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What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars
- raldi 8y agoMeanwhile, whenever the subject comes up in San Francisco, everyone trots out the excuse that "families with children need the city to be car-friendly". (I've never met a kid who didn't love riding buses and trains.)
- electric_muse 8y agoI had a university professor in the transportation department (technically “Operations Research”) who used to joke that transportation policy was mainly receptive to emotional arguments about children. “We should increase investment in autonomous vehicles. But, oh! The children!” He would cry out in class, making all the students chuckle. I thought he was joking! Reading through the article and the comments, I think he may not have been joking, but merely wryly cynical after many years of trying to research and advocate.
- bytematic 8y agoOne of my favorite streets in Madison, WI is no car traffic. Really great for business, getting across town, and general atmosphere.
- justtopost 8y agoNothing happens if you keep them inside feeding their tiktok and fortnite addictions. I can't even recall the last time I broke up a hockey or streetball game driving through neighborhoods.
- closeparen 8y agoEven if the kids wanted to, letting them play in the street would be unthinkable to contemporary parents. Trusting drivers to pay attention would be foolish.
- PavlovsCat 8y agoThe context is streets without cars any cars at all though. Even in areas where there's a car occasionally, as kids we watched out for cars, not the other way around. We never assumed a car would brake for us. I'm sure it happens, but from my memories, not even the most reckless kids did that. And we did some shit, let me tell you :D
- krylon 8y agoIn Germany, we have "Verkehrsberuhigte Zonen"[0] (Wikipedia says the english term is "living street"), where the speed limit is very low, and drivers are expected to look out for playing children. It works relatively well, at least in residential areas. Usually such streets are built in such a way you cannot go very fast any way. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsberuhigter_Bereich https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsberuhigter_Bereich / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_street
- mcv 8y agoThey're called "woonerf" in Netherland. Cars drive at walking pace, and pedestrians, particularly playing kids, always have right of way.
- alistairSH 8y agoThe US doesn’t have anything similar, at least not normally. Roads are almost always wider than needed, I assume because it feels safer, but really just makes people drive faster. Any redesign that deprioritizes cars in any way (even if it just appears to do so) is ridiculed and fought against.
- Qwertystop 8y agoA large reason kids play Fortnite is because it provides a space to socialize - it's a lot harder for kids to get anywhere without a parent driving, these days, and the parents are a lot less likely to leave the kids unattended, which tends to put a damper on things. Even malls often try to discourage crowds of teens, if you can even get there without a drive.
- ndnxhs 8y agoVery much true. I ended up playing games I didn't even like just because it was a way to meet up with friends from school who all lived about 15 - 30km away
- Nasrudith 8y agoReminds me of Christiana Mall in New Jersey's "Suicide by Ageism". They implemented a policy banning unaccompanied teenagers after 5pm - despite having 16 year olds working there! Articles in 2008 mention the boycott and the owner of the mall went bankrupt in 2009. Malls weren't their healthiest then and had grown beyond sustainability but talk about fast turn-around.
- justtopost 8y agoIf you think fortnite is healthy socializing, i cant argue. I do not agree in the slightest.
- TulliusCicero 8y agoThat's very obviously not what they were saying. You sound like you're stuck on a point you want to make about "damn kids playing Fortnite" and not bothering to listen.
- zepearl 8y ago> I can't even recall the last time I broke up a hockey or streetball game driving through neighborhoods. Because you weren't driving through such a "pedestrianized zone" :)
- ndnxhs 8y agoYou have never been on a street that would support a hockey game. Such a street would not allow you to drive on it. There were hardly any kids outside in my suburb and then the council built a small dirt jumps park and the day it opens there is a swarm of 40 - 50 people using it. People won't use something until it exists for them to use it.
- justtopost 8y agoI grew up playing hockey in the street, but please, presume more about me.
- ndnxhs 8y agoI grew up playing hockey on the school team and I would never even try playing on the street. Angry bogans would get road rage if someone got in their way and everyone I know is 10km+ away.
