An urban neighbourhood framework for realising progress towards the New Urban Agenda for equitable early childhood development

ABSTRACT Children consistently exposed to positive, stimulating environments, including their spatial neighbourhood, experience foundations for ongoing optimal development. Recognition of the neighbourhood as a mechanism to enhance wellbeing is reflected in the United Nation's New Urban Agenda. Through a series of innovations and advancements, this paper aims to describe a spatial indicators' framework, the Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework. Once tested, it can be used to assess and monitor urban neighbourhoods for their ability to equitably support early childhood development. Eight domains were included in the framework: Early childcare and education services, family-friendly destinations, food outlets, housing, public open space, public transport, traffic, and walkability. Overall, 44 indicators were conceptualised for calculation at the smallest appropriate geographical scale available (i.e. a child's home address). Different scales of analysis were chosen to represent a child's local neighbourhood in an urban setting. The Framework supports commitment to action in the New Urban Agenda through improved measurement, monitoring, and research capabilities, alongside provision of tools to support evidence-based and interdisciplinary policy and practitioner decision-making. Once tested with child outcomes, it can inform more precise, evidence-based place-based interventions, while offering the potential to reduce childhood developmental inequities at scale.


Introduction
Young children's outcomes are determined by exposure to a combination of physical, social, family, and individual factors (Bronfenbrenner 1979).Children who are exposed to positive, stimulating environments in their first eight years of life experience optimal foundations for their ongoing physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development (Villanueva et al. 2016).Early childhood development has been defined as the period from conception to 8 years of age, aligning to a period of rapid and critical development (UN 1990).While the complexity of early childhood development risk and protective factors have often been considered more down-stream, for example, from a family, school, service provision, or health-sector perspective, there is mounting evidence of the importance of the more up-stream social determinants of health for young children's outcomes, including where children live and play (Bronfenbrenner 1979;Clark et al. 2020;Goldfeld et al. 2018b).
Recent academic reviews and perspectives emphasise the need for research to identify and investigate the modifiable neighbourhood factors likely to benefit outcomes for young children (Clark et al. 2020;Minh et al. 2017;Putra et al. 2017;Villanueva et al. 2016).From the available neighbourhood built environmentchild development evidence base, availability of local green space has been associated with emotional regulation and wellbeing (Flouri, Midouhas, and Joshi 2014;Putra et al. 2021;Richardson et al. 2017) and mental health (McEachan et al. 2018), and modest associations exist between different domains of development with neighbourhood residential density, public transport access, kindergarten availability, public open space (Bell et al. 2020), and neighbourhood traffic exposure (Christian et al. 2017).Moreover, research consistently shows strong associations between neighbourhood disadvantage and child developmental outcomes (Goldfeld et al. 2018b;Moore et al. 2017).
Disadvantaged neighbourhoods represent social and economic contexts that are often underresourced to support good early years development (Moore et al. 2017).Differences in area-level disadvantage have been associated with inequities in child outcomes, such as developmental delay and behavioural and mental health problems (Woolfenden et al. 2013).For example, Australian children living in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, compared with those from the least disadvantaged neighbourhoods, were 4.1 times more likely to be developmentally vulnerable on at least one of the five Australian Early Development Census domains, a population-level measure of child development at school entry (Commonwealth of Australia Department of Education and Training 2016).Such early childhood development inequities are unjust, unfair, and avoidable (Commission on Social Determinants of Health 2008).They are also costly; in Canada, early childhood development inequities will contribute an estimated loss of 20% to Canadian GDP growth over the next 60 years (Kershaw and Warburton 2009).This paper takes the equity perspective that not everyone starts from the same place, and this must be acknowledged to correct the imbalances to create a more just society.For this to happen intentional and unintentional barriers arising from bias or systemic structures, such as those present in the neighbourhood, need to be overcome (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009).
Interest in relationships between early childhood, urban design and planning, and equity is also reflected in global policy, for example the United Nations Children's Fund's (UNICEF) Child-friendly Cities Initiative (UNICEF 2018).Launched in 1996, a Child-friendly City takes a rights-based approach framed by the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child.The Child-friendly Cities Initiative is broad and multi-pronged, comprising of action plans, evaluations, and endorsements (UNICEF 2018).However, given the diversity of the action plans within and across the Child-friendly Cities, it remains challenging to systematically and objectively evaluate how the cities match to the initiative.Efforts to create Childfriendly Cities are often not led by local authorities, which can shift the responsibility away from local policymakers, in turn, reduce the prioritisation of children in planning (Clark et al. 2020).
While not specifically child-focused, recognition of the neighbourhood as a mechanism to equitably enhance and sustain population wellbeing is also reflected in the UN's New Urban Agenda, an umbrella initiative which aspires to create equitable, liveable cities and neighbourhoods (Badland et al. 2014).Building on its predecessors, such as the Healthy Cities Movement (Hancock 1993) and UN HABITAT (UN Habitat 2016), the New Urban Agenda is a global framework aimed at government, non-government, and the private sector to establish key commitments for sustainable and equitable urban development to 2030.It has been ratified by all UN member states and is operationalised through the activities of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).The SDGs seek to equitably deliver on the New Urban Agenda through sustainable urban development generating economic prosperity, enhancing well-being, and environmental protection (UN 2015).Indeed, the 2020 World Health Organization (WHO)-UNICEF-Lancet Commission into Child Health and Wellbeing (Clark et al. 2020) argued the case as children being central to achieving the SDGs.However, no theoretically-or empirically derived objective indicators of the spatial neighbourhood environment exist that can measure and monitor the delivery of policies and interventions that support good child outcomes within the parameters of the SDGs.These are needed to assist with equitably informing, designing, and delivering 'child-friendly' neighbourhoods and cities across diverse contexts to achieve the ambitions of the New Urban Agenda by 2030 (Woolcock, Gleeson, and Randolph 2010).
Through a series of innovations and advancements, the aim of this paper is to describe the development of a new quantifiable spatial indicators' framework, the Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework, for application in urban neighbourhood settings.The framework directly responds to the lack of objective neighbourhood-level evidence-based tools available, by providing a set of spatial indicators that can be used to measure and monitor the delivery of neighbourhood-level policies and interventions to equitably support early childhood development in cities and major towns.The spatial indicators have been conceptualised based on the evidence to date and designed to measure how well cities are providing stimulating, supportive environments for all children in their local neighbourhoods.Our proposed framework has been developed with translation in mind, and designed for research, policy, and practice application.Although the framework has been developed and populated using Australian data, we anticipate similar indicators could be created and applied to countries who hold comparable data.

