Prioritizing Children's Issues in the City of Arak to Achieve the Indicators of a Child-Friendly City

Abstract

In recent years, policies and programs have been proposed under the title "Child-Friendly City" for the presence, growth, and creative participation of children in urban spaces. In this regard, the current research was conducted with the aim of investigating and prioritizing children's issues in Arak city to achieve the indicators of a child-friendly city in 1400. In this research, the content analysis method was used to investigate and extract the indicators of the child-friendly city based on the theoretical foundations of the research, UNICEF's perspective, the background of the research conducted inside and outside the country, and the descriptive survey method was used to collect data. it placed. The statistical population of the present study included all the children aged 6 to 12 years in Arak city, who were selected by random sampling method, based on the Kargesi Morgan table, and finally, after dropping the subjects and removing the incomplete questionnaires, the data of 209 children were statistically analyzed. it placed. The tool of data collection was a researcher-made questionnaire of child-friendly city indicators, whose validity and reliability was confirmed. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (one-sample t-test and Friedman's test) were used and the data were analyzed using R and spss23 software. The research findings showed that the current situation of Arak city in The field of indicators of a child-friendly city from the point of view of children, considering the scale, was lower than the average number of 3. Therefore, the results generally showed a clear difference between the current and desired conditions of the nine child-friendly city indicators, which were lower than the standards of the UNICEF organization and the measures taken in other developed and developing cities and countries. Other findings indicate It was because, from the children's point of view, participation, security, healthy and clean environment, social services, green space, attention to cultural and religious issues, education, safety and ease of movement, and beauty of urban spaces are the most important priorities. On reaching the city of Arak, they were friendly with children. In the end, it can be said that despite the problems that exist in the city of Arak on the way to achieving the indicators of a child-friendly city, we cannot be denied the previous actions of various organizations and bodies. Therefore, it is hoped that the city of Arak can become a child-friendly city by preventing the parallel work of organizations and creating coordination and implementation measures suggested in the current research.