9 ms·

Los Angeles Tests the Power of ‘Play Streets’

87 points by artsandsci 8y ago

elcapitan 8y ago
I come from a small town in Germany, and in those towns it was very popular to build those kinds of streets in the 80s and 90s (I think, probably still is). It was definitely nice not to have heavy traffic around. But the images in the article made me laugh. None of that stuff they show ever happened around where I lived. We kids played in the back yards and in the gardens, but not on the street.
- k__ 8y ago
  I come from a small german town too. In times of the skateboard hype, we certainly played on the street, mostly because you could ride it down, hehe.
- fnordian_slip 8y ago
  Of course this is all anecdotal, but in my small German town in the 90s we did play soccer on the streets. Well, we also played in the backyards and gardens, but soccer generally played in the streets where I come from. It was a town of less than 3000 inhabitants of course, and we would clear the street about every 10 minutes when a car would come through. I recently went back to visit my parents, and had to drive very slowly because a couple of children were playing on the streets in a neighboring village, so I guess it hasn't died out yet.
21 8y ago
When I was a little kid in Eastern Europe we played in the street, footbal, catch, other games. Cars were pretty rare, one every 5 minutes, we would collectively pay attention and just yell "car" when one was coming and get on the sidewalks. There was no adult supervision, just us 5-10 year olds. Of course, if that kind of thing would happen today some parents would probably go to prison.
- monomyth 8y ago
  >some parents would probably go to prison Not in Eastern Europe
  - dustincoates 8y ago
    I hesitate to think it would in the US, either. For all of the concerns of "in my day this, but today, that," the ultimate goal of child services is the welfare of the child, and no one's going to think that locking a parent up for their children playing in a residential street is what's best for the kid.
    - francisofascii 8y ago
      The Meitiv family near DC gained some notoriety for allowing their kids to walk to the park by themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitiv_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitiv_incidents
      - newnewpdro 8y ago
        That this attracted police attention and became news of this magnitude is depressing.
      - gowld 8y ago
        ...which is not on the residential street with any responsible adults available.
      - cat199 8y ago
        This story is even more ridiculous since in the metro DC area (inc Silver Spring), public buses are pretty much the schoolbuses and it is an everyday thing to see groups of kids ~5y and up taking public transit all across town for school...
    - bluGill 8y ago
      They won't think that, but the problem is they have to enforce laws as written which often don't have exceptions. And those who have to enforce the law have much more to lose by applying judgement than following the rules as written. Zero tolerance policies make it worse because they eliminate all judgement.
Clanan 8y ago
Playborhood, by Mike Lanza, describes a related endeavor to transform one's yard into an inviting area for neighborhood kids. My wife and I have been discussing this quite a lot lately. How do we bring back neighborhood play so kids can get outside, meet each other, and just be kids?
- 0x4f3759df 8y ago
  Growing up in the suburbs my experience was there were very few children my age near me. Seems counter-intuitive since people move to the suburbs to have children, but I wasn't in a dense enough area apparently.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    Kids need kids their age. 3 years is a big enough difference until you are close to an adult. Between those who don't have kids yet, those who's kids are already grown, and those who kids are the wrong age because families are so small there just are not a lot of kids in the neighborhood anymore.
  - losteric 8y ago
    Imagine a forest with only young trees - that only happens if they all die young, or if the forest is growing back after a forest fire/clear-cutting. Similarly, the suburban "dream" is only realistic in new (empty) developments where families can move in and cluster together. "Dream" is just doublespeak here... it's post-WW2 lifestyle advertising. They were convincing people to buy cheap remote land at a steep markup by putting a house on top.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  That sounds fantastic, unfortunately I'd worry about the financial liability. Even using age appropriate play equipment and a soft-fall surface, you'd likely still wind up getting sued if a kid broke an arm or worse. Some quick Googling suggests you'd need to have the playground owned by an LLC and get it "commercial business insurance" specifically commercial playground insurance. The problem with that is that you likely aren't zoned for commercial, so running a "commercial" (even free) playground from a residential property is unlawful. And you can put up an "at your own risk" sign but given attractive nuisance doctrine it likely wouldn't protect you from full liability. Then on top of that, if the playground was too popular, or some of the kids caused issues near by neighbours likely would complain. I know I sound like a complete grinch. I think it is a fantastic idea. Just the more I consider it, the more issues and expenses crop up.
readams 8y ago
There's a bit of a trend lately around destroying transportation infrastructure to achieve vague goals. What is wrong with playing in parks?
- adlaigordon 8y ago
  They got paved over to build a highway. Or in lots of places, were never built at all, or are too far away. So much infrastructure over the last half century is built for cars, not people. The trend you've identified is people realizing this situation and reclaiming some of the space for people instead of just cars.
  - ovao 8y ago
    I live in Los Angeles. There are three (what I would call "average-sized") parks within 1.5 miles of the street mentioned in the article, as well as two smaller parks. At least one of them just underwent major renovation over the past six months. I couldn't say whether public parks in Los Angeles are going away in general. I'd say "likely". But I think this article somewhat incorrectly frames how dire the situation is with respect to public parks in L.A..
    - CalRobert 8y ago
      Would you let your 8 year old kid walk 1.5 miles to the park, on their own, in LA?
      - ovao 8y ago
        No, I wouldn’t. I’m merely suggesting that the author is mischaracterizing the public park situation around Fickett St., and not suggesting that kids in Boyle Heights walk 1.5 miles to their local park.
- neuronexmachina 8y ago
  How is sectioning off a street for a single day "destroying transportation infrastructure"? This doesn't seem that different from when roads are sectioned off for farmer's markets or parades.
dholness2 8y ago
Golfers need their green, sorry kids. lol
advisedwang 8y ago
http://archive.is/7W4Hj http://archive.is/7W4Hj
11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
In the 60s/70s, we used to have a 'Block Party'. We'd pass the hat to pay for a permit and block off both ends of the street for a few hours on a Saturday. Set up picnic tables, play games, pot luck, talk politics and religion and basically call time out on our otherwise busy or boring lives.
- closeparen 8y ago
  The suburb I grew up in still has several of these every summer.
- nealdt 8y ago
  There was a movement in the UK that did exactly this (reclaim the streets, I think). They got infiltrated by the police!!
eigen-vector 8y ago
It seems to me that the way cities are laid out makes all the difference. If you have residential streets which do not see much traffic throughout the day, you don't need designated play streets. Any good old street with a threshold number of kids living on would automatically transform into one. Necessity drives invention and all that. I've lived and visited several parts of the US, Europe, and India. The major difference seems to be the wide spectrum of city layouts. India—where I grew up—for instance, has a lot of residential streets with houses and apartments. There are also what are traffic streets which act as veins coming out of wider state and national freeways. These intermediate streets take in most traffic which frees up the residential streets and lets the kids play all day/all evening. Big cities in Europe and the US seems to lack this spectrum of traffic streets which results in residential streets themselves seeing a lot of cars and buses plying across. It also perhaps depends on the sports and games culture of the geographical location. For instance, in India cricket is huge. It requires very little space to play a custom game of cricket with rules amended/modified to suit the turf you're playing it on. Same with soccer in a lot of European and South American cities. I don't know how friendly baseball or American football is to the streets.
- dionidium 8y ago
  > I don't know how friendly baseball or American football is to the streets. I grew up playing both in the street in the small American town I'm from. It was quite common in the 80s.
FrozenVoid 8y ago
Perhaps the problem isn't the lack of such streets, but lack of free spaces such as parks, due to density of development and high land use?

