{"id":170441,"date":"2025-07-07T13:34:20","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T19:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/?p=170441"},"modified":"2025-07-15T09:49:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T15:49:58","slug":"designing-cities-for-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/cities-and-prosperous-communities\/designing-cities-for-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Investing in Childhood Transforms Cities: Urban95 Academy Offers Program for Latin America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2017, a group of researchers published an economic argument in favor of investing in early childhood<\/a> education. The team, which included Nobel Prize<\/a> winning economist James Heckamn, found that for each dollar that a person invests in the first five years of a child\u2019s life, the return was $6.30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Massachusetts, quantified the benefits from infancy to middle age of an educational program for kids ages one to five<\/a>. Its focus was on education, but as N\u00e9lida Escobedo<\/a> <\/strong>explains, there\u2019s ample opportunities to invest in young kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs societies, if we invest in making cities better for this group, in reality we\u2019re working for the entire population,\u201d says the researcher and professor of social urbanism<\/strong> for the Center for the Future of Cities<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This framework, backed up by decades of scientific research, is the engine behind Urban95 Academy<\/a>, a program that helps local governments create strategies to support infancy in their cities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Center for the Future of Cities, in collaboration with the FEMSA Foundation, the London School of Economics Cities and the Van Leer Foundation, is offering the program for the first time in Spanish for cities in Latin America and the Caribbean.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several studies<\/a> have shown how important the first two years of life are in brain and cognitive development. By the time they\u2019re five, a child\u2019s brain has grown to 90 percent of its size. This is a stage with high levels of neural activity that won\u2019t repeat later in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of this, Escobedo explains, it\u2019s important for them to grow up in an environment that promotes brain activity <\/strong>through social connections and relationships. It\u2019s not just about having kids in mind, but also the people who take care<\/a> of and interact with them daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese interactions happen at home, on the street, they happen in their neighborhood,\u201d said Escobedo. \u201c\u00bfHow can we create cities that acknowledge that those connections of care and attachment are necessary?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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