Close the roads so children can play in the streets
July 31, 2017 4:36 AM   Subscribe

Roads should be closed regularly to allow children to play in the street as they did a generation ago, health experts have said, after a study showed pilot schemes increased youngsters’ activity five-fold. More than 500 communities in Britain have already signed up to the ‘Playing Out’ initiative, which works with local councils to temporarily pedestrianise roads for an hour or two each week to allow children to play safely near their homes.
posted by clawsoon (52 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
Up where I live, they started a Sunday tradition after a road was closed for construction... and everybody liked it closed.

In our neighborhood it would be nice if somehow you could enforce local traffic only guidelines... We don't get a ton of traffic but the people who are speeding are never the ones about to pull into their driveways.
posted by selfnoise at 5:10 AM on July 31, 2017 [3 favorites]


Excellent! I grew up in the UK before there were so many cars. My play range was measured in miles. My kids get to play on the street here in the US because my street has a culture of taking over the road - parents standing in the street supervising. It means the kids on the street all know each other from playing and riding bikes together, and the parents get a regular excuse to talk with each other.
posted by grubby at 5:12 AM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


I thought a generation was generally considered something like 25-30 years? City roads weren't any safer for play in the late 80s/early 90s than they are now, were they? Or is this the Telegraph trying to flatter its readers that they're only one generation removed?
posted by Dysk at 5:14 AM on July 31, 2017 [8 favorites]


This is a great idea. My council considered this a few years ago with a street near me, but it didn't go ahead (and the whining in the local newspaper comments had to be seen to be believed: "but I pay road tax! but why are parents so selfish!") They are I think relaunching the scheme this year, so here's hoping it gets the chance to go ahead.

My only concern about it is that it presents liveable streets as an opt-in special occasion, contingent on getting enough parents to campaign and volunteer, rather than actually building those principles into street design. Still, it's a start! I think there's a broad perception that children play out less These Days because parents are disproportionately anxious about nefarious child abductors, but the increase in traffic seems like a bigger factor to me.
posted by Catseye at 5:15 AM on July 31, 2017 [3 favorites]


This is what wrong with the world today - damn pampered kids. They should have to dodge traffic while playing football like we all did .
posted by COD at 5:23 AM on July 31, 2017 [5 favorites]


In our neighborhood it would be nice if somehow you could enforce local traffic only guidelines... We don't get a ton of traffic but the people who are speeding are never the ones about to pull into their driveways.

This is basically what cul-de-sacs are for. Be careful what you wish for.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:30 AM on July 31, 2017 [5 favorites]


"but I pay road tax!"

I keep seeing people say this in the UK, but they just don't. There is no road tax in the UK. Vehicle Excise Duty exists, sure, but it's not inherently linked to the roads in any way - the money from it isn't ring-fenced for road maintenance or construction (both of which are likely paid for largely through council tax if you're talking residential streets) and the cost is linked to emissions, not weight or any other factor of road wear or use. It's a tax on the use of your vehicle on public infrastructure, not a tax to pay for the roads.

My only concern about it is that it presents liveable streets as an opt-in special occasion, contingent on getting enough parents to campaign and volunteer, rather than actually building those principles into street design.

Contingent on your road not being arterial or otherwise heavily trafficked as well, I would imagine, which is likely to be at least as big a factor in the unevenness of access to the program.
posted by Dysk at 5:33 AM on July 31, 2017 [5 favorites]


In the early-mid 90's we spent a lot of time playing street hockey and baseball in the streets - mostly in short crescents and cul-de-sacs where the traffic volume was low. Even then minor and major throughfare had too much volume to allow a game to be properly played.

Every time there is a street festival (or in Ottawa, this weekend they had huge mechanical dragons and spiders roaming the core streets) adults have a childish glee about being able to reclaim their streets. Ottawa had something like 700,000 people attend this - what other argument do you need to justify shutting roads down more often other than overwhelming demand?
posted by notorious medium at 5:33 AM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


Over here we've turned our kids into adorable walking speed limit signs.

i went to that school 32 years ago
posted by adept256 at 5:41 AM on July 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


"...disproportionately anxious about nefarious child abductors, but the increase in traffic seems like a bigger factor to me."

