Coronel Díaz, there had once been a very well-known beer factory in my country: Quilmes.

The factory had been closed for a long time and eventually the whole plot was sold to build a large shopping mall. To lay the foundations for such a large project, that stretch of the avenue was closed for a while and a gigantic hole was dug.

And something unexpected happened.

The children of the neighborhood began using it to play football.

There were no playgrounds. No grass. No goalposts. There was practically nothing but dirt. But for those children, most of whom lived in apartments, that enormous empty space was glorious. It brought new friendships, invented matches, created encounters and, for a few months, became a small paradise.

Perhaps that is why I am so interested in this question: how much does a space really need in order to awaken play?

It is not always necessary to design everything. It is not always necessary to fill a place with objects, instructions, colors, functions or activities. Sometimes, what a space needs in order to become creative is exactly the opposite: not to be completely decided.

For ByBa, this idea is fundamental. Creativity appears when a person can intervene in what is available, read a possibility where others only see emptiness, transform a condition into a new scene. And children do this naturally when they find a margin for decision.

That enormous dirt hole in Buenos Aires had not been designed as a park, but for a while it functioned as something perhaps more powerful: an open space where play could invent itself.

How much does a space need in order to awaken play?

This story led me to explore some fascinating cases of cities that were intentionally rethought to become more playful, creative and livable.

And we will go through them, one by one.

Today we begin with Aldo van Eyck and Amsterdam.

After the Second World War, Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck began designing small playgrounds using empty lots and urban corners. In collaboration with Amsterdam’s Public Works Department, he developed, from 1947 onward, a network of playgrounds that eventually exceeded 700 play spaces across the city. Many of them appeared precisely in leftover places: empty plots, corners, urban gaps or areas that had been left without a clear function.

But there was something particular about them.

Van Eyck did not fill the playgrounds with toys that explained to children how they should play. He used sandpits, geometric structures, bars, stones, concrete elements and abstract forms that could imaginatively become many things. A structure could be a mountain, a house, a castle, a hiding place or something that did not yet have a name.

The space proposed. The child decided.

That difference is enormous. A swing or a slide suggests very concrete uses. By contrast, Van Eyck’s abstract forms invited children to explore different possibilities for action: climbing, crossing, hiding, balancing, gathering, imagining, inventing rules, transforming a simple geometry into a story of their own.

It was not only about placing playgrounds in the city. It was about returning children to a presence within it.

The child also belongs to the city

Van Eyck’s way of understanding the city started from an extraordinarily simple idea: the child had to be part of it, not relegated to closed, isolated and perfectly delimited children’s areas.

This is also a form of creative thinking applied to urbanism. A city can treat childhood as something to contain, separate or entertain in specific zones. Or it can recognize that children are also inhabitants, that they also read space, that they also need to appropriate places, routes, corners, edges and squares.

When a city leaves open spaces for play, it does not only offer entertainment. It offers early citizenship. It tells the child: you can also be here; this place has not been completely decided without you.

Perhaps those children playing football in an enormous dirt hole in Buenos Aires and Van Eyck’s children playing among abstract forms in Amsterdam had something in common: someone had left a space without completely deciding what was supposed to happen there.

In Buenos Aires, it was an urban accident, a pause between a closed factory and a shopping mall under construction. In Amsterdam, it was a design decision, a way of rebuilding the city from its empty spaces. But in both cases the same possibility appeared: when a space is not entirely closed, children can turn it into play.

Less program, more possibility

The creative city is not necessarily the one that provides more things to do, but the one that leaves more things to decide.

This idea can change the way we look at parks, squares, schools, libraries, homes and neighborhoods. Very often, we believe that a children’s space is better the more equipped it is. But childhood does not always need a complete catalog of activities. It also needs zones of ambiguity, open materials, appropriable corners and places where imagination does not receive all instructions in advance.

An over-programmed space may be comfortable, safe and attractive, but it can also reduce the child’s agency. It tells them what to do, where to do it, how to use each element and what kind of experience is expected. An open space, on the other hand, asks another question: what can you invent here?

That is where creativity appears. Not as decoration added at the end, but as an active relationship between the child and the world. The child observes, interprets, tests, negotiates with others, invents rules, resolves conflicts, transforms functions and discovers that a place can be more than one thing.

Perhaps a more creative city is not a city that entertains more, but a city that trusts more.

It trusts that children can read possibilities. It trusts that play does not always need to arrive fully designed. It trusts that, sometimes, a little dirt, a gap, an abstract form or an available corner can awaken more creativity than a perfectly explained installation.

Not every emptiness is absence.

Sometimes, emptiness is an invitation.

And if a city learns to leave some things undecided, perhaps it is also learning to educate creativity.

Love, 
Clody, Lady Play @ ByBa