Check out the episode:

You can find the shownotes through this link.

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Are you interested in involving the next generation in urban decision-making?

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Our summary today works with the thesis titled Actualising children’s ideas for health-promoting neighbourhoods through impactful co-design: insights from children and adult decision-makers from 2024 by Tiffany Williams, published at The University of Auckland as her PhD thesis.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Tiff Williams in episode 268 talking about urban regeneration.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to highlight why children are important for urban futures. This thesis investigates how to actualise children’s ideas for health-promoting neighbourhoods from co-design.

[intro music]

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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Children’s health and wellbeing is influenced by their local neighbourhood environments. Children also hold the right to participate in matters affecting them, such as neighbourhood design. Co-design is a participatory process being utilised to engage children in collective decision-making about neighbourhoods, both in Aotearoa New Zealand and global. An enduring gap exists between rhetoric and reality. Practical insights are needed to support co-design that facilitates children’s meaningful participation towards tangible outcomes.

Thus, Tiffany William’s PhD thesis aimed to advance knowledge of how to actualise children’s ideas for health-promoting neighbourhoods from co-design. Her research was focused on children aged 5 to 13 years. One of her participants who is an adult decision-maker experienced in working with children said regarding the future of children’s involvement:

“I’m hoping that we will continue to move to a space in which children and young people are valued for their voice and their perspective. And that we don’t limit them and say ‘they’re just a child’ or you know ‘they’ll have a contribution in the future’, but we recognise that actually they are human and they have an incredible contribution that they are playing already, in our families, our communities, in our cities.”

In her scoping review of existing studies on co-design, co-creation, and co-production with children, she highlighted opportunities for improved use of models for child participation, need for ongoing consideration of how adults’ views of children and childhood influence “co” processes, and recommended more discriminate use of the terms co-creation, co-design, and co-production. Grounded in this knowledge, Williams used pragmatic action research methodology to explore children’s perceptions and adult decision-maker perspectives, in two distinct research cycles. She worked alongside 93 children and 10 adult decision-makers in Aotearoa New Zealand. Each action research cycle comprised one cross-sectional study that drew on participatory and collaborative methods.

Over the two creative sessions, child participants shared salient ideas for health-promoting neighbourhoods. Based on the children ideas, 12 topics emerged for health and for health-promoting neighbourhoods:

• Connections with other humans;
• Healthy food and drinks;
• Exercising and playing sport to keep fit;
• Nature and helping the environment;
• Recreational activities;
• Range of places to go;
• Proximity, safety and feel;
• Friendly Streets, and
• No Smoking.

Child participants also demonstrated three threads of more-than-human thinking: care for humans and non-humans, vital interdependence of human-non-human relations, and understanding complex urban environments through everyday activities. One of the child participants described this complex and holistic approach thusly:

“Birds spread the seeds. There is space to walk and run. Nature and plants give us air. Animals give us food. Flowers keep the bees alive so we get honey. Weather gives us rain to grow crops.”

Generated through individual interviews, insights from adult participants informed a novel framework for impactful co-design with children. The framework is comprised of three key themes: empowering children within co-design, being intentional about children’s influence, and curating who is involved. Empowering children within co-design speaks to the importance of centring children’s experiences and ideas to shape tangible outcomes, towards children discovering their ability to influence local places, in a process underpinned by learning and collaboration between children and adults. Being intentional about children’s influence relates to having clarity from the outset of co-design that children’s ideas are likely to influence decision-making and enhancing their potential for influence throughout the process, by effectively navigating diverse ideas and presenting children’s ideas to decision-makers. Curating who is involved encompasses the careful consideration of which children and adults are involved in co-design, aiming for the greater inclusion of children from diverse groups and adults who are genuine, skilled, collaborative, and reflexive.

The research explores how both children and adults can contribute to important decisions by looking beyond just human perspectives. To truly involve children in decision-making, we need to consider not only social interactions but also the role of technology and other non-human factors. Drawing inspiration from children’s creative ideas, we could and should think about how everything—from technology to the environment—works together in shaping the design process. This broader view helps us see that meaningful participation involves much more than just people. Co-design with children can impactfully contribute to tangible outcomes in neighbourhoods. Children’s perceptions around health-promoting neighbourhoods demonstrates the unique interrelationship between humans and non-humans, and connects us to the bigger vision of health-promoting future cities.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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[music]

Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Involving children in co-designing the future is crucial as their unique perspectives can shape tangible, health-promoting neighbourhoods, and it ensures their voices are valued in decisions affecting them now, not just in the future.
2. Children’s ideas on health-promoting neighbourhoods highlight topics like human connections, nature, safety, and non-human relations such as animals and the environment.
3. The proposed framework for impactful co-design with children is centred on empowering their voices, ensuring influence in decision-making, and carefully selecting diverse participants, both children and adults.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. What are the challenges of balancing children’s ideas with adult perspectives in collective decision-making?
2. How might embracing children’s creative ideas change the way we approach problem-solving in communities?
3. What insight can you get from children regarding the future of your city?

[outro music]

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