- RaceWon 8y agoKids play hockey on the street I live on, basketball too. When I had the GTI I'd try to park it in such a way as to shield it a bit in my driveway. I'd however Never say anything to them... when I was their age we played Hardball in the street.
- throwawaysea 8y agoYou can also have more parks and fields that are well-maintained and available in proportions appropriate to the local population (i.e. not held at existing supply through density changes). It is a false dichotomy to suggest we have to choose between kids playing outside and having streets for transportation. Not to mention that anyone who grew up pre-Internet or pre-smartphones knows that the real barriers to kids playing outside are more cultural/societal.
- onychomys 8y agoThe cultural problems are definitely the more problematic ones. My kids run around the neighborhood, but they do so nearly alone, because nobody else's kids are allowed the same freedom. I'm hoping that once the other parents see that my kids haven't been killed by a roving serial killer then they'll let their kids come out too, but there's not much I can do beyond that.
- glangdale 8y agoI think the ability to get to the parks and fields without parental intervention is important in itself. I live in a neighborhood in Sydney where many of our streets are traffic sewers that people blast through at amazing (relatively speaking) speeds. As a large, visible adult, I walk the dog every day and 1-2 times out of 10 some idiot on a street 50m from my house doesn't know what the rules on a crosswalk are. People love to go on tirades about helicopter parents but given the quality of driving (also something that seems to have taken a hit from "Internet and smartphones") they haven't spent too much time thinking about the implications of what it's like to be an impulsive kid who will be mostly invisible stepping out behind a car, in a world where a lot of drivers are impatient and distracted. There's a huge change in the vibe of having older kids (who can, despite the roads, go out and freely interact with their peers) and younger kids who aren't sensible enough to deal with the streets (and yes, this isn't just paranoia, we had a couple bad incidents in the peer group). It's not an either/or with the Internet/smartphones, either. I think there's a lot of interaction between these factors ("kids go out less because games/internet are so compelling" vs "kids spend long hours on devices because they are stuck at home") in both directions.
- rememberbitcoin 8y agoI feel really bad for the children who seem to grow up in the backseat of some monstrous luxury SUV. I can't imagine it leads to the best types of citizens.
- kingo55 8y agoI live in St Kilda, Australia and our council recently changed one of our iconic streets to almost exclusively be for pedestrians and trams. Businesses protested for months about potential lost business, however as a resident I feel so much safer walking down the street. It feels like foot traffic has increased there, too. It's such an improvement. I also like to think tunnels to apartment buildings could help us take more cars of the road and create more green spaces for people in the future.
- whatshisface 8y ago>Businesses protested for months about potential lost business Out of curiosity, how did that pan out? Closing off an area to road traffic is basically a re-prioritization towards nearby residents, and away from distant visitors and the commerce that they engage in, so it would be interesting to know how badly the latter groups suffer.
- kingo55 8y agoHard to say, I think businesses haven't been affected too badly. I've seen some closures but there were closures back when vehicles were permitted all the way through the street, too... Distant visitors still arrive by tram loads. And parking, whilst terrible, is available close by. When you think about switching the area back to allow cars again, you begin to realise how little you needed that street to begin with. It was mostly for people showing off their cars and loud music.
- noobermin 8y ago>It was mostly for people showing off their cars and loud music. While it's seems like a shoddy observation, it's surprising how much car usage isn't really about transport but about status or psychological relief. "Going for a drive" is equivalent to "going for a walk" in much of the US.
- dylan604 8y agoI would imagine having parking structures/places to accommodate those from out of the area to still be able to drive there, park, and then proceed on foot.
- baxtr 8y agoI don’t get why cities are built around cars. As much as I love to jump into my car right outside my house, I’d love it even more when there was no car sound in the streets and children could safely walk everywhere. In densely populated cities cars should be banned outside of major roads
- whatshisface 8y agoBuilding a city around cars means building it around people who live far away. The people who live out in the suburbs and commute in get a lot more out of the roads than the people who are a block away from every place they need to go.
