The Family Friendly City - taking back the streets

In my last post that discussed the importance of improvised play for children’s development, I noted that “dense populations and urban environments create special challenges for improvisational learning.” I concluded with a promise to discuss some creative solutions to these challenges in my next post.

If we want to claim space for improvisational play a first priority is to reclaim our neighborhood streets and sidewalks. Streets and sidewalks are ubiquitous, accessible and contiguous. For any city, they constitute its largest and perhaps best maintained public space.  Unfortunately, the advent of the automobile has increasingly restricted use of the streets to the narrow function of efficient transportation. Non-transport uses such as lingering, playing, sitting, selling, and gathering for public debate have been discouraged and in many cases legally restricted. In traditional walking cities, children were a common sight on the street. Within and around the milling adults they played their ball, chase, and hoop games. Merchants also used the streets for display and for engaging the public. Pedestrians did not cling to the sidewalks but shared the roadway with horses, carts and other means of conveyance. My point is not to romanticize the streets of walking cities, because they could be unpleasant and even dangerous, but to help us reassert the idea that streets and sidewalks are public spaces first and that efficient movement of people and goods are only one of their multiple purposes.

In beginning to reclaim our streets and sidewalks, it is helpful to understand that we are part of a growing movement of activists and urbanists who have a similar goal. What is now a common practice of sidewalk seating for restaurants was only a few decades ago unconventional and illegal. Where once food vendors were legally restricted from public spaces, now cities are beginning to discover their important public and social aspects (see Project for Public Spaces) In Portland, City Repair has made it their mission to do “intersection repairs” by painting mandallas, building cob posting stations, and adding many other curb and corner attractions that are intended to reassert the public and symbolic purpose of intersections as places to “come together”. Portland also makes it relatively easy to have street festivals, marches, parades and block parties (click for application).

All of this is moving in the right direction but there are ways that individuals can do more, especially to encourage children to claim their sidewalks and streets. First, we need to get out of our houses, away from our fenced backyards, and onto our front sidewalks and streets. Our neighborhood on has developed a real habit of this. We are lucky to have a narrow street so it is easy and common to engage neighbors up down and across the streets in conversations. And if the adults are outside, invariably the children follow. Soon they will be on their scooters, roller blades, and bikes riding up on down the block. And with adults out front, neighborhood yards become fair game for kid visits. What was formerly a semi-private space, becomes a semi-public space. Dogs chase balls, kids congregate, adults sit yard walls and commiserate. It’s a real community time.

Parents on our block seem to have developed a process of informal exchange. Kids truck off to one person’s house, parents of the visiting children check in to be sure its OK, and, if so, the kids hang out there for awhile. Next time, it’s another person’s house or yard that is the location of play. It’s fun, informal and relatively fair. No need to set up play dates, the kids do that for you. Kids on our street seem to have a system for inviting other kids out. They simply hang out on the sidewalks and look for any action at the neighbor kid’s house. If things work out, someone comes out and the play begins.

On our street, there are lots of “eyes on the street” other than parents. Neighbors seem to have an intuitive sense of “how things should be” and become alert and asking questions if something seems amiss. And kids are not shy to visit. My wife and I are avid gardeners and this gets us out into the yard on a regular basis. For some curious children, this is an invitation to visit and ask questions. These are the best “teachable moments.” I also do woodworking out of my garage and this is another attraction for kids. Because I have lots of scrap wood, the kids sometimes bother me enough to get them hammers and nails so they can build a wobbly chair or box. My inclination is to leave them alone, but if I see them heading toward failure, I usually step in with a little advice. If I limit my instructions to a few hints, this becomes another “teachable moment”. 

The take away from this long post is that there is a movement to “take back the streets” and convert them from single purpose uses for car conveyance to the multiple purpose uses they formerly served in the old walking cities. And you can play a part in this process by finding a reason (conversation, gardening, puttering, lingering, playing with your dog) to get out from your private interior and backyard spaces into your front yards where you are likely to engage others. Your presence will be an invitation to interaction, for someone to stop and talk, ask a question, offer a comment. When that happens, you become an event, an excuse for others to gather.  Suddenly the semi-private spaces of front yards become semi-public spaces, for community, for fun, for engagement that blurs the hard boundaries of street, sidewalk and yard into a softer landscape of neighborhood.  And neighborhoods like this are inviting, safe and comfortable spaces for the improvisational play that is known to be so important for childrens' development.