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A child-friendly neighborhood supports the fundamental needs of children’s daily lives and promotes their physical, emotional, and social development.
However, parents’ perception of a neighborhood as child-friendly can influence where they choose to live and how comfortable they feel letting their children play outside or move around on their own. These choices affect children’s physical activity, which directly impacts their health and well-being.
To understand these choices, researcher Xiaoli Gong set out in her PhD project to develop a new instrument that measures how parents in the Netherlands perceive a neighborhood’s child-friendliness.
She also explored how these perceptions influence parents’ housing choices and children’s physical activity.
This brief summarizes key findings from Gong’s publications from 2024 and 2025, offering valuable insights for urban planners, designers, researchers, and professionals focused on child-friendly environments.
The findings can inform the planning of interventions to create more child-friendly neighborhoods that promote children’s physical activity and health.
In the first study from 2024, Gong and her supervisors developed a new instrument to measure and better understand how parents perceive the child-friendliness of a neighborhood.
It’s based on these five children’s rights and needs: to be safe, to move freely, have access to basic services (education, transportation, health, recreation), have access to green space, and to meet friends.
The instrument allows urban planners to identify strengths and weaknesses within and across neighborhoods, guiding informed planning decisions.
In the second study, Gong and her supervisors (2025a) investigated to what extent aspects of child-friendliness influence parents’ housing decisions.
They found that:
In the third and final study, Gong and her supervisors (2025b) explored the link between parents’ perception of child-friendliness and children’s physical activity.
Here, they found that:
Gong’s PhD findings highlight key insights and recommendations for urban planners, designers, researchers, and professionals focused on creating child-friendly environments.
Creating child-friendly neighborhoods includes:
Using the new measurement instrument to understand parents’ perceptions of neighborhood child-friendliness can help urban planners identify strengths and weaknesses within and across neighborhoods during the planning process.
Safety should be a priority when designing child-friendly neighborhoods. Specifically, low traffic speed limits are crucial for creating a safe, child-friendly environment.
In the Dutch context, parents who prioritize child-friendliness prefer a speed limit of 15 km/h. They also emphasize the importance of safe, well-designed sidewalks and bike lanes that are clearly separated from car traffic.
A child-friendly neighborhood should offer basic services for children, such as schools, public transportation (bus and train stops), care facilities, and places for recreation (playgrounds, sports facilities).
Easy access to primary schools is especially important and strongly influences where parents choose to live, making it a key factor to consider in urban planning.
Green spaces – such as trees, grass, parks, and public green areas – enhance a neighborhood’s child-friendliness. Green spaces also offer areas where children can meet and play with friends or other children.
Having other children in the neighborhood supports children’s social connections and physical development. Safe neighborhoods with places to play encourage children to go outside, meet others, and build friendships.
All our briefs are accessible through our website, www.playgroundresearch.org.
On the website, you’ll find a compilation of briefs that offer a clear comprehension of research findings and their implications for future research and practical application.
You can also download a printable PDF version of this brief to facilitate sharing.
Gong, X., Van den Berg, P., & Arentze, T. (2024). A New Measurement Method of Parental Perception of Child-friendliness in Neighborhoods to Improve Neighborhood Quality and Children’s Health and Well-being. Cities, 149, 104955. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2024.104955
Gong, X., Van den Berg, P., Dane, G. Z., & Arentze, T. (2025a). Parental Perception of Child-friendliness and Its Impact on Residential Location Choice: A Stated Choice Experiment. Cities, 20(161). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2025.105914
Gong, X., Van den Berg, P., Dane, G. Z., & Arentze, T. (2025b). The Relationship between Parental Perception of Child-friendliness in Neighborhoods and Children’s Physical Activity (Submitted for publication).
