Why should children have a Right to the Street?
❤ Health?
💨 Emissions?
👫 Access to friends?
🏘 Exploration & attachment?
👥 Children’s citizenship?
Whatever the reason, people want change and will show it this weekend across Europe kidsonbike.org.
Children across the world have lost their right to roam in just four generations. There are many reasons for this, but for a large part this can be traced back to how we design our streets.
We optimized our streets to offer the Homo Economicus optimal vehicular throughput and comfortable parking. The safety and dignity of our children became secondary, at best.
We discipline them, give them responsibility for their own safety. We tell them to not be distracted!
Dutch individuals and companies collectively own 8.7 million private cars. With 17.4 million people and 8 million households that equates to 500 cars
per 1,000 inhabitants, or an average of just over 1 car per household. [2]
This number has been rapidly growing and is expected to grow even further. In the last 30 years this went from 0,8 tot 1,1 car per household. [3]
It is not easy to fix the historical mistake to let cars dominate public space. But #Catharijnesingel (Utrecht) shows that cities can heal from the inflicted wounds.
Radical change is possible. But it takes strong leadership.
Design for the city you want to be.
Not for the traffic you have (or that modelers 'predict')
Connect the dots:
😱 Danish🇩🇰 kids cycle less far (-25%), less often (-32%) in last 10 years
🚙 Proportion of kids cycling to school dropped 30%. Car journeys doubled/tripled
🤸♀️ Only 26% gets enough physical exercise
⛑ Helmets became the norm
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.”
~E.F. Schumacher
A developing collection 🧵...
(pics from 'A short history of innovation' by @efesce)