Environment & Urbanization

This paper discusses the benefits of involving children in planning and managing human settlements both for the children, as they learn the formal skills of democracy, and for the wider community, as young people contribute their knowledge, energies and perceptions about local environments, and remind adults of their rights and their special needs and vulnerabilities. Children learn active and responsible citizenship through opportunities to practise it - but this requires formal channels to incorporate children into school- and community-based programmes for evaluating, planning and caring for local environments. This paper reminds governments of the commitments they have made to such an approach in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Agenda 21 and the Habitat Agenda. It also discusses what underlies effective children’s participation in development planning, drawing on the author’s work as coordinator of the Growing up in Cities programme and on other innovative policies and practices. This includes a realistic sense of what can be accomplished; supportive adults; and particular efforts to involve girls, the youngest and those from marginalized groups.

This paper discusses the different dimensions of poverty, with a particular focus on non-monetary aspects, and describes the limitations and inaccuracies inherent in the US$ 1 a day poverty line now widely used in cross-country comparisons. It highlights how little attention is given to the aspects of poverty that most affect children and explains why addressing these issues is an effective approach to poverty reduction. The authors discuss why economic growth during the 1990s failed to produce the hoped-for decline in the incidence of poverty in most nations and report, for example, on the existence of disparities as well as on the advantages of extending provision of basic services to all. Whilst on the one hand, economic growth has not necessarily reduced the incidence of (monetary and non-monetary) poverty, on the other, reductions in poverty have been achieved in some cases without waiting for economic growth. Countries with comparable per capita incomes, for instance, can show considerable variation in under-five mortality rates.

This paper describes the features that make a city “child friendly”, and the legal, institutional, budgetary and planning measures needed to underpin them. It explains how the concept of child friendly cities developed, and its key role in ensuring the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in each city. The principles and practices of a child friendly city are illustrated by examples from Spain, the Occupied Territories of Palestine, Croatia, Ecuador, Brazil, India, Bangladesh, Sweden, Lebanon, Albania and the Ukraine.

This paper summarizes the outcome of an international conference on addressing the issue of urban youth in conflict with the law in Africa. It discusses the most effective responses to youth crime and violence which centre on prevention and inclusion (especially of youth in government) rather than exclusion, punishment and incarceration. It also highlights the key role for local governments in developing effective local responses that draw in and support all key local actors (parents, schools, police, businesses).

This paper describes the development of a children’s participatory budget council in the city of Barra Mansa (Brazil), to which 18 boys and 18 girls are elected by their peers to ensure that the municipal council addresses their needs and priorities. This council determines how a proportion of the municipal budget (equivalent to around US$ 125,000 a year) is spent on addressing children’s priorities, and its child councillors are also involved in other aspects of government. Each year since 1998, more than 6,000 children have taken part in discussions and assemblies to elect their child councillors and discuss their own priorities. The elected children learn how to represent their peers within democratic structures, to prioritize based on available resources, and then to develop projects within the complex and often slow political and bureaucratic process of city governance. This process has extended to children the concept of participatory budgeting that is now widely used in Brazil for increasing citizen involvement in urban governance. It is encouraging similar innovations in other cities in Latin America, as the example becomes better known and as more people visit Barra Mansa.

This article summarizes the findings of a four-site study of children’s needs and priorities, part of the process to transform Greater Johannesburg into a child friendly city. Applying the Growing Up in Cities model, it presents the voices of 10 to 14-year-olds from four diverse but representative areas of the city. For each of these areas, boys and girls describe their use of their local environments, the places they value or fear, the problems they face and their own priorities for making Johannesburg a better city. Based on these children’s experiences, a number of programme and policy responses are recommended, many of which will be relevant to other cities as well.

This paper is an appraisal of the government and civil society actions that form child friendly city programmes in 27 neighbourhoods of five cities in the Philippines (Manila City, Quezon City, Cebu, Davao and Pasay City), along with case studies of four informal settlements (two with child friendly city programmes, two without). These programmes developed out of earlier urban basic services programmes, but with the basic services focus greatly expanded to include child protection and participation within a child rights agenda. The paper describes the concepts underlying these programmes and the sociopolitical context in which they emerged. Each city programme is assessed, based on 24 child rights indicators. The paper also includes a summary of children’s views with regard to priorities for basic services, problems of crime and violence, and the possibilities for children’s participation. It ends with recommendations on how to make the child friendly city programmes more effective.

This paper draws on interviews and discussions with 40 Congolese refugee boys and girls who live in Dar es Salaam. It describes their lives and the difficulties they face, and discusses the implications of their clandestine existence (since refugees are not meant to live in Dar but to stay in refugee camps). Children have to conceal their identities and often have their mobility restricted by parents for fear that they will be identified as refugees. Children talk about the harassment they suffer and how they learn to distrust all strangers. Many parents do not send their children to school because they feel their time in Dar is temporary. Most children still think of Congo as home and have little hope that things will improve if they stay in Dar es Salaam. The paper discusses the need to recognize the rights of the “hidden” refugees, who are common and often numerous in many African cities.

This paper describes how municipalities in the state of Ceará (Brazil) were encouraged to compete to obtain a Municipal Seal of Approval, based on their performance in meeting children’s needs and rights. It describes how the programme was implemented, including the criteria used to judge performance, the communication strategy to encourage municipal participation and the measures taken to avoid rewarding only the better-resourced municipalities. It also discusses the scheme’s links with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 1988 constitution, with its support for local rights and guardianship councils and for decentralization and local democracy. It describes the results, which included major declines in infant mortality and child malnutrition rates, and improved school attendance and health care, and considers the implications: the scheme’s capacity to mobilize civil society, local authorities and mayors in ways which deliver measurable progress for children despite no monetary reward for the successful municipalities and the small UNICEF budget that supported it.