Foundational work
The Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework has been conceptually informed by the evidence base (Bell et al. 2020;Christian et al. 2017;McEachan et al. 2018;Minh et al. 2017;Putra et al. 2017Putra et al. , 2021), an interdisciplinary 'child urban liveability' research programme (Alderton et al. 2019a(Alderton et al. , 2019b;;Villanueva et al. 2016Villanueva et al. , 2019)), and the Kids in Communities Study (Goldfeld et al. 2018a).We developed a social determinants of health definition for a liveable urban neighbourhood for children.While not early years or child development specific, much of the research used to inform this definition spanned young children and focussed on child development outcomes.Accordingly, we regard a child-friendly neighbourhood as being 'one with access to affordable housing, with low levels of traffic that provide access to attractive and safe places where children can play and interact safely with others and their environment, including access to good quality parks, facilities and services, social infrastructure, and public transport within walking or cycling distance' (Villanueva et al. 2016).
The Kids in Communities Study included a qualitative investigation into community-level influences on early childhood development in 25 communities across five Australian states and territories (Goldfeld et al. 2018a).From this investigation, a range of 'Foundational Community Factors' that plausibly laid the foundations of an optimal community for young children were identified.Neighbourhood-specific Foundational Community Factors, including parks, public transport, traffic safety, walkability, community facilities and services, and housing emerged from qualitative findings (Goldfeld et al. 2010).Moreover, for families already experiencing disadvantage, a lack of local destinations and services, or exposure to pathogenic neighbourhoods further restricted opportunities for exposure to positive experiences, thereby compounding disadvantage (Badland and Pearce 2019).The Kids in Communities Study identified that having local destinations (e.g.parks, libraries) within walkable distances encouraged families' use of these facilities, and were regarded as important enablers of child development.Taking an environmental justice perspective, we argue that these destinations should be accessible to all children, irrespective of where they live.
A major recommendation from the Kids in Communities Study qualitative research findings was the need to develop quantitative indicators of the neighbourhood Foundational Community Factors.As such, the Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework spatially refines and operationalises domains of the child liveability definition and the Foundational Community Factors to create a tool to assess an urban neighbourhood's ability to equitably support early childhood development.

