Building a Learning City for Sustainable Development: Spotlight on Beijing, China

The idea of building learning cities is one of the important strategies for implementing lifelong learning in China. It is well accepted through policymaking, research, and practice. This article provides an overview of building a learning city in Beijing. Three cases offer perspectives that explain the structure, policy, and practice of building a learning city: the Community Colleges, an important provider of learning recourses to various learners; the Adult Schools in Daxing, another type of provider from the administrative district offering adult education programs for the local residents; and a learning organization of Shougang, a state owned enterprise that provides learning activities to their employees, updating knowledge and skills for competitiveness and production. It concludes that supported by national and local policies, Beijing has established a system serving as an exemplary model city to practice lifelong learning through and for individuals, institutions, and society at large to achieve the goal of sustainable development for this increasingly developing mega city.