Children's participation in the railway planning process : an assessment of the swedish transport administration's practices

Abstract: Introduced as a right by the United Nations in The Convention of the Rights of the Child, the child participation is still, after three decades, an increasingly popular topic. As the Convention will be adopted as a Swedish law by 2020, several organizations and governmental agencies are committed to different participation strategies for children. However, the participation process is not always as effective as expected and it is usually affected by various factors such as the nature of the project or the scale. With intensive impact, large scale projects are developing more frequently than ever all around the country, affecting the environment for an indeterminate period of time. Children are one of the most sensitive groups to these kinds of developments and therefore the objectives of this thesis are to investigate and assess the extent of children’s participation in regional planning. The evaluation is made on three railway projects, coordinated by the Swedish Transport Administration and it is based on the data provided by them. The participation process is first studied through the existing models of children’s participation and an evaluation tool is developed. According to the findings, the participation process has several flaws which need to be improved. The results show which are the weakness and the strengths of the current participation process and some improvements are suggested as outcomes of this research.