Celebrate Public Life invites you to share your public life stories to build collective knowledge about the special places that make life great in cities.

Why are we celebrating public life?

We want to live in cities with vibrant public life. We believe that if our cities supported a great public life for young children and their caregivers, we could have a more healthy, equitable, and just future.

Everyone has a story to tell about their neighborhood, favorite public spaces and how they enjoy them. Yet these stories are rarely told to the policymakers, politicians or organizations that shape our cities.

We seek to use the Celebrate Public Life platform to collect and promote your public life stories:

• To make the case for public life
• To increase awareness about great public spaces
• To inform important decisions about public spaces
• To enable community health, safety, happiness, and connection
• To remind ourselves and each other that a great city for young children and caregivers is a great city for all people

The story behind Celebrate Public Life

Celebrate Public Life is co-developed by the Van Leer Foundation and Gehl, who teamed up to understand how we can bring our cities' public spaces to life by ensuring diversity, inclusion, and the presence of young children and their caregivers year-round.

Launched in 2018 as both a platform and campaign, we were supported by QM, Superpool, Child Health Initiative, Placemaking Europe, Stipo, Horizonte Ciuadando, Global Design Cities Initiative, Institute for Transport & Development Policy, UNICEF, and Fondation Botnar.

In 2024, a participatory process with urban practitioners working closely with the Urban95 approach was initiated, and the Celebrate Public Life platform was updated based on their feedback.