From words to action : A study of a child perspective in planning

Sammanfattning: This study examines how well the children’s perspective is taken into account in modern day urban planning, according to professionals within the field. It highlights both positive and negative experiences of the implementation of this perspective, in order to distinguish both flaws and strengths in the current methods. The study shows that some adults still regard children’s ideas as unnecessary, and that this is caused by the misconception that children’s wishes have a tendency to be unrealistic. Despite this image still occurring, there is often a willingness to include the children’s perspective. However, the resources to do so are often lacking, resulting in an unsatisfactory inclusion of children and their thoughts, in favor of more demanding and technical perspectives. Because of this, what is phrased as a children’s perspective is sometimes rather the image of what adults believe the children want, without actually having communicated with them. The analysis furthermore shows that the children’s perspective is often considered only after issues have arisen, when important decisions have already been made. In order to emphasize the importance of the children’s perspective, the UN:s Convention of the Rights of the Child has been acknowledged as a law in Sweden. However, the actualization of UN:s convention into planning procedures is lagging, possibly because it has not been properly adapted for the planning context, and is therefore difficult to apply to real life planning. The Swedish Planning and Building Act (PBL) has however not been adapted to incorporate the values of the UN:s convention in an urban planning context. Even though PBL requires affected parties to be consulted during the planning procedures, children are not mentioned as a specific group and are therefore sometimes forgotten. The study concludes that the planning procedures today do not fully live up to the intentions of the UN:s convention. However, the development seems to be heading in the right direction, even though the change is taking time.