This is a lie that we tell ourselves. It has ALWAYS been about cars, but we are too invested in car culture to admit that it has destroyed a way of life.
posted by bitslayer at 5:42 AM on July 31, 2017 [22 favorites]


I always have to watch for kids playing, near my house. One night I saw motion up ahead, around dusk, and slowed down. It was a group of kids, who were running along as one of their number was being pulled downhill, lying face-down on a skateboard, by two bassett hounds. I pulled over, waiting for the wipeout. But they had a system for jumping off the board onto a yard, when the hill got so steep that the dogs couldn't keep pace.

That is probably not a safe way to play! But I don't have it in me to blame them.
posted by thelonius at 5:43 AM on July 31, 2017 [6 favorites]


what other argument do you need to justify shutting roads down more often than overwhelming demand?

People looking at this kind of thing don't always do much analysis of the class divides involved. If it gives the middle-class more play room but substantially impedes the commutes of the working poor, which these things often do because the working poor are the ones who don't have the same reliable days off that the middle class do, then it becomes fairly questionable. When I was low-income and living in an fairly urban area, I dreaded major events. Nothing like trying to plan a commute around major street closures when you have the sort of job where you might well get fired for being late once. Which is just to say: It's not really that simple. The people loudest about their inconvenience might be middle class, but that doesn't mean they're bearing the brunt of it.

I'm not saying I think this is a terrible idea, especially if you can determine that the people living/working on that stretch of road are okay with it, but it requires a lot of balancing of the needs of different parts of the population. Small communities that are relatively uniformly middle-class, this is probably a great plan. Just--remember that not everybody is middle-class.
posted by Sequence at 5:51 AM on July 31, 2017 [33 favorites]


Car!
posted by delicious-luncheon at 5:51 AM on July 31, 2017 [42 favorites]


My street has problems with people zooming down it way too fast, and somebody just put up one of those signs that says DRIVE LIKE YOUR KIDS LIVE HERE. Every time I see it it makes me chuckle, because I can hear the ghost of my smartass mother saying, "Wouldn't that make me speed up?"
posted by JanetLand at 5:52 AM on July 31, 2017 [5 favorites]


When I was a kid, I lived for a while on a cul-de-sac. It was attached to a busy road with poor visibility, and my mom didn't trust me to cross it on my own--probably quite reasonably, although I thought it was ridiculous at the time.

Since there were no other kids near my age on the cul-de-sac, it meant that I had no friends in the neighborhood at all. It was lonely.

So, basically, fuck car-centric urban design. >:(
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:53 AM on July 31, 2017 [16 favorites]


Game on!
posted by cooker girl at 6:02 AM on July 31, 2017 [8 favorites]


Metafilter: When Mom said "go play in the street" she ment it!
posted by rough ashlar at 6:11 AM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


My childhood memories are full of road hockey games, bike hikes, frisbees, firecrackers and hours of joyful, aimless roaming around my small city. Of course I'm sounding like an old guy, but what will today's kids be remembering in 30 years? Minecraft in their bedrooms?
posted by davebush at 6:32 AM on July 31, 2017


Anything wrong with building some designated play areas? Like parks and playgrounds. Oh yeah. NIMBY. Them things are there every day all day long.
OOPS.

posted by notreally at 6:35 AM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


The people loudest about their inconvenience might be middle class, but that doesn't mean they're bearing the brunt of it.

I think they're talking about closing residential streets, which would have little impact on anyone's commute (unless you lived on the closed street).
posted by Optamystic at 7:18 AM on July 31, 2017


adept256: "Over here we've turned our kids into adorable walking speed limit signs.

i went to that school 32 years ago
"

You mean that's not a target noting each one's worth 40 points?
posted by chavenet at 7:20 AM on July 31, 2017 [7 favorites]


Nothing like trying to plan a commute around major street closures when you have the sort of job where you might well get fired for being late once.

