570 / 2019-02-28 23:13:27

Design for Social Capital: Improve Community Welfare for Left-behind Children in Rural China

全体主题 > Planning Support Systems

China’s urbanisation in the past decades has been mirrored by large scale rural-urban migration. During this process, hundreds of millions rural in-habitants move to cities for better employment opportunities while leaving their children behind in rural villages. The separation with parents causes negative transformation of family welfare supply structure. As a result, many “left-behind” children (LBC) display characteristics include loneli-ness, misconduct, low self-esteem, and crime tendencies. Based on welfare pluralism theory, this paper uses GIS-based planning and design approach-es to improve social welfare for LBC in rural China. Using a case study in Hubei Province, we demonstrate that LBC welfare can be improved by in-creasing community social capital through the provision of functional and child-friendly public space in rural villages. This study provides useful in-sights to issues surrounding LBC through the lens of planning and design. We hope it will inform similar endeavors aiming at improving LBC wel-fare in other villages in rural China.