“Insight, creativity and thoughts on the environment”: integrating children and youth into human settlement development

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.