- Touche 8y agoAka, the superwealthy.
- whatshisface 8y agoI don't see how living in the suburbs makes you super-wealthy. In most American cities that I know of, the very poor live in the city, the middle class lives in the suburbs, and the very rich live in top-floor penthouses and wherever else they want. Roads, cars and long commutes are very much a middle-class thing, because the poor can't afford all the driving and the rich can buy a great house in the middle of the city where it would be the most expensive.
- Touche 8y agoI got a lot of downvotes and it's because I didn't direct my comment well enough, this is who I was referring to as the superwealthy: > people who are a block away from every place they need to go. I don't know of any city in the U.S. where a middle class person can live within walking distance of everything that they need. Take a look at the most urban cities in the U.S., San Francisco, New York, Boston. You're not living in a walkable place in those cities unless you have a title that includes "executive" or "vice" in it. The closest is probably Chicago.
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoYeah, they're doing this plan to Evansville, IN. And it's one hell of a job. They've killed downtown, since there's no 'outer areas' to park. Sidewalks are in complete disarray, and cars still zoom on past. But the center areas where there are no cars also is set up for no people to move about. The road ledges are still there, so handicapped people cant just use their wheelchairs. It's the worst of both worlds.
- glangdale 8y agoIt's possible to do this well and badly. Bad iterations of this feel like urban renewal - like those horrifying stunts they pulled in the 70s where they closed half the streets in a given area, put huge ring roads around the area, and then wondered why a urban paradise didn't spontaneously spring into being. It needs to be done along with public transit (usually the missing link it the US and Australia) and a reasonable attitude to deliveries and whatever parking needs remain.
- erklik 8y ago> Australia As an anecdote, close to where I live is a suburb called Wellard. They basically have a small shopping district (One Woolies, Subway, Pizza shop, Cafe, Postie etc) right next to the train station. In fact, walking out of the train station, you're bound to walk through the shopping area as that's sort of the way people walk to get to their houses. Its kinda perfect position. What they did was to simply make it that street between the shops is closed to cars on the weekends. Its an amazing place during that time, and allow people to set up stalls in the parking lots around the road. Its an awesome place to just sit and talk on a weekend. The parking is behind the shops so its not like one can't get there on a car either. The speed on the road during normal days is also something like 20-30km/hr and they have that brick-like road which means driving your car fast on the road isn't that fun.
- Gibbon1 8y agoThis reminds me of a dead end alley in San Francisco where the residents got the city to allow them to install a gate. Suddenly you can allow your four year old to go out the front door by themself.
- b3b0p 8y agoI live downtown Minneapolis and live near Nicollet Mall [0]. Which only allows pedestrians and busses. It's quite nice. They put out chairs for people to sit on and at times have things like a connect four and corn hole games. There is a regular farmers market that happens also. I love how safe it feels. It's almost like a giant side walk. I'm always surprised that the chairs don't get stolen. I walk down it multiple times a day usually (unless I take the Skyway because of weather). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicollet_Mall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicollet_Mall
- unclesams-uncle 8y agoIn Amsterdam, the corn hole games are limited to a few car-free streets directly outside of the main train station.
- Markoff 8y agothis would be great, cars are the only reason why i would be afraid to let my child go by himself to kindergarten/school
- ashton314 8y agoI lived in Germany for two years without a car. The public transportation there was amazing—I learned to appreciate how little I needed a car, provided the infrastructure was good enough/I had a bike. In many cities there's a "Fußgängerzone": pedestrian-only areas; these were mostly found in the city center where the streets and shops are too dense to allow much traffic. I remember specifically in Frankfurt am Main and Göttingen that the biggest shopping centers were located within this zone. Didn't seem to be hurting their business. The Fußgängerzonen seemed alive, much more so than sterile car-optimized streets.
