Planning is central to ensuring that children and young people live in safe and secure places, and that they are included and can be active. There are few aspects of planners' work that do not directly impact children, from designing city centers, to implementing policies that will minimize the environmental effects of industrial practices. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) requires planners to consider children in matters affecting them and affirms that they have the right to be heard on such matters, and there is a consensus that it is important to attempt to engage children and young people in the planning process. The main question is, how? This book provides a range of international case studies illustrating good practice. It offers a variety of tools and techniques that have proved to be successful and discusses the work that needs to be done to enable planners to respond more effectively. It identifies key areas of concern with reference to the built environment and, more precisely, to planning theory and practice.

Claire Freeman is a professor of geography at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Her research is in environmental planning, and she works on planning with children, urban nature, and community planning. Andrea Cook is an urban and regional planner who specializes in strategic and community planning in both academic and a practice-based environments.