Zhang Yu

JeniZhang13@163.com

EVER since Shenzhen started building a child-friendly city at the end of 2015, the city has rolled out a spate of measures, which includes the release of the country’s first guidelines in both Chinese and English for building child-friendly communities, schools, libraries, hospitals, parks, travel systems and baby care rooms.

Experts have recognized Shenzhen’s years-long efforts, believing that the city has served as a paradigm for other cities.

“Shenzhen has explored a path of child-friendly city construction with distinctive characteristics in terms of top-level design, policy formulation and practice,” said Xu Yushan, a researcher at the Shenzhen Academy of Social Sciences.

“For example, to build a child-friendly school, it was mentioned to increase children’s activity space in the classroom corridor,” said Xu, who was referring to the guidelines for the construction of a child-friendly public service system the city released in May.

Xu was a witness for the guidelines’ preparation and review process. “As the guidelines were the first such kind in the country, we looked up a large number of materials and revised them repeatedly in the formulation process,” she said.

“But it was also because the guidelines were the first in the country that there would be far-reaching significance and great influence,” Xu noted.

Xu added that a child-friendly city has taken shape in Shenzhen over the past few years. The construction guidelines for libraries, hospitals, schools, travel systems and baby care rooms compiled years ago have given institutional support for facilities, while the new guidelines provide a direction for building a child-friendly city in terms of services.

Hu Weihua, head of Shenzhen Polytechnic’s tourism development research institute, believed that Shenzhen has provided pioneering experience in building a child-friendly city, with the guidelines filling the gap in the public service standards that cater to children’s needs.

“Child care support for young families has undoubtedly become an important factor in improving city competitiveness, and Shenzhen has been a model working on that,” said Zhang Xinyue, an architect from the China Academy of Urban Planning & Design Shenzhen.

According to Zhang, urban planning is a powerful intervention tool, which can provide a strong guarantee for the construction of elderly- and child-friendly cities from the perspective of physical space.