The Urban Child CityLab is linked to a Children's Institute research programme on "Healthy Cities for Children". The research programme aims to understand the relationships between the urban environment and children's well-being in South Africa. The study's main research question is: what is the impact of urban planning and urbanization on children's well-being in post-apartheid South Africa? The ultimate purpose of the research is to provide evidence to assist policy-makers and practitioners to create policies, programmes and institutions that support the well-being of children, as well as to build research capacity among emerging academics, and enhance capacity for policy-relevant research.

It is therefore important that there is a platform where policymakers, practitioners, researchers and postgraduate students from various disciplines can engage with this research programme and with other research studies relating to children in the urban environment. As with the other CityLab themes, the Urban Child CityLab seminars/meetings will be a way of getting interaction and engagement between various stakeholders about a specific topic, in order to create a more holistic understanding of the issue of children in the urban environment and to build research capacity for further interdisciplinary research on this issue.

The Children's Institute's Healthy Cities for Children research programme is funded by SANPAD