The Child Friendly Cities Initiative

Abstract

Over the last 15 years, numerous local, regional and national initiatives to make cities more child friendly have been launched worldwide. Experience has shown that the implementation of children's rights at local level goes hand in hand with improved living conditions for all age groups within society. This applies not only to developing countries but to industrialised nations as well. This paper describes the development and background of the Child Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI). In support of the initiative, the International Secretariat of the CFCI at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy, produced documentation and tools that are being used worldwide by individuals, institutions and organisations committed to promoting children's rights and realising child friendly environments at local level. The paper outlines the key elements of a child friendly city, as determined by the Secretariat in consultation with a wide range of partners. This article also describes the efforts of the Swiss Committee for UNICEF in implementing the initiative in Switzerland. The main aspects of the Swiss programme are the self-assessment of communities with the help of a questionnaire, the implementation of workshops with children and young people, and the elaboration of a work plan.

Intergenerational Communities as Healthy Places for Meaningful Engagement and Interaction

“…This initiative marked a turning point in how young people were perceived in the community, as valuable community members rather than "objects of protection" (Wilks 2010, p. 27). The UNICEF CFC Secretariat at Innocenti took the lead in developing a framework for defining and creating a child-friendly city and to address a range of needs (Schulze and Moneti 2007). The initiative framework includes nine building blocks:…”

Age-friendly mobilities: A transdisciplinary and intergenerational perspective

“…This is evident in the lack of integration of this global policy with similar policies relating to age. The WHO age-friendly policy debate does not appear to have taken account of a parallel age-centred policy, UNICEF's 'child-friendly city' initiative, which was launched by in 1996, ten years before the WHO age-friendly cities initiative (Schulze and Monetti, 2007). There seems to be no mention of this in the agefriendly city literature, despite a number of crossover aims in seeking to allow children to influence decisions and express opinions in cities, participate fully in city life, access basic services and move safely through city spaces.…”

The Effectiveness of Healthy Community Approaches on Positive Health Outcomes in Canada and the United States

“…Both approaches that support the development of Healthy Cities and Child Friendly Cities are broad in scope and seek to impact health through distal upstream efforts. Additionally, both approaches emphasize the process of implementation and focus on the creation of supportive environments through the development of enabling multisectoral structures and community assets [65,66]. The emphasis on development of an inclusive collaborative process may also result in a relative neglect of measurement of health outcomes as milestones of success.…”