Sure, but don't most people live on *residential* roads for which closure would not have the same impact? Even most people in dense urban settings have *a* road adjacent to them that's not a busy, important road for commutes.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:37 AM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


I agree with notreally up there. We didn't play in the road, because our town had built children into the neighborhood. There were 3 parks within biking distance, one of which didn't even require crossing a major road to get to.

I realize that absent of these opportunities, parents still want their kids playing outside, and it's good that they're making space for this to happen.
posted by Lykosidae at 7:41 AM on July 31, 2017 [3 favorites]


Dysk
"but I pay road tax!"

I keep seeing people say this in the UK, but they just don't. There is no road tax in the UK. Vehicle Excise Duty exists, sure, but it's not inherently linked to the roads in any way - the money from it isn't ring-fenced for road maintenance or construction (both of which are likely paid for largely through council tax if you're talking residential streets) and the cost is linked to emissions, not weight or any other factor of road wear or use. It's a tax on the use of your vehicle on public infrastructure, not a tax to pay for the roads.
Since this is also my hobby-horse I should just add that as of George's Osborne's budget in 2015 this is no longer true. It is now the case that VED and fuel taxes DO pay for the roads, but the roads they pay for are only in the Strategic Roads Network. However, the SRN contains about 3% of all the road miles in the UK, consisting only of the motorways and a few big A roads. All the other roads are explicitly not paid for by VED or fuel taxes and come out of the local & central tax take. This is because the car-specific taxes are nowhere near enough to cover the cost. So, all the whiners who "pay their road tax" are right, but they are only allowed to whine whilst on a motorway or the A30.

Playing Out are based round the corner from my house and their efforts do seem very popular in local streets, but sadly they have also proven more controversial in more disadvantaged bits of town, which I expect are also the places where the kids might get greater benefit from using the outside space for fun. This might be to do with some cultural grouping thing, as the charity is run by the previous Mayor's daughter, and he is seen as a Metropolitan Liberal Elite par excellence, being a red-trousered architect.
posted by larkery at 7:48 AM on July 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


Fucking Tories ruin everything.
posted by Dysk at 7:50 AM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


Contingent on your road not being arterial or otherwise heavily trafficked as well, I would imagine, which is likely to be at least as big a factor in the unevenness of access to the program.

Cambridge, MA shuts down a long stretch of Memorial Drive every Sunday in the summer. The impact is somewhat mitigated by the fact that there are other arterials running adjacent, like Mount Auburn St. and, on the other side of the river, Soldier's Field Road.

Proposal is a lot more practical in the city where alternate routes are plentiful, but that seems like it goes without saying? Do people really think that the idea is to shut down the literally-one-and-only-road in and out of a neighbourhood?
posted by tobascodagama at 8:07 AM on July 31, 2017


Parks and playgrounds aren't serving quite the same purpose; the street near me which was going to be our Playing Out pilot already has some decent playgrounds nearby.

The issue is partly access. You have to get your kids to the park if there's too much traffic on the roads for them to walk/bike/scooter there safely, which in general there is. But its also the idea, making space for people on foot
be (even very temporarily!) the default for a street, not something you have to create little fenced-off playgrounds for. What Playing Out is trying to do is move from that "here is your designated space for Playing Outside, disconnected from your house" idea, to broadening the existing available space. If you're eight then for a couple of hours a week, your street belongs not to cars but to you. You can play in it, walk from your house across it to ask if the kids across the street want to play too.

There is always a place for parks and playgrounds, but in general "here's your allocated space over here, run round in circles and play on swings" is going to come second in appeal to "your street is yours as well."
posted by Catseye at 8:09 AM on July 31, 2017 [7 favorites]


A few of my neighbours have a pack of kids and every so often they erect (illegal) barriers on their street and shut it all down for the kids to play. Nobody cares. It's fun!

Sometimes the city shuts down the road along the waterfront for a marathon or something. Before and after the race, people head out in droves to experience the shore without the noise and danger of cars. Cyclists everywhere. It's idyllic.

