Upway is a website/app for e-bike deals. They help you sell your old bike by giving you an offer and arranging pickup, and they also sell used e-bikes that are “certified pre-owned.”
This is the podcast’s name and the show’s framing: it critiques car dominance in public space and argues for alternatives that improve streets for people. In this episode, that framing is applied to children’s play and mobility.
“Outdoor play and mobility” refers to how children can safely move around and spend time outside—walking, playing, and interacting with friends in their neighborhoods. The segment ties this to street design and policy choices that either enable or restrict kids’ independence.
“Built environment” refers to the physical spaces people live in—like streets, sidewalks, parks, and buildings—and how they’re designed. In the segment, it’s used to connect children’s rights to how communities plan and build places for daily life.
They’re talking about a specific paper with a big idea: look at streets through what children need. The goal is to change how transportation policy is made so kids can play and move around more freely.
A “child lens” is just a way of thinking about streets and transportation from a kid’s point of view. It asks: is it safe and easy for children to get around, or are they being overlooked?
“Streets and transport” is basically how people get around in a city—on foot, by bike, by bus/train, or by car. The discussion is saying that if streets aren’t designed with kids in mind, it can hurt their safety and health.
It means kids should be able to get around and play in their area without feeling unsafe or blocked. When streets are designed better, it’s easier for them to walk or bike and be active every day.
They’re saying that when kids can’t move around freely, it can affect how they feel mentally. Less activity and less independence can contribute to worse mental well-being.
It’s a way of saying that how well kids do in a city shows whether the city is working for people. If kids can’t move safely and freely, it’s a sign the city design needs improvement.
Childhood obesity is a health problem where kids carry too much body fat. The transcript links it to whether kids can be active—something that depends a lot on how safe and walkable their streets are.
This means designing neighborhoods so cars aren’t the main thing taking up space and attention. Instead, streets are made safer and easier for kids to walk, play, and move around. The idea is that when cars are less dominant, kids spend more time outside.
They’re describing neighborhoods designed to make it safer and easier for kids to be active. When streets feel safer, kids can play outside and move around more freely. That leads to healthier routines.
They’re talking about kids who are walking or riding bikes. The point is that cars can be deadly for them, especially when streets aren’t designed for people on foot or bicycles. Safer street design can help prevent those tragedies.
“Motorists” just means drivers. Here, they’re pointing out that crashes involving cars can be deadly for kids walking or biking. It’s part of the argument for safer streets.
Concept
public health movements
Public health movements are big efforts to prevent injuries and save lives. Here, it’s about tackling car-related harm to kids with changes that society can make, not just telling people to be careful.
It means society acts like driving and car traffic are just “how things are,” not something we should question. When that happens, people may ignore the harm cars can cause, even to kids.
They’re saying the harm to kids is treated like an unfortunate side effect of driving, rather than something we should work to prevent. It’s like people accept it because they don’t want to change how society is set up.
Concept
collusion reporting guidelines
These are rules for journalists about how to write stories responsibly. They’re meant to avoid wording that can mislead people or make the situation seem simpler than it is.
It’s a wording journalists sometimes use that makes it sound like the child’s sudden move is the main reason for a crash. Critics say that can unfairly blame kids instead of looking at safer driving and safer street design.
“Collision partner” is a more neutral way researchers talk about who was involved in a crash. Instead of saying someone “caused” it, it focuses on the fact that two things collided.
They’re talking about studying why kids die in traffic, not just one type of crash. The idea is to understand the bigger safety picture—like street design and driving conditions—so prevention can improve.
“Victim blaming” means people act like the person who got hurt did something wrong. In road crashes, that can distract from the real causes, like unsafe driving or dangerous roads.
This is about how people talk about kids who are hurt or killed in traffic. The wording can make it seem like the parents or the child caused the danger, instead of looking at unsafe driving or road problems.
