Creating Child-Friendly Smart Cities

CREATING CHILDFRIENDLY SMART CITIES

BY LETICIA LATINO

A child-friendly approach can be the thread that unites stakeholders, prompting collaboration in the challenging task of becoming a resilient, sustainable, inclusive, and conscious city.

Iam a mom and a communications expert who lives in a vibrant city. In my opinion, the “smart” in smart cities is not about technology; it is about how we implement it. It will be our kids and their kids living with the decisions we make today, which is why it is so important to consider our children’s needs and perspectives as we embark on upgrading our cities to become viable and sustainable for the future. To me, a smart city marries traditional infrastructure and modern communication infrastructure to fuel sustainable economic growth and high quality of life.

The promise of smart cities is exciting. But we will not transform the way we live overnight. There needs to be incremental transformations through a combination of small projects and wider infrastructure changes underpinned by data-sharing. Making cities child-friendly is a complex urban development issue and is hugely affected by socioeconomic demographics. Some city officials argue it makes more economic sense to prioritize citizens without children who bring a net economic gain over families who bring a net loss. After all, kids don’t make big purchases or pay taxes, and schools can be the biggest expense for local governments.

But this mentality greatly disfavors the disadvantaged. It may seem a city’s affordability for families is a matter of market forces, yet specific policies shape whether city life is within reach. Many cities are undergoing efforts to link the dots between childfriendliness and sustainability. But there is a gap between required and existing knowledge on what children deem important.

If we roll out smart city plans by focusing only on traffic, trash, or telecommunications, we disassociate with the human component of the equation. Our children and their wellbeing could be the unifying factor that pulls a smart city strategy together, uniting a range of progressive planning and design agendas.

Urban95 is a foundation that focuses its work around one question: If you could experience the city from the height of a 3-year-old, what would you change? By answering this question, the program advocates for children and caregivers who rarely have a voice in city policy and planning. The foundation also works with city leaders, architects, planners, and engineers to encourage cities to create spaces where children can grow, imagine, and play across all neighborhoods. The motto of the program is: “A city that works for babies, toddlers, and their caregivers is a city that works for everybody.” No one can argue against the idea that a good measure of a city’s vibrancy is the presence of children and families.

UNICEF’s Child-Friendly Cities Initiative provides guidance for integrating child-related demands into smart city creation. It introduces a global framework and step-by-step guidance to professionalize and streamline this initiative globally while leaving adequate room for adaptation to local context, structures, priorities, and needs. It emphasizes the importance of measuring and demonstrating the change the program brings to children. The premise is every child has the right to grow up in an environment where they feel safe and secure and have access to basic services, clean air and water, and places to play, learn, and grow. We need to consult with children to ensure their existing and future needs are understood and met.

The repercussions of decisions we don’t make today will be more visible than ever. There are so many benefits to inviting the children to partake in smartening our cities. We need to count on our leaders’ long-term visions while putting people before policies. But we also have to get more involved because our impact and feedback are crucial to redefining our cities and making them accessible for all ages and abilities. We live in one world, and if we don’t do what’s best for it, we’re doing a disservice to the next generation. A sustainable urban future is part of a healthier, happier way of life for children and families. Family-friendly places are people-friendly places.

“OUR CHILDREN AND THEIR WELLBEING COULD BE THE UNIFYING FACTOR THAT PULLS A SMART CITY STRATEGY TOGETHER.”

Leticia Latino van-Splunteren

CEO, Neptuno USA

Hollywood, Florida

With over 20 years of experience in the telecom industry, Leticia Latino van-Splunteren went from working for Merrill Lynch and Nortel Networks to extending her family business, Neptuno Group, in the U.S. in 2002. Her father founded the company in 1972 in South America, where they helped deploy some of the first cellular networks in the region and built over 10,000 towers.