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Vancouver Working Group Discussion Paper
The Youth Friendly City
Executive Summary
Child and youth engagement in action: The capacity of young people to create inclusive, healthy and vibrant cities.
I Purpose
A child and youth friendly city is one that encompasses all aspects of a child and youth's healthy development including self-efficacy, education, recreation, the experience of cultural harmony and a sense of connection to urban environments.
As this document will demonstrate, child and youth friendly policies are an effective tool to meeting the needs of ever-changing urban communities. Local governments that research, adapt, and utilize child and youth friendly policies invest in the long-term health and sustainability of their cities. Research indicates that when communities and local governments support the full and active participation of young people in their development, the benefits have a ripple effect, improving society as a whole.
This paper links current research, policy-making and successful participatory practices in Canada and globally to highlight the vital role of child and youth engagement in preserving the well-being of the world's children.
In so doing, this paper will demonstrate how young people are ideally situated to:
- address the practical applications of policy-making and planning concerning the preservation and design of urban environments, such as creating-safe spaces for play, recreation, relationship-building and capacity building;
- educate peers on safety, health and wellness related matters, including issues of crime prevention, food security, and unemployment
- monitor and improve local access to natural resources and municipal infrastructures, including developing richer green spaces, responding to the impact of pollution and waste management and preserving sustainable energies.
Finally, we will discuss how local governments may better involve young people in every dimension of urban development -- including research, planning, programming, advocacy, project management, and decision-making -- as well as in advancing policy initiatives that strive to ensure equal access to the necessities of urban life.
II The dimensions of participation: Integrating research, policy, and practice
In addition to presenting current participatory research, we examine inspiring participatory programming involving young people locally, in Canada, and globally. These programs range from youth-driven community organizations and youth parliaments and shared-decision-making and informal consultative processes. While there are differences between developed and developing countries, particularly in terms of the magnitude and nature of the issues at stake, the experiences reflected in child and youth's participation are comparable. These cross-cutting challenges and insights are presented throughout the paper.
Through this process an effort was made to work collaboratively with multi-sectoral organizations across Canada and internationally. It is recognized that time constraints have forced us to limit the scope and diversity of child and youth-driven programming represented in this paper. Furthermore, though there is an emphasis on Canadian examples due to the location of the World Urban Forum (WUF), the intent is to have this paper open a more in-depth global dialogue leading up to and during the WUF. Children and youth make important contributions across many aspects of city life. This paper discusses child and youth issues and experiences under 4 ‘types' of cities:
1. Resilient city discusses how, in environments not always designed to enable their resilience, children and youth, not only survive stress, oppression, and adversity, but draw from their marginalization to improve their urban communities.
2. Secure city identifies children and youth threats to safety and security and presents the multiple prevention and intervention measures children and youth are engaging in to safeguard individual and community wellbeing.
3. Capable city focuses on child and youth participation in the context of local government.
4. Livable city chapter examines the involvement of child and youth in creating livable cities through five key issue-areas: water, transportation, food security and space, sustainable technology and innovation, and going ‘glocal'.
Each section provides a series of recommendations for defining calls of actions to foster leadership in bringing forward local programs. Special focus is placed on policy and programs that can go to scale and be made more sustainable.
III The multiple benefits of child and youth engagement in urban governance
Young people bring creativity, energy, lived experience, as well as practical and localized knowledge to the creation of healthier cities. Moreover, engaged, resilient young people who mobilize in their communities develop resourcefulness, improve problem-solving skills, develop critical consciousness, experience greater autonomy, feel a greater sense of purpose and concern for social justice in and through their communities.
Young citizens, and especially marginalized youth, seek diverse modes of access to civic engagement and community participation. Decision-makers must recognize that a commitment to collaborative processes of engagement may be outside of conventional modes of civic engagement. Policy-makers may have to play catch-up to the critical changes young citizens are making locally to improve their communities. Conversely, participatory processes proven effective by policy makers and researchers may not be communicated to young people, nor to the agencies that represent them. We need to integrate research, policy, and field-level practices to support child and youth engagement in formal institutions as well as to advance sustainable, informal participatory processes.
IV Conclusions
- Building & Integrating practice, research, and policy
Many initiatives already exist to involve children and youth in local, regional national and international governance, with some key recommendations for governments on how to meaningfully involve youth. There needs to be a more systematic approach to documenting, evaluating, integrating and replicating successful participatory processes. This applies especially to assessing programmatic effectiveness in supporting institutional and governmental policy change. Governments also need to expand and enhance local programs that promote a greater dimension of meaningful child and youth participation to meet basic needs and affirm young people as vital assets and citizens within their communities.
- Going Global
Many participatory actions of young people are bound by locality but have global implications and applications and vice versa. We need to explore how to replicate successful local participatory actions in other localities. Canada can take a leadership role in supporting global initiatives such as the Growing up in Cities project that has both global and local implications and that can promote the child and youth friendly cities agenda more widely. At the local level, groups such as the Environmental Youth Alliance and Santropol Roulant , have youth taking the lead in designing and implementing innovative and effective food security programs in some of the poorest urban communities in Canada. These youth-driven programs have been successful in influencing policy at many levels, but they are the exception not the norm. Programs such as these need financial support and institutional recognition to ensure their sustainability and scalability at the policy level.
- The need for institutionalization: the rhetoric needs to match reality
Children and youth need to access real power by becoming joint partners with governments and institutions. The inclusion of children and youth within adult structures is often carried out in a way that marginalizes young peoples' voices. As explored in this paper, exceptional models of participatory planning and processes do exist, both as standalone structures and within government. These processes need to be supported, strengthened, and tailored to meet the unique needs and challenges young people must face to be meaningfully involved in urban governance.
