Child-Friendly Urban Development: Smile Village Community Development Initiative in Phnom Penh

Puthearath Chan
Additional contact information
Puthearath Chan: General Secretariat of the National Council for Sustainable Development, Ministry of Environment, Phnom Penh 12301, Cambodia

World, 2021, vol. 2, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: Since urban children’s populations have been rapidly increasing, there is a growing interest in promoting child-friendly cities and communities. UNICEF has accordingly developed a framework for action to build child-friendly cities and communities. This framework outlines the steps to build a governance system committed to realizing the rights of children and translated implementation processes in relation to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Particularly, UNICEF produced a guidebook that outlines building blocks to developing child-friendly cities and communities. This guidebook provides good practices and consolidates common challenges and lessons learned to guide the city governments and relevant stakeholders. Likewise, Cambodia developed a national child-friendly community framework aimed to further improve conducive environments for children where their rights are recognized and supported. Following these international and national trends on child-friendly urban development, many organizations and relevant stakeholders in Cambodia have come together to build urban communities focused on children. Similarly, the Smile Village community in Phnom Penh city was developed. Although its main vision is to build a residential community for underprivileged families to achieve social and financial mobility, various facilities and programs were developed for children. This study explores this community on its child-friendly dimensions and examines whether this urban community is child-friendly based on the national child-friendly community development’s core dimensions.

Keywords: UNICEF child-friendly cities and communities; Cambodia child-friendly community; Phnom Penh communities; child-friendly urban development building blocks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G15 G17 G18 L21 L22 L25 L26 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 R51 R52 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/2/4/31/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/2/4/31/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jworld:v:2:y:2021:i:4:p:31-520:d:682928

Access Statistics for this article

World is currently edited by Ms. Cassie Hu

More articles in World from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().