Mobility and Access for Babies, Toddlers, and Their Caregivers Course

Welcome to the Mobility and Access for Babies, Toddlers, and Their Caregivers course.

This course will explore the who, why, what, and how of mobility and access for babies, toddlers, and caregivers. We will explore planning, design, and policies focused on this user group and explore why it is important to integrate their particular needs into transport planning decisions.

Who is this course for: This course is designed for professionals in the planning and transportation field or in early childhood development and health, aspiring planners, and decision-makers who want to learn more about how transportation and the built environment impact young children and caregivers and how to create better cities for them.

About this course: This self-paced virtual course has 3 modules that will take about 45 minutes each, for a total of 2.5 hours of material. We designed it so that you would spend less than one hour a week for three weeks to finish the course. You are also welcome to binge-watch. At the end of the course, you can request to receive a certificate of completion and be invited to future live workshops.

This course follows the synthesis of mobility needs and frameworks for access laid out in the report: Access for Babies, Toddlers, and Their Caregivers. We will look at concepts like the 15-minute neighborhoods and 10-minute public transport and explore how cycling, walking, and public transit can be instrumental to the mobility of babies, toddlers, and caregivers.

We will also dive into tools that can help you evaluate the quality of your city’s transport and land use, including measuring walkability and defining the principles and objectives of inclusive transit-oriented development, which encapsulates the main characteristics of urban access.

Modules

Module 1: Urban Mobility Needs of Young Children and Caregivers

Babies, toddlers, and their caregivers have specific needs that the cities and their mobility systems and environments can facilitate. In this module, we will explore how young children develop and what they and their caregivers need from the urban environment in order to thrive.

Goals of Module 1:

Understand why the early years of a child’s life are so important to their development.
Learn about the mobility behaviors and experiences of caregivers traveling with young children.
Understand how early childhood development and mobility behaviors relate to the quality of the urban environment.

Module 2: Solutions to Improve Access for Babies, Toddlers, and Caregivers

Urban mobility and land use are the main enablers of access in cities, as well as for the health and well-being of caregivers and their babies and toddlers. In this module, we look at how integrating inclusive urban mobility with activities and critical services helps create solutions for improving access for families and everyone in cities. This module defines key principles of access.

Goals of Module 2:

Define access from the perspective of caregivers and their young children.
Understand the key frameworks for improving access: 15-minute neighborhoods and 10-minute public transport.
Learn about the building blocks of those principles, including what makes good conditions for local mobility and public transport.

Module 3: Approaches to Making Cities for Young Children and Caregivers

In this module, we will look at how one can achieve the solutions we learned about in Module 2. This module examines different policies and approaches that can help cities plan and evaluate outcomes concerning the well-being of babies, toddlers, and caregivers. These are grounded in real-world examples and case studies. Finally, this module will explore different tools to evaluate existing conditions in order to set a baseline from which you can determine where you need to go to improve transport and urban development for young children.

Goals of Module 3:

Learn about policies and actions that can respond to the needs of caregivers and young children through real-world examples.
Learn about the tools that cities can use to plan and evaluate infrastructure and urban environments through the lens of access.

Learning Hub