- mcv 8y agoMany Dutch cities also have car-free pedestrian areas in their city centers. And it's not just that the biggest shopping centers happen to be there, it is exactly the busy shopping areas that are made car-free, so people can shop there in peace. There's usually a ring of car parking lots around the center, as well as on the edge of the town, so people can leave their car early and cheaply while continuing their trip to the center using public transport.
- codetrotter 8y ago> Fußgängerzone We have these in Norway as well. Here they are called “gågate” (“walking street”), but what I actually wanted to say was that I think it’s interesting how similar some words are. The German word for pedestrian, “fußgänger”, is very similar to what it’s called in Norwegian, which is “fotgjenger”. You’ll hear how similar they are if you know how to pronounce these words in both German and Norwegian. If you don’t you might see the visual similarity but not realize just how similar they sound as well. And in both cases the word is composed of the word for “foot” (fuß / fot) and a word derived from “walk”.
- wenderen 8y agoThey're both Germanic languages! Learning Norwegian definitely helped me brush up on my German for free - at least, reading and to a lesser extent speaking.
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- thomasfl 8y agoAccording to Richard Branson “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” The same goes for cities. Take care of the citizens, and the citizens will take care of business. Removing parking may be bad for local shops in the short run, but good for the citizens and the city in the long run.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThat's only true in some instances for some combination of high margin, not easily reproducible, or low volume products that serve wealthy purchasers. The reason Walmart killed everyone was because purchasers valued saving a few dollars rather than being taken care of by employees. Similarly with airlines, which Branson wasn’t really able to expand beyond the wealthy NYC-LA-SF routes.
- electric_muse 8y agoAnother reason Walmart killed it was because they offered more convenience at a lower cost. That’s what people choose. It’s also why people choose vehicles over public transit: point-to-point convenience for comparable prices to stringing together public transit and car services to get around.
- dba7dba 8y agoFew years ago I visited a large apartment complex about 30 minutes south of Seoul in South Korea. The complex has Dozens of 30+ stories high apartment buildings. Assuming 30 stories high, 8 units per floor, and 25 buildings, we are talking about 6000 units. The unit I visited had 4 bedrooms. Despite such a high concentration of population, the complex itself felt like it was in the country side. The key factor was underground parking (resident and visitor), with entrance to the underground parking connecting directly with the road. Within the complex are streets for cars with sidewalks like normal street, but strictly for emergency vehicles and moving trucks. As I walked around the complex day and night, I couldn't believe the peace and calm I sensed as there were no cars moving around me. I kept looking around as I crossed the street as a reflex, but there were no cars to worry about.
- jniedrauer 8y agoA few weeks ago, I looked at a large number of cities and their surrounding suburbs using google earth in VR. It was extremely interesting to see the different styles of building cities. Soviet bloc countries really built their infrastructure with brutal efficiency in mind. Huge populations in tall, mathematical buildings with lots of open space between them. Almost like someone copy-pasted a few buildings into the middle of the wilderness. To me it looks like the new infrastructure in countries like South Korea or Japan is an evolution of that, although the buildings look a lot less foreboding than Soviet buildings do. In between them you still get the sense that you're out in the country. It's deceptive because once you fly up (in VR), you can see a sea of buildings going all the way to the horizon. Compared to the population centers of American cities, which look like irregularly shaped sand dunes made out of shingles as far as the eye can see. Suburbs in the UK are similar to the American ones, except that the houses are all very neatly aligned on a grid with less space between them and the streets are often one way streets with parking on the curb. Suburbs in Nordic countries are made of small, taller houses. Each floor looks only big enough for 1 or 2 rooms, but the houses are 2-4 stories tall. It looks really cozy. If you have the hardware and a few hours to kill, I strongly recommend trying this. Tokyo is just jaw dropping. It's on an unimaginable scale compared to other cities around the world.
- TylerE 8y agoThis stream of "cars are the devil" articles from citylab is growing rather monotonous.
