Making child-friendly cities: A quest for local agenda-setting

Cities provide access to health, education, and economic opportunities; however, children face unique urban challenges such as pollution, traffic, and limited services. The Child-Friendly cities (CFC) framework advocates for urban planning that prioritizes children. Despite national governments' commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), local governments are responsible for implementing urban planning actions. Guided by agenda-setting theory, we conducted surveys and in-depth interviews with local government representatives from forty cities in diverse contexts. The findings highlight key factors supporting CFC integration into local spatial agendas, recognizing urban planning as a means to advance children's rights. • Child-friendly cities (CFC) encompass three dimensions: rights, physical environment, and governance. • There is an urgent global need to incorporate child-friendly cities into local spatial agendas. • An understanding of how agenda-setting operates at the local level is insufficient. • The research identifies factors that either hinder or facilitate the inclusion of child-friendly cities in local spatial agendas. • These factors are categorized into key policy actors, political influences, attention attractors, and alternative attributes. • Research on CFC's governance processes, particularly the policy cycle, is limited.