Domain rationale
The majority of the neighbourhood built environment and child wellbeing literature has focused on child physical activity behaviours (Oliver et al. 2016;Trapp et al. 2012) and obesity (Harrison et al. 2011;Whitzman et al. 2010), with relationships between the neighbourhood built environment and early childhood development receiving less attention.It is plausible that certain neighbourhood built environment features not only benefit children's physical development, but are also associated with their broader cognitive and psychosocial development (Villanueva et al. 2016).Based on our foundational work described earlier, the domains selected for inclusion in this framework are: early childcare and educations services; family-friendly destinations; food outlets; housing; public open space; public transport; traffic; and walkability.Each domain is briefly described and justified below.
Early childcare and education services Participating in rich learning experiences, especially in childhood, is strongly associated with better employment, income, and physical and mental health trajectories over the life course, as well as reduced likelihood of committing crime (Heckman, Stixrud, and Urzua 2006;Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post-20102010), with these associations holding across the social gradient (Heckman, Stixrud, and Urzua 2006).Local, good quality early years education appears to have a disproportionate positive effect for those who are more socioeconomically disadvantaged (Cloney et al. 2015) and higher quality programmes produce the greatest child development benefits (Burchinal et al. 2010).Moreover, participation in high quality early childcare and education programmes can reduce the effect of children's individual socioeconomic backgrounds (Havnes and Mogstad 2015).

Family-friendly destinations
Beyond the inherent functional roles, destinations such as playgroups, libraries, recreation venues, and community centres provide physical places for social interaction and support network development (Komro, Flay, and Biglan 2011).These places influence children's development through providing opportunities to learn, explore, recreate, socialise, and interact with their peers and other families (Chomitz et al. 2011).In turn, this mediates the pathways for social and health inequalities through the acquisition of cultural capital (Abel 2008).Higher levels of cultural capital have been associated with optimal mental health and reduced levels of morbidity (Veenstra 2000).

Food outlets
Access to affordable nutritious food provides the foundation for good health and development .(-Caspi et al. 2012).There is a large body of research demonstrating access to, availability of, and a variety of healthy foods are associated with better diets (Caspi et al. 2012;Thornton et al. 2012) and body size (Murphy et al. 2017).Conversely, fast food outlet availability has been associated with fast food purchasing and consumption, with associations strongest for those who are most disadvantaged (Boone-Heinonen et al. 2011).Despite challenges with study designs, a recent metaanalysis indicated a tendency for a negative relationship between supermarket access and children's body sizes (Zhou et al. 2021).

Housing
Housing is widely recognised as a major social determinant of health (Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post-2010 2010), and can impact health and wellbeing through various pathways, including housing condition and toxicant exposure, residential neighbourhood, layout, housing affordability, and tenure (Gibson et al. 2011).For example, lack of affordable housing may create uncertainty about housing security, which can increase stress and impact parenting practices.Conversely, access to constant, high-quality housing may impact children's development by setting the conditions for stable, secure, and stimulating home environments (Villanueva et al. 2019).
The types of housing offered in the neighbourhood may also be important for child development.Low residential density neighbourhoods typically lack high levels of walking and cycling infrastructure.Such neighbourhoods discourage residents from walking, which in turn, reduces young families' opportunities for social encounters in their community.Families living in highrise housing may not go outdoors often, and when located in neighbourhood with other highrise housing, this can restrict opportunities to build neighbourhood family support networks and social cohesion (Alderton et al. 2019b).