- ummonk 8y agoThis is unexpected but great! Here in the Bay Area suburbs, cul-de-sacs seem to be always be deserted, which is so unlike what it was when I was growing up. Kids seem to be almost exclusively interacting indoors / online.
- labster 8y agoOf course, this could never happen in the United States. A friend of mine, a single mother, was arrested and charged for letting her kids play without an adult present in the park across the street from her apartment. There are lots of scary people with guns out there, you see. If only it was possible to do something about that.
- mcv 8y agoI've heard more stories about kids in the US not being allowed to play outside. Of all the bizarre stories I read about life in the US, this one is still the most baffling to me.
- njarboe 8y agoWhat I find funny is that the American mall that so many people disparage (like citylab) is a place where the streets are closed to cars. Cars are not really the problem and people should really stop focusing on this object as the reason of so many social problems that exist. The car is used by individual people and families to somewhat mitigate these large scale problems. Lots of cool main streets have cars going through them. It is just the post war, huge road, big-box chain stores that suck. Maybe we need to go back to where a corporation is only allowed to form (get a charter) if it is planning on doing something that takes a lot of people and capital to execute. Like building an airplane, or a car, or a computer chip, not anything like a retail store. Leave that to the sole proprietor. We don't need corporations, and all its inhumanity, to run burger joints.
- ndnxhs 8y agoMalls are hated because they create car dependence. They kill off all local stores and require you to drive for 30 minutes to get to a shop. They also take up massive amounts of space for parking.
- asdff 8y agoAt a given mall, quite a lot of property is devoted to surface lots which go unused from 10pm-10am, not great for a growing urban environment! The problem with cars is how inefficient they are just from the physics of them. A given car is maybe 3000lbs. A person is maybe 150lbs. 95% of the gas you pump into your car goes to just moving around this hunk of metal wherever you go. And then you gotta have an empty 18'x9' spot available wherever you are going? How many 25lb bird scooters can you pile up in that spot? Even self-driving cars aren't going to solve the issues with wasting energy and space for the two tonnes-or-so hunk of metal that you require to deliver you door to door on demand. Try to have a horse pull you around town in a tesla, and it would die.
- ezequiel-garzon 8y agoWhat I find funny is that the American mall that so many people disparage (like citylab) is a place where the streets are closed to cars. First off, there are no streets in a mall. It may be a carless place, with some merits, but clearly that’s where the similarities between malls and downtown Pontevedra end. Malls arose as a natural consequence of a heavy reliance on cars, just as carless downtowns arise when there is no such reliance. Corporations are alive and well in Spain too.
- Theodores 8y agoI don't drive but I am into electric cars. I was in a ICE car over Christmas on a drive across country to see some relatives. We went through a local town that I didn't value much when I was growing up, with 'fresh eyes' I think I could see what the problem was, and it wasn't the car. The pollution is the real problem why people shun the street in front of their door. This pollution being the fumes and the noise. With electric cars there is no reason why we can't get our streets back and for not just kids but for everyone to start to be part of their local community, not just hiding behind doors, curtains closed, putting up with where they live instead of enjoying it. We have 20 mph city speed zones which are great. But when cars are noisy and polluting these streets are far from tranquil. The dirt from automotive isn't just the smog that comes out of exhaust pipes, there is also brake wear and the micro-particles that come from that. We have ended up with cities that are toxic to plant life as a consequence of this. With cars that can float along on electric power we need not close off our streets, we need not even banish traffic jams. Bus transport also needs a bit of work, with electric power they can be the modern transport that people deserve, not these noisy things that vibrate and feel hellish inside. We want the bus to be nice to be on, particularly for those with pushchairs, wheelchairs, kids in tow. Yet we have an old population of people who seem to have a fetish of loud exhausts, V8 engines, turbo engines and this fuddy-duddy idea that electric will never replace these naff petrol and diesel engines. Hopefully these people will die off soon and Chinese electric cars will show Western auto makers how to make a car properly.
