A TED Talk about urban design… By kids

“Our society routinely makes decisions without consulting a quarter of the population. […] We are making choices about land use, energy production, and natural resources without the ideas and the experiences of the full community.” – Mara Mintzer, Program Director at Growing Up Boulder

Looking around the internet I came across this great TED Talk from TEDx about how cities are designed by adults and for adults. What do you think would happen if we let children plan our cities? Sure, there’d be candy parks and water cannons (no, really) but, as it turns out, there would also be a genuine concern for the environment, inclusiveness and mobility.

In the words of Mara Mintzer, “… all of this has revealed something important, an important blind spot. If we aren’t including children in our planning, who also aren’t we including?” If you want to find out, watch this video conference from TEDx below:

Resources

• If you want to learn more about Mara Mintzer or about Growing Up Boulder, you can follow this link and this link respectively.
• Check out Boulder’s first ever child-friendly city map here (link to pdf). Do you want to know what’s also great about it? It’s bilingual to Spanish!