Event
Nordic Placemaking TALK – A Child Friendly City, Episode 2
TALK #2 : A children's process
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Karin Ahlzén is an architect working at the City of Stockholm’s Development Office where she is the project leader for “Fokus Skärholmen”. Fokus Skärholmen is Stockholm’s high-profile project for social sustainability in urban planning. Karin has longstanding experience from the construction and real-estate branch and works since 2017 with Fokus Skärholmen. She is especially interested in sustainable urban development and appreciates that social questions are more and more part of several projects.
Lilian Helgason is the president of Sweden’s Pupil Council, a nationwide non-profit student organization that gathers 64 member associations for 13- to 15-year-olds in Sweden. The organization connects 11 020 students and is the biggest student organization in Sweden. Lilian will discuss the importance of children’s involvement in the planning process and give us good examples of how to make it work.
In January 2020, the Swedish Parliament made the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into law, with consequences for the Swedish urban planning process as we know it today. It asserts for instance that “all organizations concerned with children should work towards what is best for each child” (art 4), as well as children’s rights to “have their opinions taken into account in all matters that concern them” (art 12).
As 50% of young people feel that there are few opportunities to express their opinions, adults involved in the planning process in Sweden need to ask themselves: “where are the children?”