Public open space
Local public open spaces (e.g.parks) have been shown as being consistently important for healthy child development and wellbeing (Alderton et al. 2019b;Villanueva et al. 2015).Utilisation of public open spaces supports children's emotional regulation (Korpela, Kyttä, and Hartig 2022), cognitive functioning (Wells 2000), and self-discipline (Taylor, Kuo, and Sullivan 2002).Children who play in nature-based play environments and open spaces (i.e.those containing elements such as trees and flowers) gain more cognitive (e.g.increased attention spans) and physical benefits (e.g.enhanced gross motor skills) compared with children who consistently play in purpose-built playgrounds (Bagot 2005).

Public transport
Having access to local, high quality public transport stops not only supports active transport commuting (i.e.walking or cycling to and from public transport stops), but extends the reach to the range and types of destinations and services that can be accessed outside of the neighbourhood via the public transport network (Badland et al. 2014(Badland et al. , 2017a)).This reduces social inequities by increasing productivity, earning potential, social engagement and inclusion (Banister and Thurstain-Goodwin 2011), as well as promoting good health and wellbeing across the population (Badland et al. 2014(Badland et al. , 2017a)).

Traffic
Parent traffic concerns are one of the highly cited barriers to children's playing and travelling through their neighbourhood (Carver, Timperio, and Crawford 2008).Higher levels of traffic exposure have been associated with parents' restricting children's outdoor activities, and children forming smaller social networks, having poorer academic performance, and poorer social and motor skills (Villanueva et al. 2016).Higher levels of traffic exposure have been associated with greater risk of traffic injuries (Ewing, Schieber, and Zegeer 2003), reduced sense of community (French et al. 2014), and higher levels of noise and air pollution (Weber, Haase, and Franck 2014).Emerging evidence suggests an interaction between pollution and non-communicable disease (Münzel et al. 2017).

Walkability
There is a considerable body of evidence demonstrating associations between walkability and health outcomes (Frank et al. 2010;Witten et al. 2012).Walkable neighbourhoods encourage active travel (i.e.walking and cycling for transport purposes) and habitual physical activity (Frank et al. 2010), which in turn protect against many non-communicable diseases and obesity (Beaglehole et al. 2011).Moreover, highly walkable neighbourhoods, characterised by more connected streets, a higher number of residential dwellings, and a greater mix of local destinations, have been found to increase social interactions, as people are more likely to walk, cycle, and linger locally (Leyden 2003;Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post-20102010).Children living in more walkable neighbourhoods, with safe crossing points, footpaths, and low traffic volumes and speeds, are more likely to be physically active compared with their peers living in less walkable neighbourhoods (Carlson et al. 2017;Giles-Corti et al. 2009).OpenStreetMap is a community contributed global database of geographic information available to use under an open license.The quality of OpenStreetMap data varies depending on the type and the geographical area of the data.Since OpenStreetMap data are crowdsourced, the accuracy is higher in urban areas.OpenStreetMap was used as source data for roads, open space, and destinations where alternative nationally consistent public data sources were not available (OpenStreet-Map Contributors 2018).Some virtual quality checks were undertaken with OpenStreetMap by comparing the data with satellite imagery.
Data on early childcare and education services quality in 2018 were extracted from the ACECQA website in 2019.In 2018, 94% of all ECEC services had received a quality assessment (Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority 2018).For our study areas (urban areas only), all early childcare and education services had an assessment and rating available, with the overall rating used in the indicator.The National Quality Standard data, sourced via the ACECQA, assesses Australian early childhood education and care and outside school hours care services against seven quality areas that are important for children's development, including educational programme and practice, children's health and safety, physical environment, staffing arrangements, relationships with children, and collaborative partnerships with families and communities (Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority 2018).These services are assessed against each of the seven quality areas in the National Quality Standard and given an overall rating based on these results (e.g.meeting National Quality Standard, exceeding National Quality Standard).
Public open space was defined as per the Australian Urban Observatory public open space definition available on the metadata page: https://auo.org.au/portal/metadata/access-to-areas-ofpublic-open-space/.Playgrounds were defined as specific point structures and were extracted separately to public open space from the local council or public datasets (e.g.OpenStreetMap).Detailed information about indicator creation and methods for linking the indicators with outcome datasets has been reported elsewhere (Villanueva et al. 2022).
Data cleaning.Spatial data outliers and assumptions were checked (e.g.linear relationship with logodds, normality of the residuals) (Austin and Merlo 2017) Considerable outliers were removed from the traffic exposure variable only; outliers were recoded into the 99th centile for this variable.Variables were treated continuously as per best practice (Lamb and White 2015).
Scale of application.Defining appropriate neighbourhood scale(s) is critical because the size of the area examined can affect the strength and direction of associations with outcomes being investigated (Oliver, Schuurman, and Hall 2007).Administrative units (e.g.postcodes, census tracts) are commonly used to define a 'neighbourhood', but these boundaries often do not reflect the local neighbourhoods families are exposed to.Therefore, indicators for each domain were conceptualised for calculation at the smallest appropriate geographical scale available, in most instances being the parcel level (i.e. a residential address).Using this fine-grained, individualised approach limits the impact of the modifiable areal unit problem (i.e.bias due to aggregating geographic scales) and ecological fallacy (i.e.inferences about individuals deduced from aggregated group data) that are associated with larger geographic units typically employed in child place-based research (e.g.cities, suburbs) (Greenland and Morgenstern 1989).
Dependent on the neighbourhood feature of interest, different scales of analysis were chosen to represent a child's 'local neighbourhood' in an urban setting.A street network is described as the physical road/path network someone could travel on.A 1600 m street network buffer has commonly been used in previous studies to represent a child's local neighbourhood; parents for example have reported that they would allow their 5-6 year old children to walk a 1600 m round-trip from home (Timperio et al. 2006).However, it is less common for children to have early childcare and education services (Cloney et al. 2015) and family-friendly destinations, such as public libraries and community centres, within 1600 m distance from home.To account for the likely presence of some destinations at further distances, a 3200 m street network distance was used to assess the local availability of selected neighbourhood attributes.The presence and counts of these attributes is limited in the framework at these street network distances, as the intention was to reflect a child's local neighbourhood.These thresholds also have urban planning policy relevance (Giles-Corti et al. 2014), and where possible, these indicators were designed to align with contemporary urban planning policies (Badland et al. 2017b;Hooper et al. 2018;Koohsari et al. 2018;Mavoa et al. 2018;Murphy et al. 2018;Rachele et al. 2017).In addition to address-level distance-based measures of built environment characteristics and accessibility, SA1 1 characteristics were also examined as an additional neighbourhood conceptualisation when street network analyses were inappropriate (e.g.housing affordability).