87 points by artsandsci 8y ago

I come from a small town in Germany, and in those towns it was very popular to build those kinds of streets in the 80s and 90s (I think, probably still is). It was definitely nice not to have heavy traffic around. But the images in the article made me laugh. None of that stuff they show ever happened around where I lived. We kids played in the back yards and in the gardens, but not on the street.

k__ 8y ago
I come from a small german town too. In times of the skateboard hype, we certainly played on the street, mostly because you could ride it down, hehe.
fnordian_slip 8y ago
Of course this is all anecdotal, but in my small German town in the 90s we did play soccer on the streets. Well, we also played in the backyards and gardens, but soccer generally played in the streets where I come from. It was a town of less than 3000 inhabitants of course, and we would clear the street about every 10 minutes when a car would come through. I recently went back to visit my parents, and had to drive very slowly because a couple of children were playing on the streets in a neighboring village, so I guess it hasn't died out yet.

21 8y ago

When I was a little kid in Eastern Europe we played in the street, footbal, catch, other games. Cars were pretty rare, one every 5 minutes, we would collectively pay attention and just yell "car" when one was coming and get on the sidewalks. There was no adult supervision, just us 5-10 year olds. Of course, if that kind of thing would happen today some parents would probably go to prison.

monomyth 8y ago
>some parents would probably go to prison Not in Eastern Europe
- dustincoates 8y ago
  I hesitate to think it would in the US, either. For all of the concerns of "in my day this, but today, that," the ultimate goal of child services is the welfare of the child, and no one's going to think that locking a parent up for their children playing in a residential street is what's best for the kid.
  - francisofascii 8y ago
    The Meitiv family near DC gained some notoriety for allowing their kids to walk to the park by themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitiv_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitiv_incidents
    - newnewpdro 8y ago
      That this attracted police attention and became news of this magnitude is depressing.
    - gowld 8y ago
      ...which is not on the residential street with any responsible adults available.
    - cat199 8y ago
      This story is even more ridiculous since in the metro DC area (inc Silver Spring), public buses are pretty much the schoolbuses and it is an everyday thing to see groups of kids ~5y and up taking public transit all across town for school...
  - bluGill 8y ago
    They won't think that, but the problem is they have to enforce laws as written which often don't have exceptions. And those who have to enforce the law have much more to lose by applying judgement than following the rules as written. Zero tolerance policies make it worse because they eliminate all judgement.

