Wang Xia, Chen Tiantian, Lin Guangsi

Keywords： Child-friendly Urban Environment; Urbanization; Natural Elements; Children’s Play Space; Urban Parks

Abstract：

To create a healthy and beneficial environment for children has become a necessary part of building a child-friendly city. There are various designs of children’s play spaces, but researchers and practitioners at home and abroad have realized that contact with nature”is important for children’s growth and development, which has been confirmed by relevant theories and empirical studies in Europe and North America. The natural elements in children’s play space have indisputably become an important factor in the design of urban parks. Based on the research results of foreign theories and practices, this paper aims to explore the application of natural elements in children’s play space in Chinese urban parks. 87 children’s playgrounds in urban parks in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu were selected for investigation, in attempt to fill the gap of children’s paly space in domestic childfriendly cities and improve the quality activity spaces in future child-friendly cities. It is found that hildren’s play space in four cities are generally lacking of naturalness and the form is rather monotonous. This paper proposes corresponding strategies by using rich material, and at the same time, the release of relevant design guidelines or specifications has become an urgent demand.

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