Results
Table 1 describes the domains, spatial indicators, and spatial units included in the Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework.Data sources used to create the indicators in Table 1 are further described in the metadata section of the Australian Urban Observatory (https://auo.org.au/portal/metadata) and the pilot dataset report (Villanueva et al. 2020).

Discussion
This paper introduces the Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework to quantify and monitor urban neighbourhoods for their ability to equitably support early childhood development.The domains and spatial indicators captured in the framework are overarched by an equity lens, recognising that the attributes assessed should be universally available in the local neighbourhood (Villanueva et al. 2016); absences of these destinations locally may further disadvantage families who are already disadvantaged.The framework seeks to overcome some of the critiques of the Child-friendly City movement, such as providing a conceptually-derived framework supported by a systematic suite of objective indicators to measure progress, and utilising policy-relevant measures where possible, therefore increasing its utility for policymakers and planners.
The spatial indicators have been designed for generation using geocoded data (i.e.residential addresses or x, y coordinates) through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software.Data linked to a geo-code can be visualised, calculated as a spatial indicator, and potentially overlaid with other meaningful data to create a composite indicator (e.g.family-friendly destinations) using GIS software.Using desktop spatial analysis, these indicators can be generated at the individual-level to create a unique neighbourhood for each participant or aggregated to a spatial unit of interest (e.g.suburb).
Following on from additional testing to demonstrate associations between the indicators and child outcomes, the framework can be used for identifying and monitoring progress towards Activity centres were defined as a commercially zoned Mesh Block with a major chain supermarket (Greenland and Morgenstern 1989).The presence of a supermarket in a recognised commercial area acts in practice as a proxy for co-location of other amenities; a hub where people go to.
neighbourhoods for early childhood development.It is envisaged the Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework will be able to inform more precise, evidence-driven place-based interventions, that can reduce childhood developmental inequities.Practically, in time, this tool may assist stakeholders to pinpoint where and what neighbourhood specific built environment features are lacking, and which areas warrant improvement.Utilising these leverage points will likely have on-going and widespread impacts, particularly when targeting whole-of-population outcomes and vulnerable groups.The WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission into Child Health and Wellbeing explicitly called for a 'user-friendly' tool such as this (Clark et al. 2020).Specific advancements and applications are discussed below.

