City is an important habitat for human beings. In 1933, CIAM formulated the Athens Charter, in which four basic functions of city were clarified. They are life, work, leisure and transportation. It becomes an inner function of city to satisfy people’s need of leisure.
China is now experiencing an unprecedentedly fast urbanization. How and why we develop city has become an important topic for discussion in theory and in practice.
Based on our long observation and careful thinking on the development of leisure in city, we started our research according to two core concepts. First, leisure is the basic function of city, not a special type. Each city, regardless of their natural resources, history and culture, geographical locations and economies, will make great achievements in developing urban leisure sector. Second, the city administrators need a roadmap to figure out how to develop leisure sector in different cities instead of focusing on any ranking list.
In order to fulfill this purpose, we adopted a method of integrating quantitative analysis and qualitative research with the combination of subjective judgment and objective evaluation. By depending on the 1300 data we collected from 50 sample cities and analyzed systematically, we selected 10 cities as examples according to 7 principles and 3 latitudes, and made a thorough analysis of the experience these cities had in developing leisure sector.