Children First City Design

From Canay Atalay’s keynote presentation in &Leuven Summit and Festival

#ChildrenFirst city design

When I was little, we moved to a small village where there was no big apartments, shopping malls, entertainment parks nor galleries. My parents tell us that life standards were pretty low. Somehow my side of the story is very different;

We were living in a house in a huge garden, where we had all sorts of vegetables. I used to eat parsley from the garden without washing, and despite the warnings of my parents i never got sick because there was no pesticides used on them. I could watch the sunrise in front of our house and sunset in the back of our house without any high building or pollution fog shadowing my view, somewhat like Little Prince on his little planet. One of the best parts was the neighbourhood. As children we were allowed to enter any house without knocking on the door, sit on the lunch and dinner tables and eat with neighbours as if we were a part of their families. My parents were working walking distance to our home and always at home before it was dark. To me, this was a very high quality life.

Now I am living in Istanbul with my two daughters. Although I am in the same neighbourhood for the last 10 years and I don’t know many of my neighbours, -but i know all of the WiFi names-. My daughters have to travel 2 hours to/from school. All i want is my children don’t have to inhale too much car pollution and they are safe while they are playing outside even within our fences.

As the city grew, the buildings got higher, cars flooded the roads, children got stucked in little areas, people fell distant and parents got busier. Neighbours switched from family member to strangers in the same building. And something felt missing, profoundly: It didn’t feel like home anymore.

Creating new narratives

Cities shape our physical lives but they affect our mental and emotional wellbeing as well. Most importantly cities shape how we define life and ourselves. Research shows that children who commute or exposed to more traffic see their neighbourhood and life more dangerous than children who commute less. We are poisioning our children not only with car pollution and fast food but also with distorted value systems.

With unlimited power of AI on the horizon, time is up to create new narratives so we don’t amplify the existing human problems and inherit them to future generations.

1-THINK RADICALLY NEW beyond our addictive thoughts and assumptions. And as systems shape how we think, we need to think and design new systems beyond fixing what’s wrong on already collapsing ones.

2-WORLDWIDE CO-OPERATION With Climate change, refugee crises, innovations in the technology we are becoming one global tribe who wants to survive and thrive. As conscious leaders innovating for future cities, it’s time that we find a worldwide co-operation that motivates us to create meaningful futures.

The radical new thinking and worldwide co-operation is possible when we focus on the children’s wellbeing and let the children design new narratives for themselves.

Since last two years I transformed my personal and business life prioritizing children. By listening and working with children, I noticed the vast ocean of possibilities we can unlock when it comes to designing anything, from products to cities, business models to cultures. And here I want to share some of these learnings with you.

#ChildrenFirst world design

‘Children First World Design’ is a compass of innovation for humanity, meaning prioritizing children’s wellbeing among anything else and enabling children to design their own lives. It is a hollistic and analytical thinking considering both present time and future that benefits us all. Beyond thinking it also transcendents ‘being’ in the joy of meaningful and sustainable innovation, together with the most innovative human role models; children.

Here are 4 steps to innovate with ‘Children First World Design’ principles;

1-children first decisions: We don’t think how our decisions and the narratives that we teach them are affecting them because that’s not our focus when it comes to businesses. That’s why obesity and social media addiction are skyrocketing, leaving children at the risk of mortal diseases and depression with high self harm rates including suicide. The problem is the short term thinking and our wrong assumptions based on 16th century old thinking.

Putting children is not only the right thing to do but also it is smart for the business. Children are future customers, employees, leaders and shareholders. From Facebook Cambridge Analytics example to Blackrock’s CEO announcement to business inviting them to consider society’s values, we know that any business who don’t respect communities’ values doom to fail. A children first business / public service approach combines short and long term thinking and forces us to think more hollistically around topics like ethics, sustainability, employee/citizen happiness and education.

For a systemic Innovation imagine new roles such as Chief Children First Officer who reports to a commission of children. And imagine new KPI’s; what is the impact of the company on children’s wellbeing, physical, mental and emotional? For cities check these metrics; What is the size of the free roaming area of an average child? How frequently they play outside? How close is the nearest park, forest? How frequently their opinions are heard and applied? How long they can be together with their parents and community members? How are we enabling communities to consider and act children first?

2-design with and for children

We know that children are way more creative than us because they are not educated off their creativity yet. Then why to treat them just as users and not let them lead the way?

With Wapaland we are providing platforms for children to explore, dialogue and design their own lives, their city, school and family experiences, together with their parents. We use philosophy and design thinking methodologies, different art forms such as dancing, role playing, singing and playing music together.

Now I want to show you couple of examples of their dream city designs.

my dream city

Children imagine future cities as nature. They also exclude pollution, cars in traffic and high buildings and reflect them as a part of history.

trees & family

We run value exercises with children, and most of children come up with ‘FAMILY’ as one of their top 5 values. In a city where family is valued most, there is no child or elderly alone without families, no concept of refugees, street animals (or even elephants) because we are one big family as Earthlings. They designed houses connected to each other on the trees, which are also transportation and communication devices.

green energy

Kids dreaming bigger and greener. For these kids, it’s not self-driving cars that symbolize the future. It’s alternative energy like chocolate, new materials, and flight.

freedom to move

For children their perfect city is a city which makes them happy, with simple pleasures like nature to play in, learn and feed from, freedom to move flexibly, create and express themselves, feel love and loved with their families and communities.

floating and under sea cities

Mobility is very important, children design floating cities in the sky or below the sea so they can change locations according to seasons and ecological needs.

robots take care of boring

Children imagine flying schools so they can learn from other children living in different countries. They want to learn to grow their own plants, make experiments in labs and play music while robots take care of the boring things.

3-Learn from children with children

We all know that existing education system is collapsing. Also with technology we automize more decisions every day with big data and algorithms which removes the decision making, failing and thus learning opportunities of our children. We want children to be critical thinkers and decide for themselves.

That’s why in Wapaland workshops our main focus is art and philosophy. We run Socratic dialogues with both children and adults, and enable them to experience the art of listening. Many parents listening to their children for real maybe for the first time, get shocked when they hear how their children are talking. Let’s stop talking at children and instead talk with them. Let children’s voices be heard. Let them join in the decision making processes.

To leave children out of urban planning means losing the chance to connect future leaders with issues like overcrowding, safety and sustainability. Getting kids thinking about their surroundings early on – observing and commenting – teaches them critical life skills.

More importantly let’s learn from children how to enjoy our human qualities and flourish them such as imagination, curiosity, creativity, joy of living, being in the moment and being flexible with change.

4-Listen to your inner child

When was the last time you did something you used to love doing as a child? What do you do just because it is fun? You can not ignore your inner child and create happiness for children and others. Let’s stop trying to think or do happy cities, let’s become happy cities by being happy like children. Whenever I am upset, my 5,5 yrs old Mia says; ‘Kalbinde güneş açsın anne’ which is ‘Let the sun shine in your heart mother’. A child knows happiness is a natural state of being when u let yourself. Let’s listen our inner children to show us the path to happiness.

One global human tribe

Carl Sagan once said ‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known’. I believe that incredible thing is on this planet right in front of us. No, it is not artificial intelligence, it is our natural intelligence, our children. They need our attention to their dreams and courage to change ourselves. Let’s make today and this beautiful festival kick start for a ‘Children First World Design’ and inherit a new story to future gamechangers. A loving story of one global human tribe.