- autokad 8y agoas an extensive walker, car fumes are never a problem for me. usually the biggest problems are lack of mixed zoning and really wide streets which leads to very long walking distances.
- aga98mtl 8y agoDiesel car fumes smell bad. It's not an issue in Canada/USA because only bigger trucks use diesel. However, many European cities are full of diesel cars and polluting mopeds.
- ajuc 8y agoMy city (Lublin, Poland - about 350 000 people) is doing something similar (if not on this scale). They introduced long pedestrian street in one of the busiest streets in city center in 90s, it worked pretty well - created lots of restaurants, clubs and shops. In 00s-10s some of them failed (I blame internet shopping and malls in the outskirts), especially the shops, and mostly banks and mobile phone booths replace them. But the restaurants and clubs remain, and the street is very pleasant, always full of people. It helps that Lublin is an university city (about 20% of population are students). Recently the city created some more pedestrian streets, invested into biking infrastructure (lots of bike routes, city-funded bike rental system). It's OK, but the city is on hills so biking is quite demanding, mostly young people do it. Also the public transit is very nice in the city centre, but there are no trams, only trolleybuses and regular buses (because hills). So - public transit waits in traffic jams just like cars. There's one night each summer when they turn big part of the city center into pedestrian area, put artificial grass on many streets, people sunbathe there. It changes the city completely. I know it's not realistic to make it permanent, but it's so nice.
- Annatar 8y agoThere is one major reason why this isn't practical in the United States yet: Europe has a well developed, often tax payer or state subsidised public transport network. Americans don't have that at scale: they must use their cars to go to work, else they cannot work. Solve the problem of public transport first. You can start with tax payers' funding and move on to a purely for-profit, no subsidies model gradually by incremental optimisation.
- ndnxhs 8y agoA lot of Americans I have spoken to have the opinion that public transport is only for homeless people and is always slow and dirty.
- Annatar 8y agoThat is because that is currently the reality. The buses are dirty and with exceptions here and there, mostly poor or the working poor ride them. The system is currently inefficient and focused purely on profit. Since there is usually a monopoly on regional public transit, the reality is exactly what other people told you. I myself rode the intercity bus for a year and half when I was a poor hungry student, although that was several decades ago, but not much has changed since then. Monopoly and lack of public awareness and activism does that. That doesn't mean that the perception cannot be changed, or that the reality cannot be changed. People have to demand it and it will start somewhere. Small steps. Incremental optimisations.
- unclesams-uncle 8y agoBarcelona is an interesting case study. The city is currently re-doing some of the city's grid neighborhoods into superblocks. The concept is that for every 9 blocks, the interior roads get shut to traffic save for emergency and service vehicles. Inside, the previously 3-lane streets get transformed into pedestrian avenues with vegetation, play equipment and benches/tables for the residents. The contrast between traffic-filled streets and urban tranquility couldn't be starker. Then there are neighborhoods like Gracia that largely closed off its streets to traffic. Going there is like escaping to a village within the city. Finally, the city puts a huge effort into building dedicated bike lanes, usually at the expense of a car lane. They're also rolling out a new shared biking system, which will combine electric and traditional bikes in the same system. It helps that the city has mild winters and 300+ days of sunshine a year, but in any case, they're definitely leading the way for large urban areas to give the city back the people.
- twodave 8y agoI wish my city was more livable without a car, but we have more land area than London with 1/4 the population density. The only way to get anywhere is by taking the interstate highways that pass through the middle or else circle around the outside highway. This is Jacksonville, FL. There are some pockets that are walkable and safe, but nothing at scale.
- geebee 8y agoOver here in San Francisco, I find the problem isn't so much cars as curb cuts. "Curb cuts" are those little sections of the curb that are cut out so that cars can drive over the cross walk to get to driveways and garages. https://ggwash.org/view/673/the-san-francisco-way-curb-cuts https://ggwash.org/view/673/the-san-francisco-way-curb-cuts https://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2008-06-01/eye-street https://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2008-06-0...
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