Community design with children in Montreal and Guadalajara

This paper examines two community design projects that were carried out in 2004–2006 in Montreal, Canada and Guadalajara, Mexico as part of UNESCO's Growing Up in Cities programme. In both cases, children aged 8 to 16, in collaboration with students in architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning, evaluated their neighbourhoods and proposed physical transformations to improve outdoor spaces. The collaborative process made it possible to understand how children perceive and use their neighbourhoods, to increase children's environmental knowledge and skills, and to introduce students to participatory design. This paper discusses this participatory process, describes the characteristics of places that children perceive to be meaningful and determines what lessons in neighbourhood planning can be drawn from these experiences.