GDCI Announces City Awards for Streets for Kids Program
Twelve cities announced for technical assistance and trainings
The Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI) today announced 12 global cities to receive training to design child-friendly streets as part of its Streets for Kids program. The program also includes a forthcoming publication, Designing Streets for Kids, a first-in-class design guide for transforming streets with new standards and design considerations drawn from real-life redesigns in hundreds of cities worldwide.
“If you design a street that works for kids, you’ve designed a street that works for everyone,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, NACTO Chair and Principal with Bloomberg Associates. “Putting everyone in the street on equal footing is how cities can lead by design and achieve higher standards of urban care.”
GDCI announced that four cities on three continents will be the first to receive technical assistance and hands-on training for designing child-friendly streets, including matching funds to support the implementation of street redesign projects.
Eight additional cities on five continents were selected for GDCI trainings, where staff will hold intensive technical workshop sessions to advance child-focused street design.
The 12 winning cities were selected from a competitive pool of nearly 100 applications from across the globe.
Streets for Kids is a multi-year program to develop new technical guidance and advance street designs that create safe public spaces for children of all ages and abilities to learn, play, and move around a city. Designing Streets for Kids will be published in early 2020. This program is generously funded by the Bernard van Leer Foundation, FiA Foundation, Fondation Botnar, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
GDCI marks this World Children's Day with the release of two new booklets, “How to Engage Kids in Street Design” and “How to Evaluate Street Transformations Near Schools.”
In 2023, ten cities across four continents started designing their streets for kids. Collectively, the cohort reclaimed over 40,000 SqM of public space that prioritizes children and caregivers, engaged over 4,000 children in the process, and trained 140 practitioners.
Learn how street transformations designed for children can be scaled up and made permanent.
