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In Malaysia, every year, more than 6,000 people lose their lives in traffic accidents, an average of one death every 80 minutes (ESCAP). Behind each statistic is a family, a community, a journey that didn't end the way it should have.As of 2025, Iskandar Puteri is home to over 580,000 residents within its 402 square kilometre jurisdiction. More than one in four people here is under the age of 14 (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2020, 27.7%). Every day, hundreds  of children walk to school, cross busy roads, and navigate streets and footpaths designed primarily for cars rather than the safety of young pedestrians. As one of the city’s most vulnerable groups, children’s needs and perspectives are often overlooked in urban planning          .Navinesh, a twelve-year-old boy from the Bukit Indah neighbourhood in Iskandar Puteri, is one of them.Looking Through a Children’s PerspectiveEvery weekend, Navinesh and his father make the short drive from their home in Nusa Sentral to AEON Mall in Bukit Indah. When the carpark is full, which it often is, they park wherever they can find space, sometimes far from the entrance, and walk the rest of the way. That walk ends at a crossing: three lanes of moving traffic, cars travelling fast, and a painted zebra crossing that offers the appearance of safety without always delivering it.Navinesh has made this crossing dozens of times. And every time, he holds his breath a little."Cars speed a lot, and even the zebra crossing in front of the mall doesn't feel safe," he says. For most drivers passing through Bukit Indah, that crossing is barely a second of their journey. For a child on foot, it is something else entirely. It is a moment of vulnerability, quietly repeated, week after week, accepted as normal because no one had ever suggested it could be different.A Walk with a PurposeThat changed when the ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation Strategy (ASUS) Project – Phase II arrived in Iskandar Puteri.Implemented by UN-Habitat and  ASEAN, with support from the Australian Government through the Australia for ASEAN Futures Initiative (Aus4ASEAN), the ASUS Project – Phase II works with cities across Southeast Asia to accelerate sustainable urbanisation, building more inclusive, connected, and people-centred urban environments. In Iskandar Puteri, that work centres on active mobility: how people walk, cycle, and move through the city safely and comfortably.In partnership with the Iskandar Puteri City Council (MBIP), the project organised a co-design workshop that did something unusual: it gathered 45 participants from city officials, planners, and schoolchildren outside together, and asked them all to step outside and experience the city together, observing its streets through different eyes.     The technical walkabout took participants through the streets of Bukit Indah, stopping at key locations to observe how people actually experience and use public spaces. Children were not simply observers - they were active participants in the process. With UNICEF's support, they were equipped with the language, the tools, and the confidence to document their experiences, identify barriers, and share insights that adults might otherwise overlook.      .Navinesh was one of them.Walking roads he had crossed dozens of times, but now with a clipboard, a facilitator beside him, and permission to speak, he saw everything differently. The zebra crossing near the mall that vehicles ignored. The absence of traffic signals at the busiest pedestrian points. The narrow margin between a crossing that looks safe and one that actually is."This is the first time MBIP discusses with school children about Bukit Indah's environment," he said, still visibly moved by it. "If MBIP didn't do this, cars would keep speeding and people couldn't cross safely."From Observer to AdvocateNavinesh didn't just notice problems. He came with solutions."Traffic lights should be installed at zebra crossings near the AEON Mall bus stop because cars tend to speed through," he said. His recommendations were specific, practical, and rooted in years of lived experience, the kind of insight that rarely surfaces in traffic studies or engineering reports. It came from someone who had stood at that crossing, felt the speed of passing cars, and understood intuitively, physically that a painted line on the road is not the same as protection.For the city officials walking alongside him that day, it was a quiet but powerful reminder: the most important data about how streets work often comes not from sensors or surveys, but from the people who use them. Why Road Safety Needs Children's VoicesRoad safety is most often treated as a technical problem, a matter of speed limits, signage, barrier design, and engineering standards. Those things matter. But they are designed and approved by people who rarely experience the road the way a child does: on foot, moving slowly, with less capacity to anticipate or react to fast-moving traffic.Children are among the most vulnerable road users in any city. They are smaller, less visible to drivers, and far less protected at the moments that matter most, the crossing, the curb, the gap between a parked car and a moving lane. And yet they are almost never present when road safety decisions are made.Iskandar Puteri City Council is working to close that gap by embedding child participation into its co-design methodology. In this effort, the city is supported by UNICEF’s expertise in child engagement, ensuring that it hears from its most vulnerable road users before plans are finalised, not after accidents happen. This approach is feeding directly into something concrete. With technical assistance from UN-Habitat, the city is developing a City Technical Proposal on active mobility, a dual-purpose document designed to serve both as a policy framework and a pre-feasibility study, integrated into MBIP's financial budget planning for 2027, with implementation targeted for 2028. The voices gathered during the walkabout, including Navinesh's, are part of the evidence base that will shape that plan.A Crossing That Should Feel SafeNavinesh's ask is not complicated. He wants traffic lights at the zebra crossing near AEON Mall. He wants cars to slow down. He wants to cross the road, the road he crosses every single weekend, without bracing himself.It is a simple request. It is also a precise diagnosis of a design failure that affects thousands of people every week, delivered by someone who has experienced it firsthand since he was old enough to walk beside his father.The ASUS Project – Phase II cannot install every traffic light or repaint every crossing in Iskandar Puteri. But it can do something equally vital: build the conditions in which a child's experience of road danger reaches the people with the power to act on it, and stays in the room long enough to shape policy.In Bukit Indah, that process has begun. City officials walked the same streets as Navinesh. They stood at the same crossing. They heard what he had to say. His observations are now part of a planning conversation that will eventually inform how this city's streets are designed, funded, and built.What happens next depends on political will, budget cycles, and institutional commitment. But the conversation, the one that had never happened before, has finally begun. And it all started by paying attention to how children experience the city.-ends-ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation Strategy (ASUS) Project – Phase II The ASEAN project “Accelerating the Implementation of the ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation Strategy Phase II” (or “ASUS Project Phase II”) implemented by UN-Habitat with support from the Australian Government through the Australia for ASEAN Futures Initiative (AUS4ASEAN), aims to accelerate sustainable urbanisation practices by implementing the ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation Strategy (ASUS) in secondary and intermediate cities.Phase II continues to place ASUS at the centre of action for sustainable urbanisation in ASEAN whilst enhancing connectivity and activity for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the New Urban Agenda (NUA) across the region.