The child in the city: Perspective of a mother

By Janani Suresh

(Guest Writer)

Motherhood is a life transformation for which many women are unprepared for. With its onset, one starts looking at life through a different lens, the lens of child friendliness. I was always attracted to the outdoors, but having a little child made it necessary to include new routines of visiting local parks and green spaces. It became even more important to provide my child access to the outdoors and a connection with nature. Luckily for me, I lived in South Bangalore where parks and gardens were abundant. However, reaching any of them with a little child was a nightmare. My trips to and from the park highlighted the asymmetric characteristic of Indian urban streets. While a large portion of the street is earmarked for fast moving vehicular traffic, pedestrians are left to scramble at its edges, many a times walking on a footpath not wider than the drain cover. Most, nay, all the footpaths (wherever they existed) were unfit for smooth unhindered movement of the baby stroller. We always had to negotiate levels. The message was loud and clear: “These streets are meant for motorised vehicles, cars, buses and bikes.” Children and elderly, cyclists or walkers are invisible in the city.

Children who walk to places are fitter, more observant, connected with their surroundings and have autonomy to choose a pace and path. Walking allows one to interact with the immediate surroundings, observe the environment and appreciate the local culture. It supports street vending and other economic activity, apart from developing a sense of neighbourhood and community as children interact with other passersby. The child who walks to places can pick up a flower along the way, make conversation with the milkman at the street corner, and even stop by to drink a refreshing sugarcane juice. Research states that children who walk to school absorb and observe their surroundings and create an imagery of the streets, quite different from a child who is driven to school.

Source: Urban cycling Institute

In a study of children's travel modes to my son’s preschool, we observed that nearly 75 percent of the children are dropped to school by their caregiver by a motorised bike. 15 percent of the trips are by car and only a mere 10 percent of the children walk to the school. All the children live within a 1km radius of the school. However, the route witnesses heavy vehicular traffic creating a dangerous and polluted atmosphere for walking. Even a short distance walk becomes inconvenient and unsafe because of the lack of facilities and planning for children and their caregivers. The level of smoke exhaust from vehicles also matches the height of young children, and they become the primary inhalers of vehicular emissions.  Traversing ill designed streets by foot is a bitter experience and is avoided by most families. A vicious cycle begins where lesser distance walked leads to a lower threshold for walking distance. We may even reach a situation where an entire generation of children may not walk just a few metres to go to a nearby shop, all of which can reflect as a national health and lifestyle crisis, apart from the collective harm the increased vehicular use will have on the environment.

While walkable urban streets are a major challenge, the access to the diminishing open spaces of the city is also another area to be addressed. It is well documented that children (and adults) can benefit from spending time outdoors in natural environments. It has a positive impact on mental and physical wellbeing. Open green spaces tend to be a lot less structured than indoor environments providing children the opportunity to develop creative and critical thinking. The parks in the city defied the idea of unstructured play and their design was usually typical. It consisted of a rectangular walkway, grass and plants that must not be touched, and a segregated play area for kids in the corner. It was baffling to contemplate on how rigidly we had constructed an area for play – by limiting exploration. The grass and plants need to be explored, the trees are to be climbed, the park must be criss-crossed – because when we tell them to walk on the path, are we not telling them to think only in the box? The mobility patterns of caregivers and young children is not a straight line. Children observe and make sense of their surroundings through sensorial and tactile explorations.

One positive example of child centric city planning is seen in Pontevedra, Spain. Francesco Tonucci and his book La città dei bambini (The City of Children) were very influential in the transformation of Pontevedra into a space of experimentation and discovery for the young. Deep reformations were brought about transforming the character of the streets and the sidewalks. The streets were made safe for the children by restricting the speed of vehicles in the city to 30km/h. All pedestrian crossings are designed at the height of the sidewalks making it suitable for strollers, and persons on wheelchairs. The vehicles must navigate up and down the crossings while the people travel at the same flat level. The streets have opened and one can see children playing football on the streets.

A project titled The School Path is adopted by the City Council to encourage children to walk to school. The City Council invited all children over the age of six to go to school on foot and without adults to accompany them. To implement The School Path, local police departments, networks of volunteers, street business owners, etc. came together in collaboration. The initiative provided children with great autonomy of movement in their city.

The lens of a child and the scale of the child need to be perceived through the mind of the adult. Children are inquisitive by nature and can be intrigued by what is seemingly ordinary for the adult. They can find avenues for play in the urban landscape if only access and safety is guaranteed to them. Making the sidewalks, the parks, the street crossings, the grocery shop and other everyday spaces accessible to a child is the best way to include a child in the city. As a planner, it would make sense to spend time with children and observe them play in different environments as a precursor to design. Child psychologists, caregivers and children must be engaged in the design process.

References

1. Gerben Helleman, The Child in the City (1978) : An extensive summary (2021)

2. Sarah Goodyear, The Link Between Kids Who Walk or Bike to School and Concentration (2013) 

3. Concello De Pontevedra 

4. Urban cycling institute (2022)

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