Play in Human Settlements: an Integrated Approach

This book gives reassuring evidence of the continuance of concerted international efforts to promote play in human settlements. It is a significant follow-up to the advance accomplished at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, when ‘leisure and recreation’ were extracted from the vague heading of ‘Other social services … essential to communities’, to be granted separate attention. But even as UN Recommendation C.18 was adopted, the necessity for being unrelenting in our crusade pressed upon all, since we realized, with the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1913), that ‘the day never breaks for those who lean their heads on the breast of dreamed hours’. ¹ This book proves this determination and, above all, it demonstrates a solidarity which ignores borders, elevating our hopes for a more humane mankind.