Smart City Participation for the Children

Clarinval et al. (2023) introduce a workshop model that can help urban planners and decision maker facilitate a participation design that involves children, an often-overlooked demographic in the provision of Smart City development. From this study, several recommendations that facilitator can take note from in conduction a public participation workshop for children:

• There needs to be enough time for each session that allows children to fully express their opinion, discuss the concepts and debate ideas, yet the session should not be long enough to lose the interest of the children
• There should be a separate session for programming activity, where children debate about their ideas, aside from the theoretical introduction and model building session
• In each step, children need to be challenged as much as possible with discussion of possible limitation from the solutions they offer which may include the concern on feasibility, privacy, representativeness etc.
• The sessions must be kept as playful and as fun as possible to keep the children engage and stimulated in the workshop even if the session is provided for older children

Reference:

Clarinval, A., Simonofski, A., Henry, J., Vanderose, B., & Dumas, B. (2023). Introducing the Smart City to Children: Lessons Learned from Hands-On Workshops in Classes. Sustainability, 15(3), 1774.

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