In 1924, the League of Nations (the predecessor of the United Nations) adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (also known as the Geneva Declaration), drafted by Save the Children founder Eglantyne Jebb. It states that all people need to provide a way for children to grow. This is the most basic and primary right of the child in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child – the right to life (i.e., the right to life, the right to health).
At present, no child-friendly cities in China have been officially awarded by UNICEF. As early as the Song Dynasty in China, Liu Fang discussed the issue of children's health care in his book "The New Book of Young Children": "Children and mothers should touch their children's necks and pools at three o'clock, and if they are hot, they must be ironed to make them sweat slightly." This is 774 years before the West proposed children's rights. The famous Chinese thinker Hu Shi (1891-1962) once expounded on the civilization of a country under the title of "Salesian": "If you look at the civilization of a country, you only need to examine three things: first, how they treat children (family education), second, how they treat women (respect for women), and ......" This sentence is indeed intriguing. Listening to children's voices, involving children in design, and improving children's physical and mental health are at the heart of child-friendly city design. Allowing the society to participate in urban construction should become the main theme of the era of urban renewal, which is one of the hallmarks of a civilized country.
In November 2023, the author Deng Yi was invited by Huaqiao University to give a lecture for the training class of 49 cadres of the Women's Federation in Jinjiang City. According to the requirements of the Municipal Women's Federation, the teaching topic "Analysis of the Needs and Countermeasures of Community Child-Friendly Spaces - Listening to the Different Needs of Children at Each Stage" was drafted, which received enthusiastic responses. This article is based on this lecture. It is hereby stated that portions of the International Handbook on Child-Friendly Urban Planning and related development reports are directly quoted or translated.
Series of articles
Q1: What is urban planning? Q2: What is a city?
Q3: What is urban governance?
Q4: How will cities be transformed in the post-epidemic era?
1 Why Plan Cities for Children?
1.1 What are the challenges facing cities?
The global population is growing at an alarming rate, making urbanization a major challenge and opportunity for sustainable development in the future. It took hundreds of thousands of years for the world's population to reach 1 billion, and then it took only about 200 years for the world's population to increase sevenfold. It took only about 12 years for the global population to grow from 7 billion (2011) to 8 billion (2022) [1]. The gradual increase in human life expectancy is due to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine. According to the United Nations, more than half of the world's population currently lives in cities, and this figure is expected to rise to 70% by 2050, meaning that more than 2 billion people will call cities home. In his message at the UN-Habitat Assembly (2023), UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out that cities are the main battleground for achieving a sustainable future, at the forefront of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the New Urban Agenda and the Paris Agreement[2].
UN-Habitat's report entitled "Save SDG 11, Build a Resilient Urban Planet" released at the 2023 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) says that the world is on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 11 "Sustainable Cities and Communities" (SDG 11) set in 2015. This will have irreversible consequences for everyone around the world. In reality, 2.8 billion people worldwide currently face some form of housing insecurity, far from the desired target. Without sustainable cities and communities, it will be difficult to achieve the goals of the 2030 Agenda, the Sustainable Development Agenda, and many other global agendas that advance sustainable human settlements. Goal 11 illustrates the need for urban planning by articulating the current status of air quality, road traffic, urban sprawl, and disaster risk in settlements, and that changes are urgently needed in the development of new strategies, principles and frameworks, as well as in the design, implementation, and financing of urban policies and investments (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Sustainable Development Goal 11 in response to a rapidly growing urban population but poorly planned
Source: https://news.un.org/zh/story/2023/10/1123522
In the context of global population growth and environmental change, cities face many challenges. The demand for urban infrastructure such as roads, transportation, water supply, and drainage has increased beyond the original planned capacity. The increased demand for housing has led to housing shortages and higher living costs. Traffic congestion is exacerbating, affecting the travel efficiency and quality of life of urban residents. In addition, the high-density population has led to an increase in industrial emissions, a gradual worsening of environmental pollution, and an increase in energy consumption, threatening the health of residents. The unbalanced development of cities has led to an increase in the demand for education, medical care, social welfare and other services, and the urban public service system is difficult to meet the demand for use, and the pressure on land use has increased, which is easy to cause disputes over land use rights and aggravate social inequality. Behind these issues is the need for integrated and effective urban planning to achieve Goal 11 of the 2030 goal of promoting sustainable human settlements development. 1.2 Why focus on children?