Clanan 8y ago

Playborhood, by Mike Lanza, describes a related endeavor to transform one's yard into an inviting area for neighborhood kids. My wife and I have been discussing this quite a lot lately. How do we bring back neighborhood play so kids can get outside, meet each other, and just be kids?

0x4f3759df 8y ago
Growing up in the suburbs my experience was there were very few children my age near me. Seems counter-intuitive since people move to the suburbs to have children, but I wasn't in a dense enough area apparently.
- bluGill 8y ago
  Kids need kids their age. 3 years is a big enough difference until you are close to an adult. Between those who don't have kids yet, those who's kids are already grown, and those who kids are the wrong age because families are so small there just are not a lot of kids in the neighborhood anymore.
- losteric 8y ago
  Imagine a forest with only young trees - that only happens if they all die young, or if the forest is growing back after a forest fire/clear-cutting. Similarly, the suburban "dream" is only realistic in new (empty) developments where families can move in and cluster together. "Dream" is just doublespeak here... it's post-WW2 lifestyle advertising. They were convincing people to buy cheap remote land at a steep markup by putting a house on top.
Someone1234 8y ago
That sounds fantastic, unfortunately I'd worry about the financial liability. Even using age appropriate play equipment and a soft-fall surface, you'd likely still wind up getting sued if a kid broke an arm or worse. Some quick Googling suggests you'd need to have the playground owned by an LLC and get it "commercial business insurance" specifically commercial playground insurance. The problem with that is that you likely aren't zoned for commercial, so running a "commercial" (even free) playground from a residential property is unlawful. And you can put up an "at your own risk" sign but given attractive nuisance doctrine it likely wouldn't protect you from full liability. Then on top of that, if the playground was too popular, or some of the kids caused issues near by neighbours likely would complain. I know I sound like a complete grinch. I think it is a fantastic idea. Just the more I consider it, the more issues and expenses crop up.

readams 8y ago

There's a bit of a trend lately around destroying transportation infrastructure to achieve vague goals. What is wrong with playing in parks?

adlaigordon 8y ago
They got paved over to build a highway. Or in lots of places, were never built at all, or are too far away. So much infrastructure over the last half century is built for cars, not people. The trend you've identified is people realizing this situation and reclaiming some of the space for people instead of just cars.
- ovao 8y ago
  I live in Los Angeles. There are three (what I would call "average-sized") parks within 1.5 miles of the street mentioned in the article, as well as two smaller parks. At least one of them just underwent major renovation over the past six months. I couldn't say whether public parks in Los Angeles are going away in general. I'd say "likely". But I think this article somewhat incorrectly frames how dire the situation is with respect to public parks in L.A..
  - CalRobert 8y ago
    Would you let your 8 year old kid walk 1.5 miles to the park, on their own, in LA?
    - ovao 8y ago
      No, I wouldn’t. I’m merely suggesting that the author is mischaracterizing the public park situation around Fickett St., and not suggesting that kids in Boyle Heights walk 1.5 miles to their local park.
neuronexmachina 8y ago
How is sectioning off a street for a single day "destroying transportation infrastructure"? This doesn't seem that different from when roads are sectioned off for farmer's markets or parades.

dholness2 8y ago

Golfers need their green, sorry kids. lol

advisedwang 8y ago

http://archive.is/7W4Hj http://archive.is/7W4Hj

11thEarlOfMar 8y ago

In the 60s/70s, we used to have a 'Block Party'. We'd pass the hat to pay for a permit and block off both ends of the street for a few hours on a Saturday. Set up picnic tables, play games, pot luck, talk politics and religion and basically call time out on our otherwise busy or boring lives.

closeparen 8y ago
The suburb I grew up in still has several of these every summer.
nealdt 8y ago
There was a movement in the UK that did exactly this (reclaim the streets, I think). They got infiltrated by the police!!

eigen-vector 8y ago

It seems to me that the way cities are laid out makes all the difference. If you have residential streets which do not see much traffic throughout the day, you don't need designated play streets. Any good old street with a threshold number of kids living on would automatically transform into one. Necessity drives invention and all that. I've lived and visited several parts of the US, Europe, and India. The major difference seems to be the wide spectrum of city layouts. India—where I grew up—for instance, has a lot of residential streets with houses and apartments. There are also what are traffic streets which act as veins coming out of wider state and national freeways. These intermediate streets take in most traffic which frees up the residential streets and lets the kids play all day/all evening. Big cities in Europe and the US seems to lack this spectrum of traffic streets which results in residential streets themselves seeing a lot of cars and buses plying across. It also perhaps depends on the sports and games culture of the geographical location. For instance, in India cricket is huge. It requires very little space to play a custom game of cricket with rules amended/modified to suit the turf you're playing it on. Same with soccer in a lot of European and South American cities. I don't know how friendly baseball or American football is to the streets.

dionidium 8y ago
> I don't know how friendly baseball or American football is to the streets. I grew up playing both in the street in the small American town I'm from. It was quite common in the 80s.

FrozenVoid 8y ago

Perhaps the problem isn't the lack of such streets, but lack of free spaces such as parks, due to density of development and high land use?