Actualising children’s ideas for health-promoting neighbourhoods through impactful co-design: insights from children and adult decision-makers

Abstract

Children’s health and wellbeing is influenced by their local neighbourhood environments and children hold the right to participate in matters affecting them, such as neighbourhood design. Co-design is a participatory process being utilised to engage children in collective decision-making about neighbourhoods. An enduring gap exists between rhetoric and reality, with practical insights needed to support co-design that facilitates children’s meaningful participation towards tangible outcomes. My thesis aimed to advance knowledge of how to actualise children’s (aged 5 to 13 years) ideas for health-promoting neighbourhoods from co-design. Using pragmatic action research methodology I conducted two distinct action research cycles with children (n=93) and adult decision-makers (n=10), respectively, in Aotearoa New Zealand. Each cycle comprised one cross-sectional study that drew on participatory and collaborative methods. Child participants shared salient ideas for health-promoting neighbourhoods, and they demonstrated three threads of more-than-human thinking: care for humans and non-humans, vital interdependence of human-non-human relations, and understanding complex urban environments through everyday activities. Insights from adult participants informed a novel framework for impactful co-design with children, comprising three key themes: empowering children within co-design, being intentional about children’s influence, and curating who is involved. My thesis is original in using more-than-human and socio-technical theoretical perspectives to make sense of insights from children and adult decision-makers. Responding to calls for additional views on child participation and grounded in study findings, I advocate for a socio-technical view of children’s meaningful participation in collective decision-making. This view necessitates consideration of the interdependent social and technical elements that influence co-design process and outcomes. Inspired by children’s ideas, layering a socio-technical view of children’s meaningful participation with more-than-human thinking encourages us to embrace the importance of both human and non-human entities. The primary contribution from this thesis is new insight into how impactful co-design with children can contribute to tangible outcomes in neighbourhoods. Findings have important implications for practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers working with children at the intersection of health and local environments. My pragmatic focus on generating practical insights and outputs enables actionability of thesis findings by adult decision-makers.