Children are the future of humanity and enjoy the same human rights as adults. Enrique Peñalosa, mayor of Bogotá, Colombia and an expert on urban and transportation policy, said, "If we can build a successful city for children, we build a successful city for all." "According to a number of international treaties, a child is a person under the age of 18. They have the same human rights as adults, but often require special care and protection that is different from adults, and depend on adults and their decision-making. As a result, world leaders convened in 1989 and adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which specifically addresses children, which summarizes the most basic rights of children into the following four categories[1].
- Right to life: Every child has his or her inherent right to life and health.
- The right to protection: the right to be protected from harm to one's own development. This includes the protection of children from discrimination, exploitation, torture, ill-treatment or neglect, as well as basic guarantees for refugee children who have lost their families.
- The right to development: the right to the full development of all their physical and intellectual abilities. Children have the right to formal and non-formal education, as well as to living conditions that promote their physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.
- Right to Participation: Children are given the freedom to express their views and participate in decision-making. These rights enable children to play an active role in society.
1.3 What is a composite ecosystem for urban children?
First of all, the city is a social-economic-natural complex ecosystem dominated by human behavior, supported by the natural environment, with resource flow as the lifeblood and social culture as the meridians. The natural subsystem is composed of water, soil, atmosphere, organisms and their interrelationships, and the living environment on which human beings depend for survival and reproduction; the economic subsystem refers to the production, circulation, consumption, circulation and regulation activities that human beings actively organize for their own survival and development; and the social ecological subsystem is composed of human concepts, systems and cultures. The ecological coupling relationship and interaction mechanism between these three subsystems in terms of time, space, quantity, structure and order determine the development and succession direction of the composite ecosystem.
If a space is planned and built with the needs of children in mind, then the space will also reflect respect for everyone in society. The built urban environment will provide a multifaceted opportunity to respect children's rights. But if the built environment doesn't meet the needs of children, it will also affect the quality of life for everyone in the city. Because children's participation in urban life and interactions in daily life, as well as their use of urban space, reflect the needs of all vulnerable groups in the community, including the disabled and the elderly, this is the socio-ecology of urban children, i.e., the impact of urban spatial scale, mixed use, public space, walking accessibility of living circles, and solo activities on children's behavior [3]. Focusing on the specific needs of children and their caregivers at every age helps to find solutions that are universally applicable to infants, toddlers, adolescents and young adults. The child-friendliness of sustainable cities is reflected in the spatial scale of the city, which meets the spatial needs of children of all ages.
Fig. 2 Spatial and scale of urban children's experiences
Source: References[3]
- Planning spaces for children: Include the spatial scale of the homes, streets, neighborhoods, and cities where children grow up. These different scales embody socio-ecological models, i.e., framework models used to study the interactions between individuals, communities, and the environment. The model takes into account the impact of different levels on human behavior and health, from individual behavior to family, social and policy multiple levels. Child development experts use this to develop strategies to ensure children's rights. Access to appropriate urban services should be tailored to the child's age, needs and caregiver's daily lifestyle. However, in both high-density and low-density built environments, there is a growing lack of community-scale considerations.
- Mixed-use: Urban environmental planning should take into account and balance infrastructure that provides essential services for children, such as health, education and protection. For the healthy growth of children, urban services need a certain amount of space, as well as integration with outdoor spaces and various buildings. For example, there must be space to collect and recycle garbage to keep the streets clean, space to grow and buy food for healthy food and nutrition, and space to accommodate local economic interaction for smooth entry into the job market as an adult.
- Public spaces: Outdoor environments should be designed and planned to ensure that children enjoy places to play, as well as for social, economic and cultural activities.
- Living Circle and Walkability: Children are not allowed to drive motor vehicles and are usually on foot. Proximity to public facilities is therefore key to the provision of basic services, and children and their caregivers should be able to reach their destinations by foot, bicycle or public transport. However, vehicle-oriented transportation policies and street design can lead to a significant decline in the city's walkability, which in turn will have an impact on children's walking space.
- Solo activities: Children are free and self-conscious to choose how to get around, such as walking, cycling and using public transport. This is a way of allocating financial resources, policy arrangements and environmental design with the goal of ensuring the safety of children. Build an urban environment that is safe for all community members by respecting the needs of children with disabilities, pregnant women, and young children in strollers.