They’re talking about how society decides who is responsible when road crashes happen. The point is that those ideas didn’t just appear on their own—they were influenced by powerful interests.
“Motor age” just means the era when cars became common and started shaping how cities and streets work. The hosts are using it to talk about how car traffic changed safety and laws over time.
“Motordom” is an old-fashioned term for the culture and industry surrounding motor vehicles. In the episode, it’s used to describe how early car-related deaths sparked public backlash and moral outrage.
“Corporate capture” means big companies end up steering the rules instead of the public interest. The hosts are arguing that this affected how car safety issues were handled.
Concept
wicked act and its children
This is a metaphor: the hosts are saying one harmful decision led to other problems over time. They’re emphasizing that the consequences can last for years or even generations.
The hosts mean that when a city is built around cars, people can get hurt in ways beyond just a single crash. They’re talking about how everyday street conditions can make children and other vulnerable people less safe.
They’re describing how people start to believe streets aren’t safe, so kids don’t feel able to go out on their own. That fear changes how families move around.
They’re talking about how some parents feel they have to use a car to keep kids safe. Instead of kids walking around their neighborhood, adults drive them everywhere.
They’re saying that if you don’t have a car, it’s harder for kids to get around on their own. That can keep them from exploring their neighborhood and doing normal everyday things.
They’re talking about kids being able to move around their neighborhood by themselves. If cars dominate the streets or it feels dangerous, kids lose that independence.
Jane Jacobs was a writer who studied how neighborhoods work. She argued that cities succeed when people can interact naturally on streets and in shared public spaces.
That phrase is the title of a famous book by Jane Jacobs. The hosts are using it to talk about how city planning and modern habits can reduce the lively, social street life that neighborhoods need.
It means kids aren’t getting much practice being around other people in public spaces. Instead, they’re often sitting in a car, which limits opportunities to learn independence and social skills the way walking around does.
They’re talking about what life could look like if we didn’t depend on cars so much. The idea is that safer, more walkable neighborhoods can change how people live and how kids grow up.
They’re saying that if you used buses or trains when you were a kid, you’re more likely to want a car-free lifestyle later. Early experience can make it feel normal and doable.
They’re talking about kids being able to bike to get around. If that’s part of your childhood, you may be more comfortable living with less reliance on cars later.
They mean that younger parents may not have the same experience or know-how for letting kids get around without cars. So the ability to do it safely and confidently can fade over time.
They mention a movement called “playing out” that tries to bring back the kind of neighborhood freedom kids used to have. It’s about changing how kids spend time and move around locally.
“Walk and bike” is about making it easy and safe to get around without a car. That often means safer streets for crossing and places for bikes to ride.
Great Nighten is an example neighborhood near Cambridge that the speaker visited. It’s used to show how planning can make it easier and safer for kids and families to get around without relying on cars.
“Child-friendly” means the neighborhood is designed so kids can be safer and more independent. It usually involves making streets less focused on cars so kids can walk and bike more easily.
Pedestrian networks are basically the walking routes in a neighborhood—sidewalks and safe crossings that connect places. The goal is to make it easier for people to walk instead of needing a car.
Concept
system solutions to these system problems
The speaker is saying the problem isn’t just one thing—it’s the whole setup of how streets and neighborhoods are designed and managed. Fixing the system can change how people drive and how safe the streets feel.
Traffic calming means changing roads so cars slow down and don’t dominate the street. It often uses design tricks and signs to make it safer for people walking and playing.
Car storage is the space used for parking and keeping cars. If you take away some of that space, you can use it for people—like sidewalks, play areas, and safer crossings.
Concept
changes in the law
The speaker means rules and policies can be changed to make streets safer and less car-focused. That can include things like speed rules or how cars are allowed to use certain roads.
A “15-minute city” means you can do most things you need without driving far—like getting to school, shops, or parks. It usually relies on safer streets for walking and biking and less car dependence.
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I think the first strategy is to pay more attention to what children and young people
tell us.
