Urban Hub Team at Save the Children International, March 18, 2025, 8 min

Mapping with children is a powerful tool to understand their perspectives on their neighbourhoods, identify safety concerns, and highlight opportunities for improvement. This blog explores five innovative ways to map neighbourhoods with children, from creating child-friendly city maps to using drones for waste management and even mapping imaginary cities. What is mapping? Mapping tells a Read more →

Sudeshna Chatterjee, Louise Chawla, Deepti Talpade, Leticia Lozano, January 28, 2025, 10 min

Nearby trees, parks, gardens, green schoolyards, and other urban green spaces are not just ‘nice to have’; they are ‘need to have’ resources for health and wellbeing. This blog describes two examples of how children’s enthusiasm and creativity transform inner-city wastelands into green, inclusive community spaces. Why green spaces matter for everyone Compared to young Read more →

Urban Hub Team at Save the Children International and Save the Children Egypt WUF Team, December 18, 2024, 6 min

Children and youth make up the majority of urban populations. Yet, their voices and priorities and the priorities of their caregivers are often missing from urban policies, decisions, plans, and actions. The Global Alliance Cities4Children and our members made considerable strides in bringing children and youth voices and issues and solutions relevant to them to Read more →

Mara Forbes, October 29, 2024, 5 min

Cities Alliance and Slum Dwellers International (SDI) , with financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), support youth-led climate action in informal settlements across 16 countries as part of the Building Resilience in Informal Settlements Programme. Informal settlements are home to some of the fastest-growing populations in the world, where over one billion people Read more →

Urban Hub Team at Save the Children International, October 24, 2024, 7 min

Where to find Cities4Children at World Urban Forum 2024? The World Urban Forum (WUF) was established in 2001 by the United Nations to examine one of the most pressing challenges facing the world today: rapid urbanisation and its impact on communities, cities, economies, climate change and policies. The WUF is the premier global conference on Read more →

Urban Hub Team at Save the Children International, October 1, 2024, 10 min

Pollution, heat stress, hunger and poverty are increasing in rapidly urbanising cities and towns in low-and middle-income countries, posing severe health risks to millions of children, particularly those living in slums and informal settlements. This blog identifies 11 actions that governments and other relevant stakeholders can take to promote healthy cities for all children.  According Read more →

Sree Kumar Kumaraswamy, Madhura Kulkarni and Chaitali Patil, July 9, 2024, 9 min

This blog describes how the innovative Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge (NNC) is promoting healthy early childhood development across 10 cities in India. It outlines seven key urban governance strategies for working with city governments that can strengthen the planning and management of cities to create inclusive and child-friendly spaces for young children and their caregivers. With Read more →

Sudeshna Chatterjee, June 11, 2024, 11 min

The International Day of Play (IDOP) on June 11th is a unifying global moment to celebrate the power of play for all children everywhere. In this first blog of a 3-part blog series, Sudeshna Chatterjee describes the importance of play for children and demonstrates how local governments, urban practitioners, NGOs and communities can collaborate to Read more →

Yichen Wang, June 3, 2024, 6 min

It’s World Bicycle Day and time to celebrate pedal power! BYCS is expanding its Bicycle Mayor Network to foster more cycling-friendly cities worldwide. In this blog, Yichen Wang describes inspiring initiatives led by Bicycle Mayors worldwide, promoting cycling and inclusive public spaces. Why cycling? Cycling is one of the most inclusive, sustainable, and affordable modes Read more →

Global Designing Cities Initiative, May 28, 2024, 4 min

The Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI)  is expanding its Streets for Kids program to more cities worldwide. This blog features their work in Istanbul, León, and Lima. It showcases how low-cost, relatively quick, and creative solutions can make streets safer for children and foster social life. City streets in low-and middle-income countries are increasingly unsafe, Read more →

Urban Hub Team at Save the Children International, May 7, 2024, 5 min

It’s Road Safety Week. We’re featuring Lusaka, Zambia, winner of the 2023 Vision Zero for Youth Award, and the impressive actions taken by the city to improve road safety for children since 2017. Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of death and injury for children and youth According to the World Health Organization, road Read more →

Urban Hub Team at Save the Children International, April 9, 2024, 7 min

The third blog in our ‘Public Space for Children’ series provides an overview of UN-Habitat’s ongoing 12-year Global Public Space Programme (GPSP) with a focus on interventions, tools and guidance that make public spaces better for children. In case you missed them, the first blog of the series spotlights public space interventions by our member Read more →