This TED Talk features urban planner Mara Mincer, recorded live at TEDx Mile High 2017.

Our society routinely makes decisions without consulting a quarter of the population.

We're making choices about land use, energy production, and natural resources without the ideas

and experiences of the full community. The car, an inanimate object, has more say over public

policy than this group of citizens. Can you guess which group I'm talking about? It's children.

I work in urban design, and not surprisingly,

most cities are designed by adults, urban planners, architects, developers, politicians, and occasionally

a few loud citizens. Rarely do you consider the voices of a group of four-year-olds barely tall enough

to reach the podium at city council chambers. But today, I want to ask you this. What would

happen if we ask children to design our cities? Back in 2009, I was introduced to a small group of people who wanted to start a

child-friendly city initiative in Boulder, Colorado. I come from a family of civil rights advocates,

and I had spent my career until that point working with low-income children and families. But I had never heard

of a child-friendly city initiative before. So, I figured its purpose would be to address some of the

frustrations I had encountered as the parent of a young child. Perhaps we would advocate for more

changing tables in restaurants, or create indoor play spaces for those cold and rainy days.

In other words, make the city more hospitable to children and families.

It wasn't until after I committed to this project that I realized I had it all wrong.

We wouldn't be designing better cities for children.

Children would be designing better cities for themselves,

and for the rest of us, too.

Now, I bet you're skeptical about this idea,

and honestly, I was too.

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