We don't get a ton of traffic but the people who are speeding are never the ones about to pull into their driveways.

I haven't noticed this to be true. People speed through their own neighbourhoods with abandon. It's a head-scratcher.
posted by klanawa at 8:23 AM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


Fucking Tories ruin everything.
posted by Dysk at 3:50 PM
Yeah they won't even leave my preferred topics to grumble about alone. No doubt they have plans to introduce a market-based system for grumbling backed by a complex system of government collateralised loans or something.
posted by larkery at 8:24 AM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


just close the roads to motor vehicles permanently
posted by indubitable at 8:33 AM on July 31, 2017 [5 favorites]


I live on a dead-end in a 100% residential neighborhood, so we get this pretty much all the time and it's great (our kid is still too little to normalize the idea of playing in the street, but the older kids on the block do all the time). The city does an Open Streets road shut down three times a summer (different roads each time, in different parts of town) and 99% of people either love it or ignore it but there's 1% who just scream bloody murder about it like it's the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of the universe. It's one road, once a year, for about 5 hours. It's well-publicized far in advance, there are several intersections where traffic is controlled so cars can cross from one side of the closed street to the other, and there are many parallel streets. Some people just live to complain.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:41 AM on July 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


Proposal is a lot more practical in the city where alternate routes are plentiful, but that seems like it goes without saying? Do people really think that the idea is to shut down the literally-one-and-only-road in and out of a neighbourhood?

Of course not, but with the way an awful lot of UK towns are laid out, there's an awful lot of residential along arterial roadways with no meaningful bypass, and no "neighborhoods" in the US sense. The proposal makes sense for out-of-town-ish residential estates (predominantly middle class in my neck of the woods) but not really for anything even remotely town-centre or major-road-adjacent (predominantly poorer in my area).
posted by Dysk at 9:00 AM on July 31, 2017 [3 favorites]


Our neighborhood shuts down the street for a block party on Memorial Day. Turns out it's easy and cheap to do.

Then we found out another street does it every weekend. Even better.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:03 AM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


haven't noticed this to be true. People speed through their own neighbourhoods with abandon. It's a head-scratcher.

Part of this is road design. Long straightaways encourage faster speeds. If you need a sign telling people to slow down you designed the street poorly. It's totally possible to design roads where going over the speed limit just feels wrong.

Shared space.

posted by leotrotsky at 9:06 AM on July 31, 2017 [7 favorites]


Seattle has done the bare minimum in this direction, with "Summer Parkways": they shut down a bunch of street in each of several neighborhoods, once a year. It's wonderful when it happens.

Except that it's almost August, and there are no 2017 dates listed! I think we've lost even the little bit of street-blockage we had.
posted by gurple at 9:44 AM on July 31, 2017


Hmm. My city (Minneapolis) allows a road to be shut down for a day if 75% of neighbors agree, and you pay a $25 fee. Most blocks do it once a year or so. But there's no rule saying you can't do it, say, every Sunday from May through October as long as someone pays for it. Doesn't seem like an insurmountable barrier for a street with lots of kids. (We also have tons of parks and sidewalks though donor might not really be necessary.)
posted by miyabo at 10:16 AM on July 31, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm 62. There were fewer cars and more pedestrians when I was a kid. There were still far too many accidents and injuries. In summer, when more kids were out playing, cars seldom had AC, so the windows were open, and you at least heard kids. And cars had radios, generally not big audio systems. Cars now are traveling barcaloungers and seem more insulated.

It wasn't just that the street was part of our territory, pretty much all yards were available to use, by default. Some neighbors didn't want kids playing in their yard, so we didn't play there. I notice mow that kids only play in their own yards. Subdivisions could be required to have some public spaces. I do notice some subdivisions are designed to reduce through traffic; that has to help.

disclaimer: this was a white, upper-middle neighborhood. Some other neighborhoods had unfenced yards, too, and alleys, which were great for bikes.
posted by theora55 at 10:19 AM on July 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


I do notice some subdivisions are designed to reduce through traffic; that has to help.

