Urban Environment Safety for Children: The Analysis of Current

Legislation

Natalia E. Rakitina

Department of Public and Private Law, Faculty of Social and Humanitarian Studies, Komsomolsk-na-Amure State

University, 27 Lenin’s Street, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russian Federation

Keywords: Urban Environment Safety, Quality Rating Parameters, Urban Areas, Urban Environment Quality, “Smart

City”.

Abstract: The analysis of modern trends in the development of state politics concerning the creation of safe urban

environment for children and the analysis of “urban environment safety” elaboration parameters are carried

out herein. The system-based analysis of the Russian Federation legislation concerning urban environment

safety pointed out the investigation actuality for such current practices as rating application while assessing

the quality of the Russian urban environment. Legally approved methods of urban environment quality

evaluation with statistical indicators included are reviewed, urban environment status monitoring is carried

out, and its digitalization level is assessed herein. The analysis of the current Russian legislation in terms of

issues related to children safety ensuring in urban environment revealed insufficient elaboration of urban

environment evaluation parameters with regard to its safety for children. Considerable attention in ratings is

paid to the issues concerning public areas improvement. Key indicators of urban environment quality, not

fully describing its safety evaluation parameters for children, were developed. An innovative project

developed for implementation of global digitalization into municipal facilities requires significant resources-

related costs. The recognition of the child as the top priority for the state sets the objectives related to the

development of safe environment for next generations of the Russians to their proper development. The

author proposed some additions to the current list of indicators by means of which urban environment safety

level for children can be defined.

1 INTRODUCTION

The amendments made to the constitution of the

Russian Federation in 2020 specified the child as the

top priority of the Russian state policy

(GARANT.RU-1, 2020). Urban environment is

around a child from birth till age of majority. While

adults intent to create safe living environment for

rising generations, riskogenics of urban living tends

to increase year on year (Le-van, 2015). Some

negative phenomena of a natural or antisocial

character are becoming a new turn of a social

historical development (such as ecological and

natural disasters, vi-rus pandemics, terrorism and

many others) (Vologdina et al., 2020). Cyberspace is

becoming a platform for cybercrimes because of a

high victimity degree of children being potential

victims. Adult and conscious parents develop certain

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8337-6067

strategies aimed at the development of safe behaviour

of their own children (precrime situations designing,

intimidation with possible improbable consequences,

and etc.) (Newman, 2001). Safety of urban areas for

children shall become a target criterion in the process

of Russian urban environment evaluation (Rakitina

and Filipova, 2017).

2 METHODS

The viewpoint of the state on providing safety for all

citizens (including children) is specified in the

National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation

(hereinafter referred to as the Strategy) (Consultant

Plus, 2015).

The Strategy contains some specific forms of

children safety provision. They are mostly related to

780

Rakitina, N.

Urban Environment Safety for Children: The Analysis of Current Legislation.

DOI: 10.5220/0010597507800785

In Proceedings of the International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference on Sustainable Development of Regional Infrastructure (ISSDRI 2021), pages 780-785

ISBN: 978-989-758-519-7

the health care and improvement of cultural and

educational levels of young citizens at the age of up

to 18 years, the development of child friendly justice

(the development of the maternity and child welfare

service; the development of palliative medicine, for

children as well; the development of public medical

rehabilitation and improvement of the health resort

treatment system, and for children as well; children

and young people upbringing in the spirit of

citizenship (Consultant Plus, 2015).

Structural components for provision of state and

public safety are as follows:

 the rise of efficiency indicators for law

protection activity of the bodies and special

services, as well as public oversight

(supervisory) authorities;

 the improvement of the national crime

prevention system primarily among under-age

persons and other violations of the law

(including monitoring and evaluation of law

enforcement practice efficiency);

 the development and implementation of special

measures aimed at decrease of public relations

criminalization level.

In 2018 the Federation Council issued a resolution

“On Measures of Russian Government Related to the

Implementation of the Priority Project

“Establishment of a Comfortable Urban

Environment” in which competent state authorities

and municipal authorities were recommended “to

take required measures for ensurance of law and

public safety in urban environment” (the Federation

Council, 2018).

Each federal subject of the Russian Federation

shall develop its own state program of public safety

and security ensurance and counteracting to crime in

the region (Khabarovsk Krai Government, 2020).