Methodological advancements
The domain selection and indicator development were conceptualised as part of large programmes of work that interrogated associations between child wellbeing and the neighbourhood-built environment.Domains were overarched by social determinants of health and environmental justice lenses, which focussed on up-stream systems that support equity and fairness.Once validated with child outcome data, the Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework can provide a rationale for more 'stacked' interventions that recognise the policy complexity necessary to address inequity (Goldfeld et al. 2019).
The framework has been designed to combine conceptually derived, evidence-based spatial measures specific to a child's home address, along with small-area local neighbourhood measures.Previous research suggests that the choice of spatial unit is likely to generate different results depending on the type of measure, which can potentially lead to measurement error, and consequently differences in the magnitude of associations with outcomes being assessed (Learnihan et al. 2011).Finer resolution, smaller spatial unit data are considered most appropriate for studying neighbourhood effects because: (1) they can be aggregated to larger spatial units as required; (2) capture greater spatial heterogeneity; and (3) better represent the 'local' neighbourhood, which appears to be better predictor of an individual's behaviour, rather than regional-or city-level attributes (Handy 2005;Kwan 2012;Learnihan et al. 2011).
Using disaggregated data also allows 'pockets' of inequitable distribution of physical access to services or destinations within areas to be identified.This information can be used by policymakers to prioritise delivery of amenity to specific parts of a neighbourhood to reduce inequities and utilise for precise targeting of resources which is especially important in resource constrained environments.Furthermore, the spatial indicators proposed generate continuous data, rather than transformed or quantile versions of the data.This approach is consistent with current good practice for built environment measures to prevent loss of information and power, and enable comparability with other studies and contexts, given quantile cut-points are based on a sample distribution (Thornton et al. 2012).The indicators identified are also harvested from largely open-source base data.This means the cost is minimised when updating the indicators and the framework can be applied at scale, for example, across Australian urban areas, or replicated internationally, providing comparable data are available.Applying the framework in diverse settings will generate context-specific information for end-users about what supports good early childhood development in different types of neighbourhoods, thus informing policy platforms that focus on local placebased interventions.
Emerging methodological capabilities and big data competencies enable the framework to be linked with population surveys and/or routine administrative datasets.The Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework has been purposively designed to link with administrative and population surveys provided there is a comparable linkage 'key' available in each dataset, typically residential addresses or x, y coordinates.This means the framework can readily be linked to a range of datasets, including early childhood development specific datasets (e.g.Australian Early Development Census, Longitudinal Study of Australian Children).By linking to such data, the framework can capitalise on and efficiently extend the use of early years data already invested in and collected to drive and evaluate change.Rigorous protocols have been developed for creating deidentified linked early years datasets (Villanueva et al. 2020).
Opportunities also include developing and integrating synthetically-created data (constructed data similar to real data but without compromising the privacy of individuals) using imputation techniques to allocate additional social and neighbourhood measures (e.g.parent income, occupation, neighbourhood-level education and employment) to individuals based on their residential address (Tanton et al. 2011).Linking to these additional measures enables a more complete socioecological model to be populated and pathways to be interrogated.

