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Title
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Envisioning Child-Friendly Neighborhoods: From the Context of Brazilian Cities to the World
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Description
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In recent years, child advocates, international organizations, and foundations have seen a move toward child-friendly cities (UNICEF, 2004). This movement advocates for urban interventions that reflect children's rights, policies, and programs, all designed to enhance child health and wellbeing (Woolcock, G., Gleeson, B., & Randolph, B., 2010). Children's environments can either provide the conditions for biological systems to produce positive health outcomes, or enable toxic environmental experiences in the early stages of life. Negative environments can affect the brain architecture of a child, and lead to negative developmental and mental health outcomes later in adulthood. (Shonkoff, J.P. & Phillips, D.A. (Eds.), 2000; Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2010). Spatial constraints of young people's lives today in cities direct our attention to the necessity of creating cities where children can successfully develop rather than constraining them to particular play spaces (Freeman, 2006). Despite this need, policy makers still struggle to adopt the mindsets and behavioral changes needed to create child-friendly cities (Moore-Cherry, 2014). If cities aren't child-friendly, then how can we make them so?
In order to answer this, we need to understand the following:
- What are child-friendly cities, and what is preventing them from being created?
- How are local actors working on the ground toward building positive environments for children in cities?
- How can we understand, define, develop, and implement a new approach for child-friendly cities that takes into account differences across cities and nations?
This dissertation argues that it’s not only a priority to invest in building child-friendly cities based on other than European models, but also to design local specific approaches where every child within every neighborhood is reached in a more effective, just, and equitable way. Building on a conceptual framework through literature review and on a comparative analysis using interviews, this study has sought to understand how local actors are working on the ground to implement different processes of child friendliness in Brazilian cities. This research has aimed to identify barriers that are preventing such cities from becoming child-friendly. Further, its interpretations bring a contribution to the field by advancing new possibilities and perspectives that promote social inclusion, equity, and justice for all children when envisioning and implementing child friendliness in cities worldwide.
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Doctor of Design
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Creator
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San Miguel, Carolina A.
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Subject
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child-friendly neighborhood
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child-friendly city
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child-friendly planning
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child-friendly design
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child-friendly actions
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child-friendly programs
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child-friendly urban policies
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neighborhood planning and design
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family planning
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child development
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early childhood development
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human development
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theory of human development
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children's rights
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child advocacy
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human rights
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children's health
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children at risk
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child neglect and abuse
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children's mental health
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environmental toxicity against children
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child unfriendliness
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environmental child friendliness
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ecological child friendliness
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ecological systems
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ecological urbanism
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urban ecology
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urban ecology of the child
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urban development
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urban studies
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urban governance
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urban politics
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violence in cities
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Brazilian cities
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sustainable cities
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smart cities
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green cities
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healthy cities
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learning cities
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smart ecosystems
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innovative processes of learning
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ecological learning
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child friendliness in neighborhoods
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human friendliness in neighborhoods
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innovation and strategy
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community strategy
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community development
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strategic community development
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social psychology
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social psychology of children
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social entrepreneurship
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social innovation
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child-centered innovative strategies
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child-centered society.
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Contributor
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Davis, Diane E.
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Forsyth, Ann
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Brion-Meisels, Gretchen
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Wilson, Julie Boatright
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Date
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2019-07-31T07:40:10Z
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2019-05
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2019-05-21
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2019
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2019-07-31T07:40:10Z
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Type
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Thesis or Dissertation
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text
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Format
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application/pdf
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application/pdf
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Identifier
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San Miguel, Carolina A. 2019. Envisioning Child-Friendly Neighborhoods: From the Context of Brazilian Cities to the World. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Design.
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http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41021633
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0000-0001-8303-3593
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Language
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en