employ them. The needs of other groups usually take a back seat. This is especially so in market-based societies where access to goods and services is based on ability to pay a price that guarantees suppliers a profit. Those who cannot translate their needs into a market demand are largely left out. They include people with low disposable incomes (“the urban poor”), people with disabilities, many elders, and children. Among these disadvantaged groups, children deserve special attention because they, more than others, lack political and economic power.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted by the General Assembly in 19895, created a basis to address this lack of representation. It spells out many rights of children, including the right “to have their voices heard in all matters affecting them.” State governments have a mandate to support implementation of CRC principles at the local level. Although most city governments have been slow to establish participatory processes with children and youth, there is a growing interest in many countries to promote “child-friendly cities” (CFCs). Following the Habitat II Summit in Istanbul in 1996, UNICEF established a CFC Secretariat as part of its Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy. Although its operations were discontinued in December 2005 owing to a re-prioritization of funding, its web site remains and a CFC network in Europe now organizes an annual conference. Similar networks exist in Canada and Australia. Recent years have seen CFC declarations and aspirations from London to San Salvador and from St. Petersburg to Amman, and exciting CFC initiatives and programs are underway in many Latin American, African, and Asian countries.
The next section outlines normative frameworks that have recently made a focus on children and youth into a higher priority for urban policy. These policies increasingly call for programs that support the exercise of agency by young people, enabling and empowering them to act as productive participants in the development of their communities.