And actually on that very particular point, there's been some really robust surveys of
children and young people's views about their lives and about the place of technology in
their lives, where they are telling us that they don't want to be spending ever more time
solely in the digital realm.
They want to be able to see their friends and hang out and play IRL.
So that's, you know, one of the first steps on the road to enlightenment here is to just
listen more to children, to what they're telling us and also what they're showing us through
their actions, both in terms of their lived experience, but also about the kind of neighbourhoods,
the kind of places that they want to be living in.
This is the War on Cars.
I'm Sarah Goodyear.
Today we're going to be talking with some guests who want us to look at our streets in a radically
different way, as a place for children to grow and thrive.
Alice Ferguson is a co-founder of the Playing Out movement, which for nearly two decades
has been challenging community leaders and policymakers in the United Kingdom to imagine
a world where children are free to play out in the streets of their communities with their
friends.
Her work includes research, writing, policy, campaigning, and international speaking around
the topic of children's rights in the built environment.
Tim Gill is a researcher, writer, and independent scholar based in London and a global advocate
for children's outdoor play and mobility.
We had him on the show last fall to talk about his research.
Together they've written a paper called Streets for Play, Streets for Freedom, How a Child
Lens Would Transform Transport Policy.
We'll get to that in a moment, but first we have some quick business to take care of.
If you like what we do here at the War on Cars, please support us on Patreon at patreon.com
slash theWarOnCars pod.
You can also order our new book, Life After Cars, freeing ourselves from the tyranny of
the automobile, wherever books are sold.
Find out more about the book and learn all about our ongoing book tour at lifeaftercars.com.
Alice and Tim, I'm so excited to have you here to talk about this wonderful paper.
Welcome.
Thanks very much for having us, Sarah.
Thanks, Sarah.
Yeah, great to be back.
Let's just start talking about the report itself.
I think what's so really wonderful about it is it's predicated on looking at things through
what you call a child lens.
You call it a radical view in the paper, so maybe you could explain why that's a radical
view, Alice.
Yeah, it shouldn't be a radical view, should it?
Because, you know, children are people and we should be considering their needs alongside
everyone else's.
So we've both been working around this topic for decades.
And what we've seen is that children routinely just get forgotten within thinking about built
environment policy more widely and particularly in thinking about streets and transport.
And what the paper says is that this blind spot around children has actually had a massive
impact on children's lives and health.
And this is what needs to change.
So I suppose it's radical from the point of view of we feel that things need to be completely
turned on their head and children to be prioritized within the thinking and policy around streets.
And you say this is not a technical manual, it's not an implementation guide.
It's really an invitation to think differently, which really resonates for us here at the
War on Cars because that's what we're always trying to do is to kind of just shake people's
preconceptions.
Yeah, I suppose it's a manifesto and it's making the case why we should do this differently
rather than prescribing exactly how we do it.
You start the paper talking about 10 good reasons why we need to change the way we think about
streets and the built environment in terms of children.
And the number one reason is so compelling.
Children's health is in crisis and enabling their everyday mobility and spatial freedom is a
significant part of the solution.
And this is something I think about all the time, the way that we're constraining their
movement with our built environment, that we're setting them up for a lifetime of bad health
outcomes, mental health outcomes.
So maybe you could just speak a little bit to the public health crisis that we're in with
children and how this paper addresses that.
I'm reminded of the quote from Enrique Penalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, who talked about
children being a kind of indicator species for cities.
And I think it's really helpful to take that quite literally, that children are not doing
well, the indicators are not good.
The indicators for their physical health, their levels of physical activity, levels of
childhood obesity, and also mental health, general well-being, almost everywhere around
the world, those measures are all moving in their own direction.
And of course, cars are not the only reason for that.
But we know what a good and healthy childhood looks like.
It's a childhood where children can move freely.
They can find out how their bodies work.
They can develop their movement skills.