Not necessarily. One of the knock-on effects of making it hard to get in and out of residential neighborhoods (and of keeping them residential-only, with no commercial use) is that it increases the distances involved for residents to travel from home to anywhere else, and for non-residents to travel around those neighborhoods. That discourages people from walking or biking in the area, and makes it more dangerous for people who do walk or bike.

These effects can be mitigated by including pedestrian/bicycle access that makes it easier to cross areas that don't have through access for automobiles. Unfortunately, in many places that's not done well or at all, and it's hard to retrofit neighborhoods that are already built with only the windshield view in mind. Most homeowners don't want to give up part of their property to allow people to get to the store, or park, or library, or work, or school without needing a car.

There is always a place for parks and playgrounds, but in general "here's your allocated space over here, run round in circles and play on swings" is going to come second in appeal to "your street is yours as well."

Besides, people tend to frown on having public parks be composed mostly of pavement instead of grass and trees and whatnot, and there are plenty of kinds of play that are done best on paved surfaces. We already have so much of the world covered in asphalt and concrete that it seems wasteful to set aside even more space for it, just so we can play street hockey without the street, or roller-skate outdoors, or practice bunny-hopping bicycles over trash cans, or create extra-big chalk-art drawings. Let's use the pavement we've already got for something other than moving and storing automobiles, at least some of the time.
posted by asperity at 10:56 AM on July 31, 2017 [5 favorites]


We have one here in Ew's street in Bristol, generally they are on a Sunday afternoon. It's good for building the community.
100 years ago there were no cars in our street, the kiddies could play out all the time, so maybe it's just a little historical re-enactment?
posted by Dr Ew at 11:12 AM on July 31, 2017


I live in a cul-de-sac. The person who drives fastest along the street, by some way, has three children under about six and a wayward dog. What the rush to cover the first/last fifty metres is about has always been a mystery in this house. So yes, some people need to slow down, but having kids doesn't seem to do it.
posted by StephenB at 1:16 PM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


Huh, someone just knocked on the door to talk about this yesterday.

Is there somewhere that goes over what the "five-fold increase in activity" is based on? Because that seems enormous. I scanned through a few of the papers, but I didn't see an explanation.
posted by lucidium at 1:52 PM on July 31, 2017


La beauté est dans la rue.
posted by numberstation at 3:52 PM on July 31, 2017


I love cars. I love the design, I love how they sound. I used to have a trans am, it was my life.

But cars are the worst-- they turn people into assholes. People are like Oh BMW drivers are assholes, or Prius drivers are assholes and down the list we go, guess what? All drivers are assholes because cars make you into a murderous asshole. They need to be banned.
posted by chaz at 4:06 PM on July 31, 2017 [7 favorites]


Arterial megalopolis throughways and freeway expressway highway turnpikes have taught drivers they can be ignorant of their place in the order of things.

I live in a small village, where cars -- for the most part -- still remember their proper station.

Cars must move aside for bicycles or tricycles or prams or people or pets. This isn't road law, it is social law. What kind of terrible living fart would honk aside a boy walking his dog, or a girl walking her chicken?

(Tourists from Toronto, that's who.)

As the most dangerous it is on their hoods to be most careful. Drivers who fail to force their cars to acquiesce to this order are bad people. They are careless and mean. They refuse to take responsibility for their car's behaviour, because their hearts have been adulterated by reading too much Internet gossip and envying people who don't exist (which hollows out a soul, and cheapens all it touches).

On the flip side, I always make sure to explicitly thank aloud every car that doesn't kill me. It's not only an exercise in gratitude and grace but a reminder to the cars not to forget to treat me as alive, the giddy chrome bastards. "Thank you," I'm always saying as I trot along. "Thank you for not killing me at all."

Sometimes cars get uppity, and try speeding around the village or doing something else foolhardy. They might find themselves surrounded by my neighbours, agitating for a saner approach. And the little driver inside the car, surrounded by shouting apes, is suddenly reminded how precarious their situation is, and who the real killers really are. Cars have been bloodthirsty for a century, but mob justice has a longer pedigree.

