Participation of Children in Decision Making and Urban Planning in Local Communities: Employing Solar Energy in the Serbian Schools

Abstract

Children and young people are rarely recognized as active and important participants in community development. Urban planners and designers who are involved in planning, developing and designing places usually follow standard procedures which assume the involvement and participation of the governmental representatives, different stakeholders, experts from different fields or the representatives of NGOs and civil society. Children and young people are not recognized as a group with specific aspirations, views, needs or understanding of space. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child speaks about that, recognizes the need for change and recommends the active involvement of children in different areas and decisions. This should be applied to the urban planning and decisions that are being made in planning and development. The situation in Serbia is not much different from what is going on in other countries. However, there are already the first signs of the changing practice; a shift toward broadening the number of participants whose opinion matter and who should be included in the planning process is taking place. Thus, there is also a growing notion of how important it would be to include children as well, listen to them and work with them. At the moment, several projects have been designed and developed along these lines where children have been one of the main actors. This paper will explore and present one of them–example from the Food and Catering school in Čačak which have been developed as part of the national project on energy efficiency and use of the renewable energy sources in schools throughout Serbia. In this case, children were actively involved throughout the whole process, which was also used as part of their education on energy, renewable energy resources, the importance of energy question in the everyday life, and sustainability. Throughout the process, they had regular meetings with the local governments, which provided opportunity to talk about issues relevant for their community and its development. This experience has many messages for planners and all those who are involved in community planning and development. In the paper, some of the messages will be outlined.