How kids can help design cities | Mara Mintzer

71,009 views ・ 2018-11-28

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Our society routinely makes decisions
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without consulting a quarter of the population.
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We're making choices about land use, energy production and natural resources
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without the ideas and experiences of the full community.
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The car, an inanimate object, has more say over public policy
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than this group of citizens.
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Can you guess which group I'm talking about?
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It's children.
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I work in urban design, and not surprisingly,
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most cities are designed by adults.
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Urban planners, architects, developers, politicians,
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and occasionally, a few loud citizens.
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Rarely do you consider the voices of a group of four-year-olds,
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barely tall enough to reach the podium at city council chambers.
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But today, I want to ask you this:
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What would happen if we asked children to design our cities?
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(Laughter)
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Back in 2009, I was introduced to a small group of people
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who wanted to start a child-friendly city initiative in Boulder, Colorado.
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I come from a family of civil rights advocates,
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and I had spent my career until that point
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working with low-income children and families.
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But I had never heard of a child-friendly city initiative before.
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So I figured its purpose would be to address some of the frustrations
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I had encountered as the parent of a young child.
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Perhaps we would advocate for more changing tables in restaurants.
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Or create indoor play spaces for those cold and rainy days.
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In other words, make the city more hospitable to children and families.
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It wasn't until after I committed to this project
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that I realized I had it all wrong.
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We wouldn't be designing better cities for children.
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Children would be designing better cities for themselves,
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and for the rest of us, too.
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Now, I bet you're skeptical about this idea.
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And honestly, I was, too.
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I mean, there must be a reason the voting age is 18.
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(Laughter)
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How could children possibly understand complex ideas
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such as the affordable housing crisis
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or how to develop a transportation master plan?
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And even if they had ideas, wouldn't they be childish?
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Or unreasonable?
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Do our cities really need a park made out of candy?
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(Laughter)
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Or a bridge with water cannons
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that fire water onto unsuspecting kayakers below?
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(Laughter)
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While these concerns sound legitimate,
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I realized that not including children in city planning
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was a bigger design problem.
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After all, shouldn't we include end users in the design process?
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If we're building a park to be largely used by kids,
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then kids should have a say in the park's design.
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So with all of this in mind,
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we formed a program called "Growing Up Boulder,"
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and my job is to work with children ages zero through 18
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to come up with innovative city-design solutions.
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How do we do this, you might ask?
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Let me give you a real example.
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In 2012, the city of Boulder decided to redesign a large downtown park,
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known as the Civic Area.
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This space is bounded by a farmers' market on one end,
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Boulder Public Library on the other end,
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and by Boulder Creek, which runs through the middle.
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The space needed a new design
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to better handle the creek's inevitable flash floods,
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restore a sense of safety to the area
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and support an expanded farmers' market.
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So from 2012 through 2014,
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we engaged more than 200 young people in the process,
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ranging from preschool through high school students.
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Now, how did we do this?
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Let me explain.
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First, we visited children in their classrooms
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and presented the project:
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what it was, why their ideas mattered
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and what would happen with their recommendations.
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Before we could influence them, we asked children to record their ideas,
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based on their own lived experiences.
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Then we asked children to go on a field trip with us,
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to document what they liked and didn't like about the space,
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using photography.
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Through green picture frames,
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students highlighted what they liked about the space,
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such as college students, tubing down the creek.
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(Laughter)
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Then they flipped those frames over and used the red side
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to highlight things they didn't like, such as trash.
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Our sixth-grade students studied the Civic Area
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by researching sites with similar challenges
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from around the world.
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Then, we invited the kids to combine their original ideas
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with their new inspiration,
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to synthesize solutions to improve the space.
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Each class invited adult planners, city council and community members
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into the classroom, to share and discuss their recommendations.
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Boulder's senior urban planners stepped over blocks and stuffed animals
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to explore preschool students' full-size classroom recreation of the Civic Area.
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Adult planners marveled at the students' ideas
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as they shared a park constructed out of a jelly bracelet.
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It was supposed to be an ice-skating rink.
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And then, public art constructed from animal-shaped plastic beads.
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And while this may seem ridiculous,
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it isn't so different from the models that architects create.
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Now, fast-forward four years, and I am pleased to report
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that many of the children's ideas are being implemented in the Civic Area.
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For example,
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there will be improved access to Boulder Creek,
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so kids can play safely in the water.
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Lighting in previously dark underpasses,
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so high school students can walk home safely after school at night.
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And separated biking and walking paths,
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so speeding bikers won't hit young people as they stroll by the creek.
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My daughter and I even skated on a new, child-requested ice-skating rink,
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last winter.
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So, were all of the kids' ideas implemented at the Civic Area?
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Of course not.
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Democracy is a messy process.
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But just as a reasonable and well-informed adult
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does not expect all of her ideas to be utilized,
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neither does a nine-year-old.