They can engage with the people and places around them.
And that the existence and the presence of cars always and everywhere in human
habitats really makes that healthy childhood very difficult.
It's like if you wanted to invent a way to ruin the environments that children are
growing up in, you could hardly do worse than add cars into the mix.
And that's where it comes back to the sort of reframing that we want people to be doing
with this report.
We've lived with cars for so long that we don't see how devastating they are as objects
that we brought into children's lives.
And turning that around, reducing the dominance of the car, creating
neighborhoods where it's easier for children to play outside and to get around.
Those are neighborhoods where children's health outcomes are improved, where
children are happier, they're more active, they're spending more time outdoors,
they're spending less time sitting down, less time on screens.
So this is not an obscure or hard argument to make.
It's like once you see it, you can't unsee it.
And yet there is a gap, I feel, between our expressed care for children
and our felt care for children.
You have some statistics in here that I've read before, but it's still hard to face them.
Worldwide, you write 75,000 child pedestrians and cyclists, age zero to 19,
are killed by motorists each year.
And that can be really hard to take in.
It's almost impossible, isn't it, to conceive?
Exactly, because you think of each one of those children and all of the people
that are devastated by that loss.
It doesn't even include children who are in cars.
But just these pedestrians, that makes it the leading cause of death for
children and adolescents more than from cancer, drowning or malaria.
These are all things that we have big public health movements about to protect children.
And sometimes I think that it's just almost too much for people to realize
that something that they are forced by the structure of our environment to do every day,
which is to drive, that that is such a bad thing for children.
And so maybe you could talk, Alice, a little bit about the gap between how we feel
about protecting children and our ability to actually put that feeling and that
knowledge into action in the real world.
One aspect of it is that the level of child death and injury caused by cars is not
publicized widely.
I mean, it doesn't get the same amount of attention in the media, not even close
to other things that impact children, which is part of this motor normativity.
It's part of society as a whole almost deciding to turn a blind eye to the impact
of cars on our lives.
It's like a conspiracy, almost, to look the other way.
Let's just not give that attention because, you know, what can we do about it?
I think that's that's part of the mentality.
It's like cars are just intrinsic part of life and danger comes with that.
But, you know, almost the child death side of it is seen as collateral damage
to something that is seen as non-negotiable in our lives.
So if there was more media attention on the issue, there would be a bit more
awareness and response and feeling of wanting to do something to change things.
But yeah, I think it's like you said, you know, we're almost trapped all of us
in this system and we don't know how to to get out of it.
But when you talk to people individually, we talk about some individual instances
in the report of children who have lost their lives to traffic danger.
And a mother in the UK, Claire, who lost her daughter, age nine, read the report
for us and fed into it.
And when you hear people's personal stories, it does have an impact and people do respond.
I think something about just looking at numbers, I don't know, allows people to
look the other way and be a bit complacent about it, perhaps.
You talk about the way that the media frames these fatalities and how that's been
changing in some ways for the positive, thanks to the efforts of people like
Laura Laker, who we've had on the show, to talk about, you know,
collusion reporting guidelines that she helped to create to help journalists
not fall into these traps.
But there is so much language.
I always am particularly angered by the phrase, the child darted out into traffic
because, first of all, children are supposed to dart.
That's a developmental type of movement that is part of how they learn
like any other young animal, how to explore the world, how to how to use their
gross motor skills.
Yeah.
And then I think you cite an occasion, the phrase collision partner.
Can you tell me about that particular phrase because that really just jumped out at me.
Well, it jumped out at me when I heard it.
It was in the context of an academic research project that's looking at the causes
of child's road death, not just pedestrian, but all child road death.
Just to explain, when they said collision partner, they were referring to the driver
of a vehicle and a child who was killed by the vehicle.
It's actually quite sickening and I challenged the language and they changed it
and they don't use that phrase now.
But it just highlighted the depth of this kind of victim blaming mentality.