1.4 Children's vulnerability in complex ecosystems
The urban environment determines the development of children, and children are often disadvantaged in urban environments, so it is important to promote child-friendly urbanization. Planning urban environments in a way that meets the needs of children not only contributes to the development of children, but also provides a better home for future generations. However, most of the built environment of cities is built to meet the daily needs of adults themselves, and factors such as insufficient space, lack of infrastructure, and unsafe roads ignore the needs of children, which has a profound impact on children.
Factors such as inadequate and uneven coverage of urban infrastructure, or poor quality of existing facilities, result in children not receiving good urban services in terms of sanitation, public safety, and social participation. For example, uneven distribution of transport facilities deprives children in poor living conditions of access to nearby services, and housing, childcare, transport, food and energy are the main components of household expenditure, but the most vulnerable have access to basic services rather than better services due to the high cost of affordable housing, healthy food, education and health services, and limited availability of water and sanitation. If supply does not meet demand, and public financial support is limited, access to basic urban services becomes more difficult.
Children's vulnerability in the built environment is mainly reflected in the following aspects.
(1) Environmental hygiene
Urban air pollution is one of the main threats to children's health, and indoor air pollution is responsible for more child deaths than outdoor air pollution worldwide. In high-density, small-scale housing, a large family crammed into 1~2 rooms will bring different degrees of pressure, which will affect children's brain development. Even in outdoor public spaces and other public places, children's breathing zones are closer to the ground and closer to high-concentration exhaust gases than adults, making them more susceptible to pollutants. The lack of safe outdoor spaces and places to walk and play is a major contributor to the lack of physical activity among children, leading to an increase in the incidence of obesity, asthma and heart disease among adolescents in urban areas worldwide. At the broader urban environmental level, cities in hot, dry regions create a "heat island effect" that can increase the threat of water scarcity if they do not invest in green infrastructure, which in turn makes children, pregnant women and other vulnerable populations more susceptible to heat stroke, severe dehydration and premature death.
(2) Public safety
Public emergencies are also one of the major threats to child safety. Children do not have the ability to anticipate risks, prepare in advance, and quickly avoid disasters, and the threat to children's lives posed by the built environment with public safety hazards is fatal. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and flash floods, coastal floods, and mudslides caused by climate change, often hit areas where vulnerable people live in poor conditions.
In urban villages and shantytowns that are not protected by law, social security emergencies are frequently staged, and disasters caused by human factors have a greater impact on poor communities. In addition, the backward infrastructure in the living environment such as home and school is also prone to potential safety hazards at home. For example, unhealthy cooking practices, inadequate or dangerous power supply methods, lack of lighting and ventilation increase the risk of accidents such as falls, burns, electric shocks and suffocation.
(3) Social participation
The imperfection of "child-friendly" public space has become a constraint for children's social interaction and participation in public activities. In urban areas where there is a lack of public and green spaces, children and their communities do not provide sufficient space for play, group activities or social activities, both quantitatively and qualitatively. In addition, children's activities have to be confined indoors due to incidents such as street violence and traffic accidents that often occur in outdoor public spaces. Vehicle-oriented traffic planning and road safety policies have resulted in streets being unsafe for pedestrians, and every day children on the road is an adventure, they need to be escorted by caregivers, lose the possibility of traveling alone, and therefore spend more time at home, ultimately disconnected from life in their communities and cities (Figure 3).
Figure 3 Classification of children's vulnerability in the built environment
Source: Ref. [3]221.5 History of Child Friendly Cities
The twentieth century saw significant progress in the field of international standards on children's rights. At the beginning of the 20th century, child protection standards were not yet in place in industrialized countries, and it was not uncommon for children and adults to live together in unhygienic and unsafe conditions. As awareness of children's developmental needs has deepened, people have become aware of the inequities of children's situation, which has led to the creation of a movement to better protect children.
In 1924, the League of Nations adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, drafted by Egrantyne Jebb, one of Save the Children's leading founders. The Declaration states that all people need to do the following for their children: to provide them with access to development, to provide special assistance when necessary, to give priority to children, to provide them with economic freedom from exploitation, and to develop children's social awareness and responsibility. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 25 of which states that mothers and children have the right to "special care and assistance" and "social protection". In 1959, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which states that children have the right to, among other rights, to education, to play, to live in a favourable environment and to health care. In 1989, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Recognizing the role of the child in the social, economic, political, civil and cultural spheres, the Convention has been widely praised as a milestone in the cause of human rights, committing to and comprehensively setting minimum standards for the protection of children's rights [quoted in "History of the Rights of the Child", see https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/history-child-rights for details).