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We've now been using this process for eight years,
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and along the way, we've found some incredible benefits
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to designing cities with children.
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First of all, kids think differently from adults.
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And that's a good thing.
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Adults think about constraints,
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how much time will a project take,
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how much money will it cost and how dangerous will it be.
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In other words, "Are we going to get sued?"
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(Laughter)
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It's not that these constraints aren't real,
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but if we kill off ideas from the beginning,
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it limits our creativity and dampens the design process.
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Kids, on the other hand, think about possibilities.
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For kids, the sky is the limit.
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Literally.
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When we worked with middle-school students to design teen-friendly parks,
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they drew pictures of skydiving, hang gliding,
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(Laughter)
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and jumping from trampolines into giant foam pits.
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(Laughter)
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Some of this sounds far-fetched,
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but the commonalities among the activities revealed an important story.
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Our adolescents wanted thrill-seeking opportunities.
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Which makes perfect sense, given their developmental stage in life.
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So our task, as connectors between inspiration and reality,
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was to point them towards activities and equipment
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that actually could be installed in a park.
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This is exactly what parks in Australia have done,
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with their extensive zip lines and their 30-foot-tall climbing towers.
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When kids dream up a space,
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they almost always include fun, play and movement in their designs.
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Now, this is not what adults prioritize.
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But research shows that fun, play and movement
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are exactly what adults need to stay healthy, too.
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(Laughter)
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Who wouldn't enjoy a tree house containing a little lending library
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and comfortable beanbag chairs for reading?
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Or what about a public art display
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that sprays paint onto a canvas each time you walk up the steps?
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In addition to fun and play, children value beauty in their designs.
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When tasked with designing dense affordable housing,
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kids rejected the blocks of identical, beige condominiums
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so many developers favor,
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and instead, put bright colors on everything,
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from housing to play equipment.
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They placed flowers between biking and walking paths,
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and placed benches along the creek,
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so kids could hang out with their friends
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and enjoy the tranquility of the water.
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Which leads me to nature.
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Children have a biological need to connect with nature,
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and this shows up in their designs.
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They want nature right in their backyards,
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not four blocks away.
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So they design communities that incorporate water,
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fruit trees, flowers and animals into their common spaces on site.
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For better or worse, this is logical,
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because five-year-olds today are rarely allowed to walk four blocks
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to access a park by themselves.
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And nature in one's immediate environment benefits everyone,
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since it has been shown to have restorative effects for all ages.
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It may come as a surprise,
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but we even take into consideration the desires or our littlest citizens,
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babies and toddlers.
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From toddlers, we learned that the joy of walking
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comes from what you discover along the way.
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When they evaluated the walkability of Boulder's 19th Street corridor,
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toddlers spent long stretches exploring leaves in a ditch
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and sparkles in the sidewalk.
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They reminded us to slow down
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and design a path where the journey is as important as the destination.
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In addition to trees and plants,
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kids almost always include animals in their designs.
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Insects, birds and small mammals
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figure prominently into children's pictures.
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Whether it's because they're closer to the ground
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and can see the grasshoppers better than we can,
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or simply because they have a greater sense of empathy for other beings,
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children almost always include non-human species in their ideal worlds.
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Across the board, children are inclusive in their city planning.
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They design for everyone, from their grandmother in a wheelchair
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to the homeless woman they see sleeping in the park.
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Children design for living creatures,
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not for cars, egos or corporations.
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The last and perhaps most compelling discovery we made
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is that a city friendly to children is a city friendly to all.
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Bogota, Colombia mayor Enrique Peñalosa
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observed that children are a kind of indicator species.
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If we can build a successful city for children,
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we will have a successful city for all people.
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Think about it.
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Kids can't just hop in a car and drive to the store.
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And most kids can't afford an expensive lunch at the nearby cafe.
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So if we build cities that take into the consideration
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their needs for alternative forms of transportation
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and for cheaper food venues,
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we meet the needs of many other populations, too.
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The more frequent and more affordable bus service,
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so desired by our youth,
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also supports the elderly who wish to live independently,
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after they can no longer drive cars.
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Teens' recommendations for smooth, protected walking and skateboarding paths
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also support the person in a wheelchair who wishes to go smoothly down the path,
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or the parent pushing a new stroller.
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So to me, all of this has revealed something important.
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An important blind spot.
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If we aren't including children in our planning,
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who else aren't we including?
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Are we listening to people of color, immigrants,
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the elderly and people with disabilities, or with reduced incomes?
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What innovative design solutions are we overlooking,
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because we aren't hearing the voices of the full community?
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We can't possibly know the needs and wants of other people
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without asking.
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That goes for kids and for everyone else.
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So, adults, let's stop thinking of our children as future citizens
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and instead, start valuing them for the citizens they are today.
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Because our children
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are designing the cities that will make us happier and healthier.
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Cities filled with nature, play, movement, social connection and beauty.
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Children are designing the cities we all want to live in.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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