Building a child-friendly Pune: how Egis helped transform urban spaces for young families
Financial Commitment
The PMC has allocated a budget of €1.99 million (approximately ₹19.5 crore) across various departments to enhance urban infrastructure for families with young children.
Infrastructure Enhancements
Public Spaces: Sixteen infrastructure projects are currently underway to transform parks, streets, Anganwadi centers, and public health centers into more child‑ and family‑friendly spaces.
Sensory Garden: In collaboration with the PMC’s Garden Department, Egis has also helped establish the city’s first sensory garden designed for infants, toddlers, and caregivers, featuring sand and mud play areas, a variety of plants, and seating areas for accompanying adults.
Early Childhood Development (ECD) Initiatives
Crèche Facilities: A model crèche has been created for the children of PMC employees and now serves as an inspiration for other employers. In addition, a crèche for airport security staff—accommodating children up to six years old and offering stay facilities—was inaugurated in March 2024. The first ECD corner was opened on May 25, 2023, within a primary health clinic to provide a safe and playful environment for children and caregivers, and the PMC plans to replicate this model across all 25 clinics.
Community Engagement
Kids Festival: The inaugural week‑long Kids Festival in March 2023 attracted more than 70,000 participants with activities such as storytelling, clay modeling, and games. Thanks to its success, the festival became an annual event, with the December 2023 edition drawing approximately 150,000 children.
Policy and Guidelines Development
Under the Urban95 programme, Egis has developed crèche and daycare guidelines to set standards for child‑friendly facilities, as well as child safety guidelines to improve the protection of young children within the city’s urban infrastructure.
High replicability opportunities : Case study & Implementation
The following project criteria requirements allows for high replicability opportunities of the ITC-Friendly outdoor space within a Primary Health Care center following the project rationale:
- Chhatrapati Shivray Hospital is situated within an active neighbourhood. There are several ITC-friendly markers within a 500m radius from the site such as public parks, schools, playgrounds, and day-care centres. Each of the ITC-friendly areas cater to different development roles for the child, while also acting as safety markers and recognisable wayfinding points at a neighbourhood scale. They together form a network to create a holistic, child-friendly neighbourhood.
- The Primary Health Care is an important ITC marker within the neighbourhood. The inclusion of the PHC as an ITC-friendly marker serves as a point of contact between medical practitioners, paediatric patients, ITC users and the State.
- The Primary Health Care infrastructure facilities currently present are minimal and lacking in several ITC utilities such as ITC-friendly washrooms, drinking water facilities, diaper-changing stations and breastfeeding booth.
- The PHC has vacant and underutilised open space within the premise. It is located within a quiet residential neighbourhood, with the presence of existing trees in and around the plot. This serves as potential to integrate ITC-friendly activities that are beneficial for paediatric patients and caregivers such as therapeutic areas, and engaging activities such as learning, awareness and interactive spaces.