And I think with children, particularly, it does seem to be almost more powerful.
The idea that it's either children who are to blame because they're not predictable.
They don't look properly.
Their brains aren't developed.
They're distracted.
They're chatting to their friends.
They're playing all those things, which are completely
natural, healthy behaviors that what children should be doing and should be able to do.
And so the reporting tends to either focus on that or blame the parents quite often.
And I think that's particularly extreme in the states, actually, isn't it?
Where we've seen parents prosecuted for just simply letting their children
walk somewhere and then the child is killed by a drunk driver.
And yet it's the parents who are blamed for letting their children cross that road.
So we do talk about that in the paper as well, the particular language
that's used around child road victims.
And we also drew heavily on the work of Peter Norton showing how this
way of understanding road danger and in particular the kind of who's to blame
relative responsibilities didn't come out of nowhere.
It didn't naturally evolve or it's not part of the kind of given moral fabric.
It was imposed on society by the motor industry and motor forces
right back at the dawn of the motor age in the 1920s.
All of the key questions that we're talking about right now about
what's the job of drivers?
What's the job of people who are outside of cars to keep themselves and other people safe?
All of those questions were absolutely up in the air in the 1920s in your country,
in the USA, and there was moral outrage at the level of what was called
motordom was causing all these deaths.
And yet within a few short years that was completely turned around
through a process of corporate capture.
And just because that corporate capture happened a hundred years ago,
it doesn't make it any more acceptable.
And right now we're still dealing with the aftermath,
with the long shadow cast by that wicked act
and its children who have been and are now still hit the hardest.
They used to be literally hit in huge numbers.
Now that doesn't happen so much because children are not out
in the streets and towns and cities where we live.
The side effects that we're talking about are two sides of the same coin.
For most of the first 50, 60 years of the motor age,
children were harmed directly and brutally and instantly
by the side effects of a car dominated world.
Now that's changed and it takes longer and it's more insidious
and it's a little bit harder to see,
but it's still pretty obvious when you think about it.
And one of the things we really wanted to do in the report
was bring those two debates and kind of aspects
of the relationship between children and cars, bring them both together
because they're often treated entirely separately and that makes no sense.
You have a PSA in the report that really struck me.
It's a child sneaker, I think, stepping into the street
and the caption is one false step and you're dead.
And the message that that sends to parents
is my child is not safe outside, period,
because we know that they make false steps, right?
That's a standard that children can't be held to.
And so negative talk about helicopter parents
who are supervising their children too much and aren't allowing them to explore.
And then there's also shaming of parents that do allow their children to explore.
And parents are really caught and abiding.
And I know that you're you're committed to not shaming parents.
But when parents get a message that says,
if my child takes one false step out in the street, they're dead.
Well, what else are they to do, right, except for hold them inside?
And so I'd love to hear you talk, Alice,
about what some of those costs that Tim referred to are
that are the hidden costs to children.
So that poster was from the 1980s
and was the title of a paper by Mayor Hillman,
who was one of the first to really raise this topic
of the way in which road safety education has inadvertently or not
directly impacted children's freedom through sending the message
to children and parents that streets are not safe,
suitable places for children.
If a child is is hit or killed, it's essentially their fault
shifting the focus and responsibility onto children
who have no power to to do anything about addressing that danger.
So, yeah, it's been a decades long project, in a way,
to communicate that message.
And it's been very effective.
And I think parents have absorbed the idea that to be a good parent
means if you have the money and, you know, you own a car
and then to drive them to places.
And that's the way to keep your child safe,
which you could argue, what's the problem?
And the problem is, I mean, it's obvious to us, but just to spell it out.
Firstly, not everybody does have a car.
And so a lot of children are just essentially trapped
and stuck inside and not able to to go anywhere.
And secondly, even those children that are being driven around
are missing out on everyday outdoor freedom and independence
and being able to get around their own neighbourhoods.
