Child in the City Conference Rotterdam, The Netherlands

The 4th Child in the City Conference was held in 2008 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The 2008 edition of the conference focused on several topics that were highlighted in this particular year.

In 2008 there were no detailed terms of reference how to measure child-friendliness of a city and therefore many cities developed and implemented innovative tools which introduced guidelines for creating child-friendly cities. UNICEF gathered the self-assessment tools for analysis. The theme of self-assessment tools for child-friendly cities were brought together and were discussed with the help of UNICEF and Roger Hart. The objective was to establish guidelines and key indicators that would help cities to develop their own tools of self-assessment.

A second series of workshops focused on a child-friendly urban planning. During the workshops the theme of urban planning and the concept of the ‘city-web’, or more specifically ‘play-web’ was introduced and how children’s play areas are closely interlinked with urban life. The participants discussed how an urban design of a city can impact children’s mobility and how to make urban spaces playful without making them play areas, etc. The objective was to help cities with developing a child oriented urban planning.