- Outreach efforts need to recognize and include marginalized populations and invite a plurality of perspectives
Child and youth participation initiatives need to be accessible to a range of involved youth. Innovative outreach strategies are needed to ensure that marginalized children have opportunities for real participation. This requires an analysis of which youth communities are not being heard, and a concerted effort to create methods that engage these communities. Participation initiatives need to recognize, accommodate and validate a plurality of opinions and perspectives.
- Stronger partnerships with adults and young people lead to effective capacity-building
Child and youth participation initiatives are most successful through engaging equitable adult partnerships. Rather than involve young people in the vibrant, inclusive democratic decision-making processes of the adult world, participatory initiatives with young people provide an opportunity to engage a new generation in new forms of democratic decision-making - strengthening (and sometimes creating) democratic institutions in the process. Adults as well need to learn new participation skills, and be willing to engage in new and innovative democratic processes.
- Diverse forms of participation ensure young people are more actively engaged in their cities
In addition to involving young people in formal government processes - from elections to urban planning and policy review - decision-makers need to support the full dimension of young people's interests and abilities. To address the needs of all youth, especially those most marginalized, informal processes of participation, such as local community action that focus on experiential engagement, must also be developed and supported. In concert with formal processes of participation, informal modes of access to governance add value to policy and political deliberations.
- Promoting positive images of young people helps eliminate barriers to meaningful engagement in their cities
Social marketing and public campaigns at the local, global, and international level need to focus on the good work being done by children and youth in their cities. Too often, dominant public narratives of young people suggest youth are incapable, lack commitment, and even pose threats to healthy urban living. Such stereotypes inhibit the meaningful engagement of young people in cities by discouraging young people from contributing their assets, accessing services, and thus creating barriers to good urban governance.
Commitments to democratic principles such as active participation, civic responsibility and inclusion require a paradigm shift: from prescriptive modes of intervention to supporting young peoples' innate capacity for transformation and change, while preserving their development and well-being. A more coordinated national and global media effort should advance stories of child and youth survival, resistance, and engagement within civic processes and urban environments that ensure communities are more collaborative, diverse and inclusive.
V Key recommendations
Establish a Local Government Plan of Action for Children and Youth
We recommended that each local government, similar to the National Plan of Action called for at the UN Special Summit for Children, establish a Local Government Plan of Action for Children and Youth. This Plan should be tailored to the specific capacities of local governments, but should have a vision that encompasses all levels of government.
Support sustainable, scalable participatory programming and initiatives
Local governments must recognize and support the expertise and initiatives that children and youth bring to their communities through sustainable programs supporting these initiatives, as well as through institutionalizing this expertise within policy and policy frameworks. Special attention should be given to supporting initiatives in “going to scale” both horizontally (bridging diverse government services responsible for children), and vertically (harmonizing different levels of government policy and practice).
We further recommended that local government advocate with and on behalf of children and youth regarding these local initiatives, and facilitate the uptake of these initiatives into policy and policy frameworks at all levels of government .
Create local government support structures to enable the meaningful involvement of children and youth in policy deliberations
Local government must meaningfully engage with and support child and youth led organizations through recognizing, supporting and involving them in policy development and delivery. To do so, support structures within government institutions should be created that meaningfully involve children and youth in policy deliberations.
It is recommended that local governments identify and promote the expertise and knowledge of children and youth at the regional, national and international governmental level.
We recommend that the academic community conduct further research on the effective and meaningful involvement of children and youth through child and youth-led organizations. Research should also explore aspects of effective and meaningful engagement of children and youth in local government and its institutions.
Initiate child and youth outreach efforts that engage a plurality of voices, especially those populations most marginalized
We recommend that structures created to engage youth by government and its institutions should strive to engage a diversity of youth, especially those most marginalized. By developing a greater understanding of child and youth-driven strategies of resilience, for example, decision-makers can work with young citizens to design more inclusive, effective models protective and intervention. Further, because many child and youth-led organizations engage a multiplicity of communities, local governments need to open a dialogue with young people to learn the tools and best practices of successful participatory programming, such as community asset mapping and other innovative, peer-led initiatives.
Promote capacity-building by supporting informal methods of child and youth participation
All levels of government should support both formal and informal methods of child and youth participation in their communities. We recommend the government NGO, and academic communities collaborate in conducting research on non-formal methods that promote child and youth input into policy development and implementation. Special emphasis should be placed on successful tools such as Participatory Action Research and Community Asset Mapping.
Develop positive media images of youth and support integrated media promoting child and youth friendly cities
Social marketing and public campaigns at the local level need to focus on the good work already being done by children and youth in their communities. Media campaigns highlighting stories similar to those profiled in this paper would also be a first step to inviting the active participation of children in cities around the world.
A child and youth friendly web site developed for World Urban Forum in Vancouver will showcase examples of successful child and youth-involved programming globally; profile stories of engaged young people in their cities; and provide a searchable database of research literature and programs.
In future phases of site implementation, we imagine the site becoming an interactive environment in which local government, city planners and developers, researchers, and young people can meet in a dynamic space that supports active knowledge exchange and information sharing. The site will also provide practical, concrete building blocks for developing participatory action plans; building sustainable community projects and programming; and conducting issue-based research that invites the full participation of diverse communities.
Finally, it is hoped that this paper will ignite global dialogue concerning the meaningful engagement of children and youth in all dimensions of urban life. Child and youth participation initiatives are becoming more widespread and increasingly effective. In considering current and future actions, we need to implement child and youth participatory practices that integrate research, policy-making, and local programming. Local governments need to develop and strengthen aspects of child and youth policies that are inclusive, adaptable and responsive to the diverse needs of young people. Such dialogue can only happen with a renewed and invigorated partnership between children, youth and the communities in which they live.