And I think it ties in also with what connects children with their community
where we care for each other and where we have everyday encounters and connections
and that those take us beyond the confines of our own homes
and our schools and helps to build relationships between different generations,
between people with different backgrounds, you know,
just those qualities of rubbing along and being part of a wider society and community.
Jane Jacobs, I think, was very eloquent about this in the death of the life of great American cities,
that in a way what makes cities work at all
is that people find a way of getting along with each other and sharing these places,
even though they don't have close ties and you don't have to look very hard
to realise that that whole notion of getting along and living side by side,
those practices, that way of understanding is at great risk.
It starts not by teaching children stuff, but by giving children the opportunity
to be part of a wider community, to be out in the streets, to figure out how they get along,
how they solve differences, to get told off and face the consequences of their actions.
And all of that is at risk in a world where children are essentially spending their entire lives,
either indoors or in the passenger seat of a car.
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It seems to me too that now that this process has been going on for some generations,
we are losing the generational memory of how to foster that independence.
We talk about the whole idea of life after cars is a provocation and an invitation,
but it's a necessary provocation because nobody remembers what life before cars was.
There's no one living.
That generational memory of what it means to be in a community and function in a community
is really at risk. We just did an episode where we talked to some researchers from Arizona State
University who had done a really interesting study showing that there is a lot of demand hidden
in the US population for car-free lifestyle. 20% of the people that they surveyed had a strong
interest in living car-free. Another 40% had some interest, which I think is more than most people
in the US might expect would fall into those categories, but what they found was one of the
strongest predictors was had people experienced public transit use as children, had they experienced
being able to use bicycles as children for transportation. Maybe you could talk about
the generational loss that's happening and how parents don't really know how to do this anymore,
because we really need to have compassion for parents here, I think.
Absolutely. I grew up in the 1970s in Bristol, which is the city I still live in, and had
with hindsight an idyllic childhood. I was out, I was in my neighborhood, I was in my community,
I felt part of the community, I was mixing with children from all different backgrounds, had a
huge amount of freedom, and the contrast when I had my own children just down the road in the same
city was huge, and that was the seed of starting the playing out movement, was talking to other
parents of my generation who felt the same way that there'd just been this drastic change from
our own childhood to now, and we shared a sense of urgency about changing that or at least raising
the issue, because exactly like you say, we were aware that we were the last generation of parents
who had that experience, who understood the really deep and rich benefit of having that childhood
freedom, and it's exactly what we've experienced over the 17 years of running playing out as an
organization that embodied memory of playing out is not there anymore with the younger generation
of parents, and it's really scary, but on the positive side, this is partly why we started
with Play Streets, which has been playing out its kind of main tool really to bring about change in
communities, because Play Streets creates a situation that reminds people about the very sort
of natural urge that children have to play out, it allows people to experience the feeling of
being in that public space, allows children that experience, and it gives adults a vision of what's
possible, so even though Play Streets only happen a couple of hours a week or a couple of hours a
month, it shows what's possible longer term and bigger picture if we were to tackle the barriers
which car dominance and traffic danger is the biggest barrier to children using that space every
day, so all is not lost, and I think the recent movement that's come from parents about phone
use and digital, which is huge in the UK, I don't know if it's the same in the US, but
presumably is, actually does give me hope because I think it shows that parents have not lost the
hope for their children, and I do think there's a conversation to be had about the focus on
technology itself as being the main problem or the cause of the problem, I mean we started playing out
before iPhones were really a thing, certainly no children had them, and yet children were not
playing out you know then really, so we don't see phones and technology as being the main
cause of children being stuck inside, it's more of a symptom and it's kind of exacerbate the
situation. That's actually one of the things I wanted to ask about is you reference one argument
that's sort of pro-digital saying kids these days want to be online, this is their world,
this is the world that we're preparing them for, it takes place online to a great extent, and
