Sam Sturgis ~ Kids In India Are Sparking Urban Planning Changes By Mapping Slums

Hand-drawn maps such as this are winding up on the desks of urban planners across India. (Courtesy of Humara Bachpan)

Every kid likes to draw. But in India, young people living in slums are using their sketching skills to spur urban change.

As part of a broader civic campaign centered on “child clubs,” groups of children are creating detailed “social maps” of their marginalized neighborhoods to voice their concerns about public space, as first reported in Citiscope, a CityLab partner site.

Since 2011, UNICEF has been encouraging kids to use mobile technology and open data to map environmental and health issues near their homes. But that technology isn’t available to everyone. Instead, much of the child-led mapping campaign sweeping India today relies on old-school topography materials—paper and a rainbow-spectrum of markers.

Read more: http://www.citylab.com/kids-are-sparking

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