The evaluation of such programs implementation

results for each year is included into annual summary

reports with detailed description of indicators related

to the growth of crimes amount and crime detection

statistics. Crime monitoring in the regions is carried

out by the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian

Federation with publishing of data as per the key

indicators on web-portal of legal statistics. Each

subject of the Russian Federation takes its own place

in the rating as per the key indicators of recorded

crimes. Year by year dynamics is specified (Web-

portal of legal statistics, 2020).

There was a shift to childhood in the Russian

society during the last decade. The state and society

began to treat “childhood” as a significant part of the

civil society requiring special attention. A new stage

in the state policy was marked by development of

specific national programs beginning with “The

National Strategy of Actions for the Benefit of

Children for 2012-2017” and including some a certain

content for strategic directions of activities to fulfill

the Plan of Events performed within the framework

of the Childhood Decade (hereinafter referred to as

the Plan) (GARANT.RU-1, 2017) and a system of

statistical indicators characterizing the process of

their execution (The Russian Government-2, 2019).

The Plan of Events, to be performed within the

period of 2018-2020 (The Russian Government,

2018), contains a section “Children Safety

Ensurance”. Some directions are specified in the

section:

 recommendations related to anti-terrorism

security of tent type organizations providing

recreation and recovery of children, as well as

the places of mass events with children

participation holding in a natural environment;

 development of children life safety culture

(behaviour in case of emergency);

 improvement of children active tourism safety;

 accessibility and safety of emergency exits in

educational establishments.

It is specified in the section devoted to the events

aimed at cultural development of children that the

state mass media must be engaged to facilitate the

covering of events related to strengthening of a family

institution, spiritual and moral traditions of family

relationships, as well as a patriotic education of

children and youth, moral values propaganda, healthy

lifestyle popularization and a propaganda of kids and

teenager’s life safety culture. The above mentioned

preventive function of such an education provides the

growth of knowledge level in the sphere of fire safety

and life safety in general.

The tenth section “Safe Information Space for

Children” shall be marked among the main events

within the framework of the Childhood Decade.

According to the Plan the performance of these events

shall be resulted in children media literacy

improvement, increasing number of educating

programs aimed at familiarization of parents and

teachers with the newest hardware and software

means for children protection against negative

information, increasing level of children and their

parents (representatives in law) awareness of risks

and threats existing in the information and

communication network (Tseveleva and Starinov,

2020).

Expected results on providing and protection of

children rights and interests are described in the 13th

Urban Environment Safety for Children: The Analysis of Current Legislation

781

section of the Plan. They include the decrease of

juvenile criminals proportion in the total amount of

teenagers (14 to 17 years old), minimization of

attempted suicides number and suicides committed

among teenagers, humanization of a criminal

prosecution practice for under-age persons (medium

and small offense severity), resocialization of under-

age persons who are to discharge from penal colonies

(Vector “Childhood”, 2020).

Reformation of the approach to arrangement of

urban environment which is safe for children moving

and staying is performed on a stage by stage basis in

Russia. Since 2017 a large scale work has been

carried out in Russia concerning provision of

accessible urban environment, as amended, including

events for the period of their performance till 2025

(GARANT.RU-2, 2020). Within the framework of

this program, objects and services accessibility maps

for category of people with different disabilities are

being created in municipal units. The fulfillment of

control over respecting the interests and providing

accessible and safe conditions for people with

different disabilities in all social urban objects

became the aim of municipal authorities. Urban

amenities plans also assume the creation of attraction

points for people, the establishment of accessible

public areas for leisure of children and adults.

Speaking about the integral evaluation of Russian

urban area safety (Hagmann, 2017) in general, paying

attention to cities rating evaluation is necessary. The

implementation of the monitoring program “The

Quality Index of Urban Environment” and the project

“Smart City” within the framework of the national

project “Housing and urban environment” became

innovative.

1 The Program “Quality Index of Urban

Environment”. In November 2019 the Russian

Ministry of Construction published the results of

Russian cities indexing with regard to urban

environment quality. Evaluation procedure was

developed in accordance with the Russian President

Decree enumerating the list of indicators to assess the

efficiency of top officials activities, as well as the

activities of Russian federal subjects executive

authorities. One of the indicators is marked as “the

proportion of cities with a comfortable urban

environment” (The Russian Government-3, 2019).