they need to learn those tools and they're happy that way, and that keeps them safe. It's interesting
because I think that people like to blame tech for the problems and allow that to sort of give
everything else a pass, and then at the same time they use this justification for why we don't need
real life as much as we used to, but maybe you could talk about like what are some of the strategies
that you've seen as being successful and how are you trying to make that connection
for decision makers and parents and other people in the community, how can we help people to see
that those things are connected in the way that we see it so clearly? I think the first strategy
is to pay more attention to what children and young people tell us, and actually on that very
particular point there's been really robust surveys of children and young people's views
about their lives and about the place of technology in their lives where they are telling us that they
don't want to be spending ever more time solely in the digital realm, they want to be able to see
their friends and hang out and play IRL. One of the first steps on the road to enlightenment here
is to just listen more to children, to what they're telling us and also what they're showing us through
their actions, both in terms of their lived experience, but also about the kind of neighbourhoods,
the kind of places that they want to be living in. So we have some stuff in the report about
children's participation and getting, giving children a bigger voice and taking seriously what
they say about being able to walk and bike. I mean biking is a really interesting case study in a
ways, and I mean I have incredibly resonant vivid memories of biking around the village where I grew
up as a nine, ten year old. It was like the air I breathed a lot of the time, that was how I saw
my friends, and that has all but vanished, yet it's something that children today and young
people would still absolutely latch onto as being of incredible value and part of a kind of stepping
stone, you know, on their path to being a more independent person with the freedom to get around.
So yeah, we have quite a lot to say in the report about paying more attention to what children say,
doing that in a meaningful, yeah, an honest way. Some of the examples, you know, of places
that have shifted away from being car dominated, whether that's at the level of individual streets
or neighbourhoods or indeed entire cities, some of those examples will be familiar to you and
some of your listeners. We talk about Barcelona, we talk about Dutch cities. You talk about a
neighbourhood in Cambridge, maybe you could tell me about that example. So that was one that I
visited last year and I was really interested. It's called Great Nighten and it's a big district,
sort of on the outskirts of Cambridge. It's not London, that's really important. Cambridge is not
a big city and this district has been developed partly inspired by the vision of being child-friendly,
of being family-friendly, of having less emphasis on car mobility and car storage. You know, and
when you go there you can see, as I did when I went last summer, there's chalk drawings from kids
playing out in the streets and the pedestrian networks in this town. There are streets that
it's clearly impossible to drive down and they were built that way. So it shows that there are
system solutions to these system problems and that they can actually be quite general.
There's a kind of a better world and that we know that we can move right now towards that
better world by having fewer cars, slower cars, less space for car storage, more space for people
to get out and play and socialise and also as part of that we also talk about, you know,
changes in the law and speed and some of that. But Great Night and I think is a nice example
that shows this new world that we're arguing for is much more achievable than lots of people think
it is. But I think one of the problems is examples like Great Night and in the UK are really few
and far between. They're very rare and they really only come about when a housing developer
has the motivation to want to create this better, more child-friendly community.
Or a local authority in this case. Cambridge City Council and the other county councils
are were and are very progressive and that also made that happen.
Yeah, there actually are now some positive changes in the pipeline around national planning
guidance which may help shift that. They may help to encourage more house builders and developers
to consider children and outdoor play, you know, in the design from the beginning.
So hopefully things are starting to shift in the right direction.
Okay, so we can't talk about that shift which I do think is happening globally in some ways
without talking about the way that all of this is dealt with in the culture wars and casting all
of this as part of a greater struggle in which, you know, real freedom is driving and these people
are trying to take away my freedom. These people are trying to hurt us into 15-minute cities.
And, you know, the culture war is something that we are just running up against all the time in this
work. As much as I think that we have made huge advances and that, you know, sort of regular
people now see these things more clearly sometimes than they used to, I believe, it's still a very
powerful tool that people who are opposed to change and who want to keep the status quo are using.
