Li Jingyu, a 10-year-old student from Peixin Primary School in Beijing’s Dongcheng District, has been an art enthusiast for six years. On 3 November, one of her creations was exhibited at the capital’s Today Art Museum. 

“It is about my trip to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region this summer, where I got to create an intangible cultural heritage piece with a local craftsman in Kashgar City,” Li said. The young pupil added that she hopes her artwork will help children in China’s Taiwan region to learn more about Xinjiang. 

The annual exhibition gathers hundreds of very young artists from both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. Its goal is to foster friendship and cultural exchange between children from both sides across the Taiwan Straits while providing them with opportunities to share their observations of their most beloved places. 

To accommodate children’s height, the artworks are displayed about 1 metre from the ground, at children’s eye level. Adults will have to bend down to see them in detail. This design aligns with the Observing the City From a One-Metre Perspective initiative, which promotes child-friendly city designs across China. It was introduced as part of China’s efforts to address children’s needs in urban development. 

“In the early stages of urban development, children’s needs are often overlooked. By reconsidering the city from their perspective, we can make adjustments that better serve children,” read a 2018 report in Changsha Daily, a newspaper published in Changsha, Hunan Province. 

Tending to children’s needs   

In 1996, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme jointly launched an initiative aimed at crafting child-friendly urban landscapes. The project focuses on promoting children’s well-being in the construction, development and governance of cities worldwide. 

With the booming of urban development, many cities around the globe are increasingly prioritising the benefits of children in different urban areas. According to the official UN website, as of August 2022, the initiative had been adopted by over 3,000 cities across 57 countries. 

A strong advocate for children’s well-being, China embraced the initiative in the late 1990s, a period of rapid urbanisation and modernisation. 

Since then, many major Chinese cities have worked to address children’s needs, homing in on areas such as transportation, health care, education and child-friendly public spaces. Additionally, the central authorities have encouraged local governments to fine-tune their urban renewal plans based on children’s feedback. 

In 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission, along with 22 related departments, issued a circular, outlining a set of guidelines on building child-friendly cities. 

The document states that by the end of 2025, 100 pilot zones for child-friendly city construction will be established nationwide. It requires local authorities to incorporate the concept of child-friendliness into various sectors of urban development and governance, including public services, legal protection of children’s rights, and broader social policies. 

“As a mother, I have seen great changes in Beijing’s urban development trends,” Li’s mother said, citing the city’s unremitting efforts to make children’s health services more easily accessible by increasing the number of related facilities and optimising their distribution. “In the past, we had to travel quite the distance to get to Beijing Children’s Hospital, one of the country’s most prominent paediatric hospitals, if my daughter fell ill. But now, community health centres for children have been established in our neighbourhood, and other hospitals are sparing no effort to develop their paediatric departments.” 

Li is also pleased with the wide range of children-targeted activities held at parks and museums close to her neighbourhood. “I can participate in different events every week, including sports contests, charity sales and handmade clubs,” she said. 

Beyond education and health care, child-friendliness can be seamlessly integrated into more aspects of a city. 

To gather genuine feedback from children, Guangzhou, capital of the southern province of Guangdong, has hosted a biennial event since 1996 called Advising Guangzhou Like a Mayor. The local government has incorporated children’s suggestions into urban development, like adding buttons on traffic lights within children’s reach, inviting children to design community centres, and placing different types of trash bins around schools. 

“If we pay attention to the details and view the city from children’s perspectives, there’s still much to be done,” Peng Jinhua, chair of the Fuzhou Women’s Federation, told newspaper Fuzhou Daily in November 2023. Fuzhou is capital of the southeastern province of Fujian. In China, women’s federations play a significant role in the protection of women and children. 

“For example, signs in hospitals that are easy for children to read, toilet stalls and hand sinks designed for children’s height, designated areas in malls where children can rest and play safely, public facilities with anti-collision patches or stickers, tour guides in public museums who can offer engaging and educational lectures for children, waiting areas for lost children at train stations, and emergent health care spots in parks. All these small efforts can greatly contribute to the overall well-being of children,” she said.

Long-term vision 

Some cities are intensifying efforts to integrate the latest digital technologies into newly developed child-friendly spaces. 

Shanghai, for instance, has created 170 digitalised child-friendly spaces across the city. These spaces incorporate cutting-edge digital technologies, according to an official speaking at a forum on the role of children in the future development of cities, held in Shanghai on 25 October. 

The city’s goal is to establish new children’s activity centres and renovate existing ones with the latest educational technologies, allowing children to explore their talents and interests in digital and technological fields from an early age. 

The development of child-friendly cities will also accelerate urban and socio-economic progress. “The establishment of child-friendly cities will have long-term benefits for socio-economic development. By providing children with liveable and healthy environments, inspiring activities and quality education, we are nurturing the talents of future generations,” Luo Xueming, chief researcher at the Guangdong Institute of Modern Industrial Technology, told news portal Chinanews.com.cn. 

Luo elaborated that the construction of child-friendly cities also stimulates consumption and investment. “The thriving child-related businesses in these cities ­ including entertainment, infrastructure improvement, education and health care – can create job opportunities, and substantially increase tax revenue,” he said.

African Times has published this article in partnership with ChinAfrica Magazine.