The Child Friendly City Initiative (CFCI) was launched in 1996 by UNICEF and UN-Habitat for the first time, and has received positive responses from more than 3,000 cities and communities in 38 countries around the world. According to UNICEF, the key to child-friendly cities is "children first". The Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) declared that child well-being is the ultimate measure of a society's livability, democracy and good governance[4]. Child-friendly cities are platforms to advance the realization of children's rights (Table 1).
Table 1 History of the Child Friendly Cities Initiative
Source: Drawn by the authors based on references [3,5].
The creation of child-friendly cities is not only an innovative practice of urban governance, but also a practice of the concept of modern urban civilization. As a world power with 290 million children, the concept of "child-friendly" has gradually attracted widespread attention. Since the 1990s, the State Council has promulgated a number of laws and regulations on the protection and development of children in China. In 2010, the Office of the National Working Committee on Women and Children of the State Council drafted the Goals, Strategies and Measures for the Establishment of China's "Child-Friendly Cities", advocating the construction of "child-friendly cities", hoping to transition from "child-friendly cities" to "child-friendly cities" or "child-friendly villages", and finally achieve a "child-friendly society" to promote social civilization and progress.
The first two editions of the Programme for the Development of Children in China (2001-2010) and the Programme for the Development of Children in China (2011-2020) proposed to protect the legitimate rights and interests of children in accordance with the law in terms of children's physical and mental health, quality education, welfare system, social environment and protection mechanisms. The latest edition of China's Child Development Programme (2021-2030) clearly proposes to build child-friendly cities and communities. In September 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and 23 ministries and commissions issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Construction of Child-Friendly Cities, proposing that "by 2025, 100 child-friendly cities will be piloted nationwide to promote the concept of child-friendly cities, and child-friendly requirements will be fully reflected in social policies, public services, rights protection, growth space, and development environment." It also puts forward clear requirements for the overall goals, guiding ideology, and implementation path of building a child-friendly city in mainland China [6].
2 What can urban planning do for children?2.1 Conduct a child rights analysisThe Child Rights Status Analysis aims to review statistics, local policies, laws and academic research related to the situation and well-being of children. Compared with conventional analysis of the current situation of children's rights, the analysis of the current situation of children's rights for child-friendly cities focuses on understanding the functional context and interrelationships between local governments and other key stakeholders, as well as the decision-making process. On the one hand, the analysis looks at the most important areas of children's problems, seeks to identify the root causes of the problems, and identifies the changes that children want to see, and on the other hand, it can provide an important basis for the formulation of child-friendly city action plans, set a baseline for monitoring and evaluation of progress and impact in the future, provide empirical information for policy formulation, and identify various aspects of local capacity building.
The analysis of the current situation of children's rights consists of the following three phases.
(1) Sort out and analyze relevant local stakeholders (including children's and youth group organizations, parents, government or academic institutions, social groups, businesses, media, etc.) and seek their participation to ensure that a consensus is reached on the issues identified in the analysis of the current situation.
(2) analysis of existing empirical information on children's affairs, including: review of the concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, legal and policy documents related to children's rights and well-being, and research reports produced by civil society organizations, monitoring bodies, universities, etc.; risks and constraints, etc.).
and (3) disseminate and disseminate the final analysis of the current state of children's rights. It is important to publish and disseminate the results of the analysis of the current situation so that stakeholders can reach a common understanding of the child issues identified in the analysis, and that all parties can respond in a coherent manner and incorporate it into the Child Friendly Cities Action Plan. 2.2 Development of action plans for child-friendly cities (1) Development of action plans. The Child-Friendly Cities Action Plan is not intended to be a one-time investment project, but rather to emphasize a step-by-step approach to strengthening children's rights through long-term commitment and capacity building. The first child-friendly city action plan (first project cycle) alone may not address all child rights issues. Therefore, the most pressing issues need to be identified and incorporated into action plans, and medium- and long-term goals need to be defined to be addressed in the next CCCI project cycle and action plan. In addition, there is a need to focus on clear linkages with the SDGs to avoid adding additional workload.
