Growing Up in Beijing: Children’s outdoor play and related experiences across three generations

Aiming to document children’s daily outdoor play experiences in a rapidly developing urban environment, this research is based on a case study involving children living in the central Shichahai area in Beijing to provide an understanding of the subject from the scarce Chinese perspective. This study investigates its subject in terms of four dimensions, space, people, activities and time (SPAT). The children’s play is considered not only through their own experience, but also through that of their parents and grandparents’ generations, so covering a lengthy span of urban development history from 1950s to 2010s. This study employs a qualitative triangulation approach to investigating childhood experience, using multiple qualitative data collection methods including interviews, observations, diaries and data drawn from various sources, people, environmental settings and texts. This data records the children’s outdoor play experience as well as the changes in those experiences across generations, and its analysis addresses the lack of knowledge and understanding of childhood play experience in Chinese cities. The factors which have a profound influence on children’s play experience in a developing urban context, are discussed and interpreted in terms of a range of factors which have influenced the transformation of the urban environment, including economic development, policy implications and cultural traditions. Based on the insights drawn from this evidence, this study offers key recommendations for policy and practice, highlighting methods which can help to develop a more child-friendly city, in which children’s use of the urban environment is considered and the children’s voices are heard.