Municipal Conferences

Creating spaces that nurture infants, toddlers, and their caregivers is a significant urban challenge, and one that demands deep, high-quality collaboration among diverse municipal stakeholders. This approach ensures that responsibility is shared across departments rather than placed on a single team, fostering a more holistic and effective response. Success in meeting this challenge hinges on a strong foundation of shared knowledge, mutual understanding, and collective action, all aimed at improving municipal services for early childhood development. 

At Urban95, we are committed to addressing this need by investing considerable resources in building a comprehensive and dynamic body of professional knowledge. This knowledge serves as a vital tool for making early childhood expertise accessible to a broad range of municipal partners. By fostering a culture of creative thinking and innovation, we aim to inspire the development of diverse, impactful solutions that improve the well-being of the city’s youngest residents and their families.

To support and amplify these efforts, we organize high-value municipal conferences that bring together professionals and teams from across the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality. These events provide a platform for collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and collective progress in early childhood urban planning.

The municipal conferences provide a unique platform for imparting professional and practical knowledge in the fields of early childhood and urban development. They aim to inspire fruitful collaboration, foster resource pooling, and deliver high-quality, substantive content. Through a series of lectures, panels, and workshops, we offer municipal employees an engaging opportunity to explore the world of toddlers, learn from international experts, and connect with colleagues from other departments.

In addition to enriching professional knowledge, the conferences are designed to strengthen participants’ sense of belonging and shared responsibility in advancing innovative initiatives to improve the well-being of children and families in the city.

Each conference centers on a key theme that shapes its content, guides the selection of speakers, informs the workshop design, and fosters collaborations with professionals from around the world. Some of the conference themes to date include:

• Free Play: This conference featured a keynote lecture by Darell Hammond on urban planning strategies from a child’s perspective (95 cm height), as well as a presentation of the municipal early childhood strategic plan and an ideation workshop focused on early childhood-oriented thinking.
• The Street as a Child-Friendly Space (in collaboration with NACTO): This conference explored the urban environment as a shared space for children and adults. Sessions focused on designing streets that are safe and accessible for everyone. It also featured a VR experience offering a child’s perspective of the city from a height of 95 cm.
• Brain Development in Early Childhood: Dedicated to the critical early years of brain development, this conference included a keynote lecture by Prof. Itai Berger, along with study sessions and workshops addressing brain development in children from birth to age three.
• Language Development in Early Childhood: Focused on the theme of how children acquire language, this conference featured a keynote lecture by Patricia Kuhl, Ph.D., on the interplay between language, literacy, and infant brain development. Additional sessions included a municipal panel addressing opportunities and challenges in language development and how environmental factors influence the learning process.
• A Healthy City for Children: Carlos Dora, MD, presented a keynote lecture on the connection between urban environments and children’s health in early childhood. The conference also presented case studies from Israel and around the world on fostering healthy urban childhoods.