The plan of action needs to be developed with a balance between the findings of the analysis of the current situation of children's rights, UNICEF's global basic standards, and the interests and independence of local governments as democratic institutions. Listening to children and their definition of their needs leads to more encouraging results.
(2) Special budget. The Child Friendly Cities Action Plan needs to allocate a clear and adequate budget for each of the established outputs and activities. Before launching a child-friendly city action plan and establishing a specific scope for implementation, it is important to take into account the financial and human resources available at the local level. If the budget is insufficient, the Steering Committee will need to secure additional resources or consider raising additional funds. To ensure the sustainability of child-friendly city action plans and activities, local governments should take these elements into account as much as possible when developing their planning and budgeting cycles.
In addition to funding the implementation of the Child Friendly Cities Action Plan, one of the key purposes of Child Friendly Cities is to ensure that public budgeting gives children a wider range of consideration and attention. UNICEF's Public Finance Framework for Children[4] establishes five principles – adequacy, transparency and accountability, fairness, efficiency and effectiveness – that can guide the development of public budgets for children.
Building a child-friendly city does not have to be costly, and in many cases it has been possible to achieve great results with a limited budget. The fundamental goal of the Child-Friendly Cities Initiative is to change the way the world perceives children and the way they work with and for children. Strengthening cross-departmental coordination and collaboration will not be achieved overnight. However, once established, it can effectively improve the efficiency and effectiveness of work processes, leading to better outcomes for children. 2.3 Approach to evaluating child-friendly citiesTo understand the effectiveness and impact of building child-friendly cities, it is necessary to develop mechanisms to assess the impact of child-friendly cities on children's lives, specific to each child, to children in the region or to children in the country as a whole. The assessment may include an assessment of the overall situation of children's rights, and the identification of problems in the context of local realities. Effective monitoring and evaluation helps implementing partners to track, change, and highlight results, both positive and negative, and help them better identify what works and why.
Child Friendly Cities conduct an evaluation after each project cycle and action plan is completed. The evaluation consists of two components: a process assessment (establishing coordination mechanisms, coordinating and managing child-friendly cities, analysing the current situation of children's rights, implementing actions agreed in the action plan, etc.) and an impact assessment (assessing the results achieved against the baseline indicators set in the logical framework). The assessment is best left to an external independent expert.
强烈建议按照经济合作与发展组织（Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development）发展援助委员会（Development Assistance Committee）提出的五条评价标准，评估儿童友好型城市倡议。
(1) Relevance: Are we doing what we are supposed to do, are development assistance activities aligned with local and national needs and development priorities, and how important is it playing?
(2) Effectiveness: Have development assistance activities achieved their goals?
(3) Efficiency: Is it cost-effective and efficient while achieving the stated goals of development assistance activities?
(4) Impact: Does the development assistance activities contribute to the achievement of higher development goals, and what is the impact or effect of the development assistance activities in light of the overall situation of the target group or the affected group?
(5) Sustainability: Have development assistance activities delivered sustained and long-term positive results or positive impacts?
Children and youth should play an important role in assessing the impact of child-friendly cities. Because, at the end of the day, it's their experience in the community that is the primary factor that determines the success or failure of a child-friendly city. Involve children in the assessment process in the following ways.
(1) Consultation: Questionnaires and focus group discussions can be used to obtain the views of children and young people on relevant issues, such as: How has the community made changes in the realization of children's rights, and how do they feel about it?
(2) Collaboration: Children and young people are actively involved in the design and implementation of assessment mechanisms, such as identifying assessment questions, participating in the analysis of problems found, and helping to develop recommendations and communicate information during the assessment process.
Children and young people are leading the way, with children and young people as researchers taking the lead in the assessment. Its functions extend not only to the design of research proposals, but also to data collection and analysis. Adults are needed to assist children in their work, to provide them with support and training, to build capacity, and to ensure that the impact of their work is fully reflected in the realities of the everyday experiences of children and young people. Children bring very different insights from adults and can help strengthen the accountability of implementing partners in child-friendly cities. UPI
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A study on the development dynamics of child-friendly cities in Japan
Towards a Child-Friendly City (1) International Conference on Child-Friendly Cities and Vienna Practice
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