Whenever I am asked what children should be taught to survive in this age of artificial intelligence, people expect me to list technical skills: coding, robotics, algorithmic thinking. But my answer is always the same, and it always surprises them.

We must teach children care.

Not as a soft virtue, but as a foundation for the world we want to build. Because if we truly care about children, they would be reflected in the very shape of our cities. Their needs would guide our public spaces. Their safety would be the metric by which infrastructure is judged. Their right to exploration, mobility, and joy would be treated not as optional extras, but as core civic obligations.

Imagine a city built from the perspective of a child: slower, safer, kinder. A place where sidewalks welcome small feet, where crossings are forgiving, where parks are plentiful, where public transport feels like an invitation rather than a threat. Such a city would not only nurture its youngest—it would protect its oldest, empower persons with disabilities, and embrace families and workers alike. If a child can use a city safely, then everyone can use it well.

But somewhere along the way, we lost that warmth. We became accustomed to public spaces that require toughness instead of trust. We normalized designs that prioritize speed over safety, efficiency over empathy. We forgot that the true test of civilization is not how well it serves the strongest, but how gently it holds the most vulnerable.

AI will change many things. It will alter jobs, restructure economies, and challenge our understanding of knowledge itself. But the skill that will matter most, the one that no machine can replicate, is care: the ability to connect, to empathise, to build for others and not just for ourselves.

Teaching children care means modelling it ourselves—through the cities we shape, the policies we pass, and the communities we cultivate. It means designing playgrounds alongside train stations, and pedestrian paths before parking lots. It means noticing who is left behind and choosing, deliberately, to reach out and extend a hand.

Children are not the future in some distant abstract sense—they are living in our present, navigating the structures we impose on them. If we care for them through thoughtful design, inclusive planning, and humane public spaces, we produce not only better cities but better citizens. Citizens capable of holding one another, and the systems that guide them, with compassion.

In an age obsessed with intelligence—artificial or otherwise—care is the wisdom we cannot afford to lose.