Mar16

in the streets.

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A world built for cars has made life much harder for grown-ups, Stephanie H. Murray wrote in 2024. https://theatln.tc/XVjVdlji
In 2009, two mothers in Bristol, England, experimented with closing part of a neighborhood road to traffic for two hours after school. “The experiment also produced some unexpected results,” Murray writes. “As children poured into the street, some ran into classmates, only just then realizing that they were neighbors … That session, and the many more it prompted, also became the means by which adult residents got to know one another.” As the experiment has expanded, “neighborhoods across the country have discovered that allowing kids to play out in the open has helped residents reclaim something they didn’t know they were missing: the ability to connect with the people living closest to them.”
Roads were once areas of community and play. “Only when cars hit the streets in larger numbers did things begin to change,” Murray writes, as “deliberate efforts within the auto industry shifted the blame for traffic deaths to children and their parents.” Streets became a place for children to cross only when cars were absent, and speed limits subsequently rose.
Play streets can now be found sporadically in urban centers. Play streets help bind communities, because adults must work together to enact the logistics of shutting the roads down. But it could also have something to do with the way children’s play alters the feel of the street, giving adults permission to engage in the sort of socializing “we’ve otherwise policed out,” one expert told Murray; kids function, he pointed out, as a sort of “connective tissue for adults.”
“Children’s tendency to violate social boundaries—to stare a little too long, ask someone an overly forward question, or wander into someone else’s yard—can nudge adults to reach across those boundaries too,” Murray continues at the link in our bio. “It probably isn’t a coincidence that playgrounds are one of the few places in America where striking up a conversation with a stranger is considered socially acceptable … By siloing play there, we may have inadvertently undercut children’s capacity to bind us to one another.”
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:Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: Giuseppe Ramos / Getty

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27 responses »

  1. oh yes, we ‘sort of’ have a playstreet where we live; it’s a dead-end tiny bit of road, but with access to a large underground parking and rental and visitor parking. BUT we all know to drive super slow, because there are kids playing everywhere, but also cats carelessly crossing and toys, trottinets, strollers, and clothes might lie here or there…. In Zurich we have (had?) bits of playground-streets, closed to traffic – and it’s a wonderful thing. It’s very dear to us because there are far too few places where kids can be kids and many an opportunity to have a chat with an unknown neighbour ensues.

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  3. Wow, I never thought of it that way. I have been lamenting the absence of kids playing in the streets, and bemoaning the fact that we’re making a socially awkward generation. Hadn’t realized it’s also making socially awkward adults.
    This is a very good share, Beth.

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  11. I have always lived in suburban areas with front yards. No need to play in the street. We did occasionally have block parties where, with city permission, we could block off the street for a day and gather there for a party.

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  12. I recently reunited with a childhood friend and neighbour – after 33 years of living down the hall from each other in the same apartment building am going to grades 5 and 6 together. This was one of the things we spoke about – how different our childhoods were and how lucky we were that we grew up in a time when kids plays outside all day, unattended, and came home for dinner and then out again until dark. Streets were for cops and robbers games and street hockey and chase. No screens. No crime. No harm. No worry or paranoia. A different time. How I wish T could grow up in a similar time.

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  13. This is such an interesting read. Growing up on a farm, my playmates were my siblings and we had free roam of the land from grove of trees to our massive yard. Only at school or when we visited extended family did we have playmates. So much has changed. It’s a different time. But, yes, we have lost much due to, I think, overly-scheduled lives filled with activities. Kids need time to free-play and that seems to be lacking. Just my opinion.

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