Taking into account the large territory of Russia

“The Quality Index of Urban Environment” applies a

differentiated approach based on the size and the

climatic conditions to different cities. The safety of

urban environment is one of the six criteria for urban

environment quality evaluation. There may be the

following indicators having impact on urban

environment safety:

The proportion of apartment blocks considered as

unfit ones (maybe used to characterize the safety of

living conditions);

The proportion of solid and municipal wastes sent

for treatment and disposal (this indicator increase

proves the improvement of ecological situation; it

characterizes ecological safety of the environment);

The proportion of pedestrian deaths occurred a

result of road accidents (it characterizes the safety of

urban road traffic network with regard to pedestrian

movement);

The amount of traffic (it characterizes the number

of constant atmospheric emission sources and

subsequently has impact on ecological safety);

The level of urban environment accessibility for

people with different disabilities (it characterizes the

accessibility and safety of urban infrastructure

objects, public transport, public areas and pedestrian

crossings);

The proportion of lighted parts of streets, lanes

and embankments (it characterizes the safety of

movement during night time);

The safety of movement near health care,

education, culture and sport institutions (it

characterizes the safety of children movement to the

objects of infrastructure);

The number of road accidents versus the number

of population (it characterizes the level of threat to

life and health of children because of various risks

caused by the imperfection of its infrastructure);

The proportion of the urban population provided

with potable water of a proper quality (the sanitation

safety of children).

2 The Project “Smart City”. The initial items of

the project were defined in 2015. The Russian

Ministry of Internal Affairs developed technical

requirements to the law enforcement segment of the

hardware and software complex “The Safety City”. In

May 2017 the new methodological recommendations

were sent to the regional departments of the ministry

(RU-BEZH, 2015).

Interdepartmental Commission for issues related

to the project implementation and development had

been working till September 23, 2017 as a part of the

Russian government. Systems for calling emergency

response services through the universal telephone

number “112” and the State Automated Information

System “ERA-GLONASS” appeared alongside with

the development of the target directions for providing

the safety strategy (GARANT.RU-2, 2017).

The above mentioned safety systems were

combined as a single platform “The Smart City” with

ISSDRI 2021 - International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference on Sustainable Development of Regional Infrastructure

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the support of the Russian president in 2018. The

transformation of the pilot project was approved by

the order of the Ministry of Construction, Housing

and Utilities of the Russian Federation (hereinafter

referred to as the Russian Ministry of Construction)

No. 924/pr dd December 31, 2019 “On approval of

the evaluation of the process and efficiency of urban

facilities digital transformation in the Russian

Federation (City IQ)” (The Russian Ministry of

Construction, 2019). Under the ministry a working

group specializing in the project implementation

began its functioning; the group included the

representatives of all interested federal and regional

authorities, the representatives of housing and utilities

branches, IT-technologies developers, a group of

experts, the representatives of scientific society and

centers of competence, as well as a UN Deputy

Secretary General, the Executive Director of the

United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN

Habitat) Ms. Maimunah Mohd Sharif. Taganrog

became the first full-scale “smart city” upon the

results of the project startup in 2019 (RG.RU, 2020).

The “Smart City” standard includes items related

to the implementation of the following systems:

 automatic photo and video recording of road

traffic offences;

 management of urban parking areas;

 intelligent management of urban public

transport;

 intelligent traffic control (“smart traffic

lights”);

 safe and comfortable public transport waiting

areas;

 roadway condition monitoring;

 intelligent systems of ecological safety, and

etc. (The Russian Ministry of Construction,

2019).

3 RESULTS

The movement of Russia towards the global

digitalization of all public and economic processes

following the rapid development of IT-technologies

led to the occurrence of the “smart city” idea. It is

capable to control the communication systems of

municipal units and to facilitate all-round control over

events in urban are-as. The idea shall be implemented

in the direction from the West to the East of the

country. Of course, the issues related to the all-round

implementation of total control systems cause a lot of

discussions in the society (Dé R., 2016).

Implementing the global program of control over all

life support systems, the municipal facilities face the

problem of public danger level increase, if cyber

criminals are infiltrated into such a platform.