The net net? Hold cars to account. When they show attitude, smack them across the wipers. Don't take no guff. It's the only way automobiles learn.
posted by Construction Concern at 5:22 PM on July 31, 2017 [7 favorites]


As the most dangerous it is on their hoods to be most careful.

I've often wondered how different driving would be if punative liability were placed entirely on the driver, so that hitting a pedestrian or running into another vehicle came with mandatory jail time like the worst of the drug laws. I'm not advocating for this, but I think about it while walking and I'd love it if even for just one day drivers had to take the scrupulous care that pedestrians and bicyclists have to take every day.

When I'm driving, I'm just as convinced as everyone else that I am a safe and careful driver, though I'm well aware that averages don't work that way.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:36 PM on July 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


"In our neighborhood it would be nice if somehow you could enforce local traffic only guidelines... We don't get a ton of traffic but the people who are speeding are never the ones about to pull into their driveways."

In the McGee household this is done by calling the local councilwoman and asking her to have cops stake out the offending intersection between the Hours Of Frequent Speeding, and then generally they make their quota of speeding tickets for the month in two afternoons, and I get several months of slower drivers.

(And you know what it is? It's school pickup from people who love the neighborhood so much they send their kids to school here (at a private school with strong neighborhood ties) but have such disdain for the people who actually live in the neighborhood that they drive like assholes when school has just let out and the sidewalks and crosswalks are full of children who are their child's classmates. Because God forbid it take them an extra 30 seconds to pick up little Betty.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:48 PM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


Car!

Yes, exactly! You just... play on the street. It doesn't have to be closed?

Is there any evidence it is more dangerous now than it used to be? I sure didn't see any in the article? I guess it could be helpful for busy streets where you'd have to yell CAR! every 30 seconds.
posted by Justinian at 12:11 AM on August 1, 2017


Is there any evidence it is more dangerous now than it used to be?

A lot more traffic, mainly:
Growth in the number of motor vehicles owned, contributing to the greater distances travelled by individuals, along with greater numbers of road haulage and public transport vehicles, have led to an increase in the average daily flow of vehicles on the roads.
Between 1965 and 2008 the average daily traffic flow on all roads in Great Britain rose by 150 per cent to 3,500 vehicles per day
Also children in particular spend much more time travelling in cars and less on foot/bike/etc than they used to 30-odd years ago. And that itself becomes a vicious cycle after a while: 'I can't let my kids walk to school because the traffic's too dangerous, so I'll drive them'.
posted by Catseye at 1:56 AM on August 1, 2017 [2 favorites]


That's comparing to two generations ago though, not the one the article claims. No doubt it looks different compared to the 60s/70s, but compared to the 90s?
posted by Dysk at 2:53 AM on August 1, 2017


Dysk: That's comparing to two generations ago though, not the one the article claims. No doubt it looks different compared to the 60s/70s, but compared to the 90s?

Yeah I know the standard measure of a generation is 30-odd years, but I grew up in the 70's and my kids are growing up in the now's, so thats an actual generation's difference.
posted by grubby at 5:53 AM on August 1, 2017


Also: yes it does look different to even the 80s/90s when I was a child. Motor vehicle traffic has continually increased over the past 50 years at least. And if you're a child stats like this one (from the report I linked) are particularly relevant:
Between 1989–91 and 2008, the proportion of children in Great Britain of primary school age travelling to school by car rose steadily, from 27 per cent to 43 per cent.
posted by Catseye at 6:28 AM on August 1, 2017 [3 favorites]


And yet from the national travel survey 2015

Around two thirds of trips are made by
car, either as a driver or passenger.
Since the mid-2000s, most of the fall
in trips has been due to fewer car trips,
despite the proportion of households
with car access remaining broadly
unchanged. Over this period, average
distance travelled by car per person has
also fallen; this is explained largely by
the fall in trips, with average trip length
by car remaining fairly stable.

posted by 92_elements at 11:10 AM on August 1, 2017


« Older No one knows what Maspeth is   |   Christmas approaches Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments