ABSTRACT
Eight years ago I happened to meet an educational specialist in Australia, who introduced the concept of the Child Friendly City to me and then I read somewhere that in Africa, there is a saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. This may not be entirely agreeable in our Chinese culture, but there is a certain degree of truth. ‘Child development’ is a very specific term referring to the physical and psychological development of children. Child development and real estate research should have no overlapping area in principle, as most people would think child development is more about humanity while real estate research is more about maximizing investment return for the rich! But then, if real estate is interpreted as the use of buildings and land, it fits perfectly well into this multi-disciplinary research agenda. This is because children spend a large amount of their time at home and the immediate housing environment in return has a strong impact on them. In this chapter, we will continue with our discussion on the built environment and children from the previous chapter and extend the focus to look at how they view the overall physical form of our society, which, as I keep emphasizing, is shaped by various real estate decisions.
