Dr Kathy Hirsh-Pasek | Transforming Cityscapes into Opportunities for Playful Learning | CCF2019

Conscious Cities Festival 2019 | Day 2 | Family Friendly Cities

The push for child-friendly cities is a positive indicator towards inclusivity, but it is also a symptom of the decades of urban planning that has marginalized families to specific points in the city. In most urban areas raising a family can be a challenge to parents and children alike, what can we change to make the city supportive of growing families?

The day’s events will address with what needs to be done to create more inclusive environments in which families thrive and children experience healthy physical and mental development.

With thanks for the support of our day partner: Bernard Van Leer Foundation

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Mission Statement
The mission of the 2019 Conscious Cities Festival is to provide a four-day learning environment to explore how science-informed design can create a healthier, more inclusive city. Using a multidisciplinary approach grounded in principles of racial equity and social justice, the festival aims to facilitate dialogue among individuals, organizations, and institutions working towards common goals in efforts to spur collaborative and creative solutions for achieving just communities.

The 2019 Festival
Building on the conscious cities movement’s previous events, each day of the festival will tackle pressing issues facing today and the future’s urban population, grouped into four themes: Resilience, Families, Aging, and Mental Health.

Designers, community planners and organizers, advocates and activists, decision- and policy-makers, and behavioral scientists will present forward-thinking approaches to share knowledge in the week’s workshops and public lectures. We will be joined by representatives of New York’s City Hall and other city agencies interested in the latest innovation in planning and engagement with local communities, and how psychology and neuroscience can inform the design of our cities.

Hosted by our venue partner Pratt Institute, the festival will highlight how behavioural science and design can inform one another to better suit the needs of communities and individuals. Participants will co-develop human-centered measures of impact and promote political and economic arguments to sustain investment.

Conscious Cities and The CCD
The Conscious Cities movement began in 2015 emerging out its Manifesto which advocates for environments that are aware and responsive to the needs of people. It is envisioned as the integration of technology and science-informed design, taking insights from psychology and neuroscience to create a healthier, more inclusive, and democratic built environment. Since then, numerous events and publications have contributed to promoting positive social impact through design that is grounded in research and evidence.

The CCD is a think tank focused on using design to address urban issues facing society today and in the future. We see the continued urbanisation of the world population presenting both challenges and opportunities to building an environment that improves health and wellbeing. The centre acts as a home to the Conscious Cities movement and as a hub for human-centered and science-informed architecture and urbanism.

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Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek is the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Faculty Fellow in the Department of Psychology at Temple University and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her research examines the development of early language and literacy as well as the role of play in learning. With her long-term collaborator, Roberta Golinkoff, she is author of 14 books and hundreds of publications.

She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, is the Past President of the International Society for Infant Studies and served as the Associate Editor of Child Development. She is on the Steering Committee of the Latin American School for Education, Cognitive Neural Science as well as on the advisory board for Vroom, The Boston Children’s Museum, Disney Junior, The Free to Be Initiative and Jumpstart. Her book, Einstein never used Flashcards: How children really learn and why they need to play more and memorize less, (Rodale Books) won the prestigious Books for Better Life Award as the best psychology book in 2003.

CCF2019