This paper relates the history of playground provision in New York to changing conceptions of childhood, and specifically to a felt need to ’contain’ children in order to keep them off the streets, safe from traffic and unsavoury influences - a trend that children have tended to resist. Playgrounds most often substitute a narrow range of physical activity for the spontaneous play in diverse environments that children more naturally crave. Not only do playgrounds fail to satisfy the complexity of children’s developmental needs, they also tend to separate children from the daily life of their communities - exposure to which is fundamental to the development of civil society. What is needed, argues the author, is not more segregated playgrounds, but a greater attempt to make neighbourhoods safe and welcoming for children, responding to their own preferences for free play close to home.

This paper describes the findings of four youth groups in Cali, who conducted exploratory qualitative research in their marginalized and violent neighbourhoods, looking at the social networks, resources and assets of local community members. Their research focused especially on the ways in which young people capitalize on their social supports in the absence of material assets. Whilst there was a sense of social solidarity in these neighbourhoods, this could not make up for the absence of any institutional presence. The authors call for further research, but make some preliminary recommendations regarding the need for collective discussion and activities to strengthen community ties, and to pave the way for building links with external groups and institutions.

This paper examines city streets and public space as a domain in which social values are asserted and contested. The definitions of spatial boundaries and of acceptable and non-acceptable uses and users are, at the same time, expressions of intolerance and difference within society. The paper focuses in particular on the ways in which suspicion, intolerance and moral censure limit the spatial world of young people in Australia, where various regulatory practices such as curfews are common. The author reflects on the failures of the two main strategies that have been used in Australia to control the presence of young people, and concludes with some thoughts about the construction of streets and public spaces as diverse and democratic places.

This paper reviews the strengths and limitations of different child friendly cities initiatives in Italy and the many measures by national, regional and local governments to support them. These measures include a new law, a national plan of action, more funds and an award available to the cities that achieve the most. City initiatives have sought to respond to the constraints that industrialization and urbanization have placed on children’s safe mobility, use of city space and participation. Many of the initiatives described have promoted children’s participation in city governance, often through children’s councils that developed proposals for city governments. Also described are special provisions by municipal authorities to ensure more attention to children’s issues, many of them involving environmental improvements that benefit children (for example, making children’s routes between home and school safer, expanding parks, creating bicycle tracks). The paper also describes children’s assessment of impacts, also their critical views of administrators who failed to keep their promises and teachers who were too controlling in participatory projects.

Porto Alegre is well known for its innovative social policies but less so for the environmental policies that are this paper’s focus. The paper begins by describing the city’s participatory budgeting system and the multiple interconnections it has with a wide-ranging environmental policy. Porto Alegre has the highest standard of living and the highest life expectancy of any Brazilian metropolitan centre. Virtually all its people have water piped to their homes and most have good-quality sanitation and drainage. The garbage collection system reaches virtually all households and has included a separate collection of recyclables since 1990; other programmes enforce industrial pollution control (including special provision in garages and petrol stations), keep down polluting motor vehicle emissions and ensure the re-utilization of organic wastes from parks and restaurants. The city has 14 square metres of green space per person and a million trees along its streets. This paper also describes the education and environmental information programme that underpins these policies, including changes to school curricula and the Environmental Atlas of Porto Alegre that provides the base information for environmental policy, environmental discussion and environmental education. The paper ends by discussing how sustainable development is impossible without good urban environmental management and how this, in turn, has to be built on democracy and participation.

This paper highlights the scope for making progress towards sustainable development through changes in current practices and decision-making processes that do not need international agreements. It outlines seven key areas for improving implementation, including: using monitoring and evaluation (and the information these produce) to change attitudes and behaviour; participation that involves the public constructively; better use of “soft” instruments of persuasion and communication; and ensuring that funding flows are structured to achieve the desired changes.

This paper describes two experiences with community-led upgrading programmes in precarious settlements in Ho Chi Minh City and discusses how and why these are more effective and appropriate than the city’s “redevelopment” and relocation programmes. Although rapid economic growth has meant improved material conditions for much of the city’s population, it has also had a negative impact on the environment and on the poorer groups whose living conditions are deteriorating, especially in the precarious settlements on vacant lots, along canals and on the city outskirts. The city has plentiful water, but large sections of the population are not reached by piped water and sewers. Although relocation programmes are better managed here than in most cities, many who are relocated suffer a drop in income, a steep rise in housing costs and a disruption to their social networks. The paper ends with some reflections on the changes needed in government attitudes towards citizens.

This paper describes how the NGO Shelter Associates and an organization of women and men slum dwellers worked together to collect information on each household in slum settlements in Pune and Sangli and to map this, along with infrastructure and service provision and each slum’s position within the city. This permitted data on slums to be superimposed on these cities’ development plans using a geographical information system. This provides an important information base for improving infrastructure and services within slums and for integrating slums into city-wide planning. The paper also discusses the contrasting experiences in the use made by the two different city governments of this information (little interest in Pune, great interest in Sangli) and how communities, governments and NGOs can work most effectively together to ensure the inclusion of slums within city plans.

This paper contrasts two different approaches to community participation in developing more effective solid waste collection and management, illustrated by case studies from Bamako (where community participation was the objective) and Bangalore (where community participation was an instrument). A close look reveals that the two projects applied different methods despite using the same terminology. The achievements and problems faced by both case studies are discussed, along with a general discussion of how community-based schemes can contribute to more effective municipal solid waste management systems. It stresses how case studies can bring important general lessons but, for any city, these need to be applied within a strong understanding of local context.