The Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card is the seventh edition of the ZPG Children's Environmental Index biannual series. Its mission is to present the best available data on the social, economic, educational and physical environment in our cities--exactly where our children live, grow, learn and play.
F.A.Q. - 1999 Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card
ZPG has constructed a list of Frequently Asked Questions to help answer the more common inquiries about the Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card
1999 Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card
ZPG's Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card hopes to inspire families, individuals, activists and officials to work together to create better communities, instead of just moving to "better" places. To this end, our report broadens the discussion on population to include concerns about social justice felt by many urban and suburban residents.
Priscilla Y. González, Principal Researcher,
Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card
Naperville, IL Report card
Linking Social Justice Concerns with Environmental Issues:
How Communities of Color Have Paved the Way for a Broader Environmental Movement
People of color, especially, are among the most active participants in improving the communities where they live.
by Jessika Fruchter, ZPG Communications Fellow and
by Priscilla Y. González, Principal Researcher
Why the ZPG Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card
Is Important to All of Us
Thoroughly researched and compiled in an easy-to-read way by ZPG, the latest edition of The Children's Environmental Index series contains both good news and bad about the state of children in America today. And like a child's report card, ZPG's Report Card points out the progress.
By Representative Carolyn B. Maloney
How We Did the Math
(How we graded each city)
After we accumulated all of the data for each city, we took each indicator individually. For example, we considered Teen Birth Rate, Bad Air Days, and so forth, separately.
Using the Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card
In the Classroom
Attention Teachers!
Now you can use all of the data in ZPG's Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card to teach innovative classroom lessons. Living a Quality Future is the Report Card's teaching companion, providing creative ways to evaluate the data and conclusions, to explore community sustainability and to start discussions on community well-being in the classroom.
from...the Director of Communications
So, what do Seattle, Washington and Fargo, North Dakota and Livonia, Michigan all have in common? Well, besides being generally "up north" and also being pretty cool towns, these are the three places-major city (Seattle), independent city (Fargo), and suburb (Livonia)-that ZPG found "made the grade" in the 1999 version of our Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card. These cities, while not perfect, certainly give us some idea of what other places can do to make a city more hospitable to the most vulnerable of our citizens-the children.
By Timothy Cline, Director of Communications