And maybe we could, to kind of wrap things up, talk about the way that focusing on children
can help us get past some of that really toxic discourse and move into things that,
you know, really are going to be good for everybody because as you make the point so
eloquently, you know, if it's good design for children, it's good design for everybody. We
all will benefit from a world in which children are safer and happier and healthier and in which
they're allowed to grow up into happy, healthy parents. How can we use this to help people
understand this is not some terrible plot. This is really about life.
I think going back to the beginning, talking about children's health and well-being is quite key
because, you know, this isn't an ideological argument. You know, we're not saying we need to
reduce car dominance just because we don't like cars. We're saying from the point of view of children,
they are not getting the physical activity they need. In the UK, less than half of children
get the very minimum amount of physical activity they need. And I think in the States,
it might be even slightly less. And child obesity is what has been a crisis for decades,
actually. One in five primary school children are clinically obese in the UK. And the impact of all
of that is greater for children from more disadvantaged backgrounds. So I think starting
from that point of view could just help to shift the conversation in a different, more
rational, more caring direction. That would be my hope.
Yeah, and I just add that we've lived in a world that's been shaped around the car
for a hundred years or more. It's absolutely embedded in every aspect of our lives.
So it's hard. It's going to be hard to change. But also, I think if you spoke to almost anybody
about how they like their neighborhood, their town, their city to be in five, 10, 15 years time,
what changes would they like to see? I don't think many people would say, yeah, we want to have loads
more cars and we want them to be going faster and we want them to be bigger and we want them to be
more polluting. We don't want kids out anywhere. So to turn that on its head, the positive vision
most people would sign up to for their own neighborhood, their own town, their own city
is one where neighbors are cleaner, quieter, safer. It's easier to get around and where children,
our own children, other people's children, future generations have more freedom and are healthier.
So that basic vision of the future of towns and cities, I don't think is a hard one
to get people to sign up to. The challenge is that getting there is going to be hard.
It is going to involve some people having to change the way they get around and indeed having
to change the way they make a living. And there's no avoiding that because we've got 100 years of
baked in car dependency to overcome. But here I think bringing children into the conversation
figuratively and literally, what does it do? It forces us to think more about the future,
about that long term. It forces us to think collectively to recognize that children and
children's health and well-being are a kind of shared responsibility. It's not just down to
individual families. And so it does help to overcome some of those narrow short-term vested
interests that can otherwise really derail political conversations. It's not a civil bullet.
You also need tactics. You know, you need to be smart. You need to think about the timing,
about what's possible in your town or city with your political context, your point in the political
cycle. All of that comes into the mix. But I think that basic framing the question about
how we want cities to be and to become, framing that around children and young people and their
future lives really helps to build consensus and overcome some of that kind of toxic discourse.
I think that's a good place to end this. Thank you so much for your work and your persistence
on these issues. It's so important. We're really so glad to have you on. I think this report should
be read by many, many people who are designing our cities, who are responsible for the political
leadership in our cities and towns. And we will link to it in the show notes. Thank you so much
for having us. That is it for this episode of The War on Cars. Remember, you can support us and
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this is The War on Cars.
About this episode
Alice Ferguson and Tim Gill make a forceful case for treating streets as places where children should be able to play, move, and socialize freely. Drawing on their paper, they argue that a “child lens” would transform transport policy by prioritizing health, safety, and everyday mobility over car dominance. The conversation covers child pedestrian deaths, media victim-blaming, the mental and physical health impacts of car-centric streets, and how listening to children’s own wishes points toward safer, more playful neighborhoods.
Streets can be more than places to move and store cars—they can be places for children to grow and thrive. Alice Ferguson and Tim Gill are the UK-based authors of a new paper called "Streets for Play, Streets for Freedom: How a 'child lens' would transform transport policy." Each of them has decades of experience in envisioning a world where children can use streets safely and happily. Together they are calling for a "radical, child-centric approach to transport policy and planning."
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