Imagining the city that locks its children indoors

Imagine a city that locks its children indoors...
A city that knows of the danger that can damage its young citizens, but would rather accommodate that danger than look after its own...  
Imagine a city where there's no space for children to play, but you can always park your car....
Is the city you are imagining... Amsterdam?!

Mark at Bicycle Dutch blog has taken the time to translate into English an incredible Dutch documentary from 1972 which chronicles the actions of Amsterdam's inner city children to claim back their local streets as a safe place to play.  The children in this film are striking not least for their articulate manner and belief in the possibility of change, but also because the conditions they were challenging in 1972 are - somewhat shockingly - not dissimilar to conditions for most inner city children in the UK today.  I recommend you take 10 minutes out of your day to watch the film;



I am sure the children of the Pijp would recognise here in London the issues of community severance, air pollution, road safety and a lack of safe space to play that they were campaigning against 40 years ago.  These issues really came to life for me at the recent Bow roundabout protests when I realised there were children's bedrooms overlooking this noisy, dirty, choking space where traffic from outside of the area is sped through at high capacity on its way to somewhere else.  Just as every action has a reaction so there are those who travel, and those who are travelled upon.  Of course, the city considers it vitally important that cars be allowed easy access to the centre, but the children at Bow roundabout do not derive any benefit from all these vehicles being pushed through their front yards.  It's worth remembering that in the London borough of Tower Hamlets, where Bow is situated,  just 33% of people have access to a car (and just 26% in neighbouring Islington. See PDF report.)

Housing overlooks the Bow roundabout in east London - a flyunder, flyover and high capacity roundabout where three cyclists have been killed in recent years. Image via Bing Maps.

Having watched the film about De Pijp, I began to think about my own neighbourhood of Bethnal Green in East London.  It too is filled with dense housing; a mixture of Victorian tenements and walk ups, post war and modernist social housing, and private homes.  Like De Pijp in the 1970s there are cars on every street, including small residential streets which are used as rat runs by commercial vehicles.  We're blessed with fantastic rail, tube and bus connections, but our streets are second rate.  On the road where I live there are two schools, a park, an elderly people's home, a train station, medium density Victorian housing and some shops.  The primary purpose of this street, however, is the storage and carriage of motor vehicles; there's nowhere to lock your bike, or to sit in the sun with your neighbour, or for children to play.  Off the top of my head I know there is a young family living in our basement flat, a family with 5 girls aged between 8 and 16 at the end of the street and a couple with a new baby living in the apartments opposite.  Does the street upon which these children live meet their needs?

A typical De Pijp street scene today, near the Albert Cuyp street market.

Mark's film strikes me as interesting for a number of reasons;

1. Our urban spaces do not just "appear" but are the collective result of a series of design choices.  Speed limits, or whether or not a street should be a through road for traffic or not, are the consequence of decisions we should all play a roll in.
2. Change may be difficult to imagine, but it is possible.  There is a man in the video who says it will be impossible to close the street; "It is for traffic!" he exclaims.  But the street was closed, the sky didn't fall in, and now most people in Amsterdam are entirely familiar and comfortable with such design choices; a similar process could take place here over time.
3. Street design adds value.  My inner city mortgage-obsessed cynic watched the film about De Pijp thinking constantly "those run down houses must be worth a fortune now!"  It seems to me that you could spend a lot of money employing consultants and designers to tell you how to squeeze every drop of potential revenue out of new urban developments, when all you really need to do is ask the kids what they would do.  After all, who wouldn't want some trees, benches, bike stands and a place to play on their street instead of cars?

If London really is 40 years behind the Netherlands, perhaps it is time we employed a change in tactics, and simply asked the children who live here what they would like from the city they're growing up in?  There's so very much we could gain, and it would seem all we have to lose are a few rat runs and parking spaces - surely a price we can afford to pay?

Many thanks to Mark at the always consistently excellent Bicycle Dutch blog (also on Twitter @BicycleDutch) for taking the time to research, translate, edit this fantastic archive footage.

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