The urban realm for children

I tend to be quite wary of the refrain "But what about the children?" As a rule, I hear this trotted out in alarmist tones calling for conservatism and decisions based on fear. Especially in my work on Safe Routes to Schools, I hear from parents who are given messages of fear day in and day out about the dangers their children face if they're allowed to walk or bike to school: stranger danger, traffic danger, personal safety danger. I hear many of them reminisce wistfully about their own childhoods, when it was much more common and widely accepted that young children could travel about their neighborhoods unattended.

Nevertheless, the fear for children's safety, whether the perceived threats are real or imagined, plays a huge role in the decisions parents make for their children, and how other parents respond to those choices.

So, I'm fascinated by the concept of designing cities for children. We're not talking, here, about cities full of ball-pits and bouncy-castles (though who wouldn't love THAT?) but rather, cities whose physical infrastructure is safe and inviting for kids to navigate on their own, to get from home to playground to school:

As its main objectives, the project seeks autonomy, participation, safety and mobility for children in the city, to make it possible for them to leave their home without being accompanied by an adult so that they can meet friends and play in public spaces of the city: from courtyards to sidewalks, from public squares to parks.

This has me thinking about how utterly people friendly a kid-friendly city would be. If a child can safely navigate a city's streets, then the vast majority of adult users will be able to do the same. If a city's streets are vibrant and inviting to curious young people, they will probably be welcoming and intriguing to adults of all ages.

What do you think a kid-friendly city would look like?

Safe walking habits

The last couple of weeks, I've been getting involved with our Safe Routes to School trainings at elementary schools around the state. In these, we go to elementary schools, train parents, teachers and other volunteers in the skills we want them to teach the kids, and then we all take small groups of kids out walking around the school to practice those skills and begin developing safe walking habits.

One of the interesting observations I've made in this process is what bad habits the adults have -- myself included! It's less urgent that adults have good habits in looking out for our own safety, because we are generally more observant and aware of our surroundings than your average 2nd or 3rd grader, but it presents a challenge to our volunteers to model good walking habits when their own habits demonstrate their own lack of concern with regards to, for example, making sure that cars in all lanes of traffic have stopped before they enter the crosswalk.

I've also noticed that over the course of working with 3 or 5 classrooms in succession, the adults get much better, smoother, and more comfortable with the material and enacting the behaviors we hope to impress upon the children. This makes me think how important it is that children be regularly exposed to safe walking in practice and also in discussion. Kids often know the right answer, even as they enact bad habits.

For example, I might ask a couple of kids at a crosswalk, "What do you need to do to cross safely here?" And they certainly know the answer is, "Look both ways!" But very often, looking both ways simply involves turning their heads without actually paying attention to what they see.

This is all a reminder to me to take more care with my own walking habits, and not to assume that cars will do what I expect them to do at crosswalks, traffic lights and other places that I encounter them as a pedestrian. It also reminds me, though, to talk about safe walking when I'm out and about with kids, rather than simply leading the way and figuring they'll pick up the right thing to do by osmosis.