Child-Friendly Urban Development: Smile Village Community Development Initiative in Phnom Penh

Abstract

Since urban children’s populations have been rapidly increasing, there is a growing interest in promoting child-friendly cities and communities. UNICEF has accordingly developed a framework for action to build child-friendly cities and communities. This framework outlines the steps to build a governance system committed to realizing the rights of children and translated implementation processes in relation to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Particularly, UNICEF produced a guidebook that outlines building blocks to developing child-friendly cities and communities. This guidebook provides good practices and consolidates common challenges and lessons learned to guide the city governments and relevant stakeholders. Likewise, Cambodia developed a national child-friendly community framework aimed to further improve conducive environments for children where their rights are recognized and supported. Following these international and national trends on child-friendly urban development, many organizations and relevant stakeholders in Cambodia have come together to build urban communities focused on children. Similarly, the Smile Village community in Phnom Penh city was developed. Although its main vision is to build a residential community for underprivileged families to achieve social and financial mobility, various facilities and programs were developed for children. This study explores this community on its child-friendly dimensions and examines whether this urban community is child-friendly based on the national child-friendly community development’s core dimensions.

The Consensus Planning and Design Criteria for Sustainable Buildings in Cambodia

“…There data were resulted from reviewing literature that are relevant and available. A literature review is quite helpful in summarizing the current literatures on the factor that influences the success of collaboration, and conducting a study based on available knowledge has also been considered as building block of all activities in academic research regardless of discipline [12,13]. The review results, however, need to be validated to fit with the country's context by using consensus methods, such as the Delphi technique [14,15].…”

Sustainable Building Plan-Design, Construction, Performance, and Renovation Criteria

“…Reviewing literature is important to summarize and report the relevant existing literature on the factors that influence the research topic [9]. Conducting a research based on existing knowledge is also addressed as building block of all academic research activities, regardless of discipline [10,11]. Recently, various papers have applied consensus methods to obtain accurate information and define areas where there is considerable uncertainty or a lack of agreed knowledge, as well as handle complex problems that require more judgmental analysis [12][13][14][15][16].…”