Financial expenses for development and

implementation became another limitation for the

project spreading. The current economical crisis,

because of relieving the consequences of the anti-

pandemic campaign 2019-2020 and a protract-ed

nature of limitations escaping, created sufficient

number of reasons to believe that the East of Russia

will not be able to see the efficiency of such digital

project implementation in the nearest future.

Therefore, nowadays urban environment safety

shall be specified and included into the current

program of the Russian urban environment safety

quality evaluation “The Quality Index of Urban

Environment” (Consultant Plus, 2019).

4 DISCUSSION

By 2024 the rise of the index average value of the

urban environment quality all over the Russian

Federation by one third (+30 %) is planned by the

Government (The Russian Government-1, 2019).

Therefore, the internal indicators of urban

environment safety shall increase. It means that the

number of cities having a comfortable environment

shall increase by one third (up to 60 %).

As an example, in 2019 the 13th place was the

result of work related to the development of a

comfortable urban environment (out of 84

participating federal subject) according to the data

provided by the press service of the governor and

Khabarovsk Krai government. Moscow region has

still the leading position (National projects of

Khabarovsk Krai, 2020). Meanwhile, the key

indicators demonstrating efforts related to the

development of a comfortable urban environment

were concentrated on the issues of public areas

improvement but without taking in-to consideration

such an important indicator of comfortability as the

urban areas safеty (Lebedeva, 2020).

The place in a rating of the recorded indicators of

crimes committed in Khabarovsk Krai for the period

of 2019 can be observed here. During a decadde the

rating place of Khabarovsk Krai among all Russian

regions has not been low than the 28th (with regard to

the total number of the recorded crimes at low

population density) (Web-portal of legal statistics,

2020). As the result, the environmental quality

increases according to the index but without taking

into account the criminogenic level of the region.

Urban Environment Safety for Children: The Analysis of Current Legislation

783

5 CONCLUSIONS

The Russian legislation has got a significant resource

in the form of developed state programs aimed at the

society development with children as the top priority.

The activities developed in the federal plans are

implemented directly in the federal subjects.

Requirements to ensuring infrastructure objects

accessibility for people with disabilities were

developed long ago, as well as the indicators of the

urban environment quality. However up to now no

specific indicators have been defined by means of

which the statistic indicators of the urban

environment safety for children could be taken into

account. But children are the main users of urban

areas (in case of leisure together with adults or by

their own mobility potential). The criminogenic level

of environment in cities shall be included as a

parameter alongside with some other ones.

The analysis of the legislation in the field of

providing urban environment safety for children

justified that Appendix No. 1 of the Russian

Federation Government Decree No. 510-r dd March

23rd, 2019 shall be amended. The list of indicators for

urban environment quantity index calculation shall be

supplemented as follows: “37 Number of crimes

committed towards under-age persons and ones

committed with their participation per year. The

calculation formula is the ratio be-tween the number

of crimes committed toward under-age persons and

the number of population (between 0-18 years old)

per year. According to the data provided by the

Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The indicator

characterizes the degree of urban environment safety

for children”. “38 The implementation degree of an

automatic photo-video recording system into the

perimeters of public places and building surrounding

areas. The calculation formula is the increase of

perimeters number equipped with automatic photo-

video recording systems in a reporting year versus the

number of perimeters equipped in the previous year”.

The existing indicators related to the efficiency in

holding activities aiming at safety provisions are

specified in the statistical annual reports of internal

affairs bodies and regional security departments

responsible for fulfillment of public safety programs

(except for road traffic and transport safety). At the

same time the de-crease in the number of road

accidents with participation of under-age persons is

interrelated with roadways and pedestrian ways

quantity improvement and taking additional measures

for regulating pedestrian movement around a city

(The Russian Government, 2018).

The important parameter having impact on public

areas safety is an outdoor surveillance providing a

recording of situation taking place inside parks,

public gardens and embankments. That is why the

provision of public areas with monitoring of their

current situation will not only help to detect street

crimes but can also be used as a preventive mean

against public disturbers.

Proposed parameters will help to specificate

urban environment quality indicators shifting the

emphasis to the safety of urban areas for children.

Chasing the leading positions in the rating of urban

environment quality, the efforts of municipal and

state authority representatives will focus on the target

indicator of urban environment quality that is its

safety for children.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The study was funded by the Russian Humanitarian

Science Foundation. The grant of the RHSF, project

No. 19-011-00654 А, 2019-2021.

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