Policy and practice applications
Evidence-based metrics are valuable policy tools to benchmark and monitor neighbourhood progress and better support integrated planning (Alderton et al. 2020;Goldfeld et al. 2018aGoldfeld et al. , 2019)).Early childhood development indicators have been used to monitor factors such as infant mortality, school enrolment, and immunisations (Ben-Arieh 2008), but have not been extended to inform the design of neighbourhoods.The SDGs, of which Australia is a signatorycall for equitable access to quality early education (Goal 4), reduced inequalities (Goal 10), sustainable cities and communities (Goal 11), and partnerships (Goal 17) (including monitoring, reporting, and use of indicators) (UN Sustainable Development Goals 2015).The framework encourages multi-sectorial and interdisciplinary partnerships to achieve these goals by stimulating discussion and action on integrated planning policies and practices (Lowe et al. 2015).
Many of the spatial indicators in the Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework are currently available for interrogation and visualisation (e.g.heat maps) for Australia's 21 major cities, capturing nearly 80% of the national population (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2022).These child indicators build on the multiple spatial social determinants of health indicators related to adults' wellbeing that are currently available through the Australian Urban Observatory.Accordingly, they will be included as a separate set of indicators for ongoing application.Metadata and user guides support indicator use and data interpretation, with functionality to extract maps and data for stakeholder use.

Limitations
This framework was conceptualised for urban environments, not regional or rural settings.Taking the example of the 'walkability' domain, it would not be expected that regional towns would have the infrastructure or population to support high scores of 'local living' within 1600 m of a residential address.Achieving this in a regional context would likely require extensive retrofitting and/or mixed-use development, which may be unfeasible.Future research should seek to identify regionalspecific built environment indicators with potentially different scales of application.Similarly, the framework may need to be re-conceptualised and adapted for application outside of Australia, including the Global South.Our earlier work in Bangkok indicated similarities with Australia with regard to the conceptualisation of 'liveability', however there was a greater emphasis on the importance of physical environmental determinants of health in Bangkok (e.g.air pollution exposure) (Alderton et al. 2019c).
While the framework contents were informed by evidence, we do not know which local destinations and services families are more likely to use or able to access (e.g.vacancies in local childcare services), and whether they typically access those located in their local neighbourhood or further away.Moreover, the small area estimates derived using SA1 geographies are indicative of the neighbourhood in which a child lives but does not necessarily reflect an individual family's situation (e.g.household experiences of housing affordability).Future research may consider Global Positioning Systems, travel diaries, questionnaires, citizen science methodologies, or other technologies (e.g.SoftGIS) (Kyttä et al. 2016;Mavoa et al. 2011) to better understand how and why families use certain destinations and services.While the framework focuses on children's local neighbourhoods in an urban context, we do not know what a 'walkable' distance is for young children.Future research needs to investigate perceived and actual distances walked for families with young children.Other limitations of this framework include: that family day care services and playgroups were not included because of data availability, and in the case of playgroups, may not be held at the same location each time; quality was considered for a very limited number of indicators (e.g.childcare centres); some of the suggested indicators are blunt, however they have been designed to be readily applied at large urban geographic scales (e.g.suburb, city, urban regions of a country); there was an implied equal weighting for the composite indicators (e.g.family-friendly destination score, local living score) that have not been quantitatively tested; and only spatial dimensions of the urban neighbourhood were assessed, despite layers of social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions also impacting child outcomes.
This framework now needs to be rigorously tested and validated with early child development outcome data to determine which domains and indicators are most important and at what thresholds, along with gaining a better understanding of the combination of domains and indicators that optimise early childhood development.Until this testing occurs, it remains unknown whether favourable outcomes need to be achieved on all domains and indicators for a community to thrive.

Conclusions
The Neighbourhood Early Childhood Development Framework provides a conceptually driven, quantitative assessment of the urban neighbourhood in relation to early childhood development.Once validated, the framework can be replicated across urban neighbourhoods, linked with diverse datasets, and/or applied over time using desktop spatial analysis to understand progress towards achieving the New Urban Agenda.Use of geo-coded data allows for built environment features to be investigated both at fine-grained scales and aggregated to larger geographic units if required.The spatial indicators are available for policy and practice use through an online digital platform, and when combined with open-source base data, provide a cost-effective way to drive a policy and research agenda underpinned by a tangible set of indicators to equitably support early childhood development.

Table 1 .
The neighbourhood early childhood development framework.

Table 1 .
Continued.Community centre were defined as places mostly used for local events, festivities and group activities including professional societies, union halls and other non-profit organisations.
b Preschool service / kindergartenpart of a school and standalone included.cd