How child friendly are our cities

The ABC started a brilliant series called Life at 9. The first episode looked at the question of creativity. They looked at the role of independence and how nine year olds of today have hardly any independence. In comparison, previous generations gave a nine year old a lot more autonomy and they were expected to take on more responsibility. This is essential for the  development of a child's creativity by instilling self confidence in their own ability to solve problems as independent entities from their parents.

In that first episode they did a little test of independence - something that was common in previous generations. They asked the 10 children participating in the study to walk from their home to the closest corner store to buy an ice lolly. Only two of these children could successfully complete the task. The rest couldn't because of:

• fear of the unknown
• traffic preventing them from crossing roads
• the lack of any corner store within walking distance

If you missed it you can watch on Iview.

It really got me thinking about how child-friendly our suburbs are. This month we passed a milestone with our kids. We asked our nine and seven year old daughters to walk to the corner store on their own to buy milk and eggs. We are fortunate in that there are two corner shops within walking distance. The one is on the other side of a busy road that would be difficult to cross. The other can be reached with only crossing minor side streets.

The next level of independence would be for them to walk to school on their own. There is just one road crossing an the route that is a cause for concern. Traffic flies around the corner and it is a hazard for children to cross. In Tokyo parents don't accompany their children on the walk to school. From prep the children walk themselves to school. Would this be possible in our Australian cities?

A nine year old may be a good auditor of the walkability of our neighbourhoods. If a young child can safely navigate their way on foot from home to the corner store or school I think it would be safe to say that we have a walkable neighbourhood. When designing our urban roads we should be designing with the needs of the local residents in mind (especially children), not the need to limit delay to the traffic passing through the suburbs.

Children and cycling

The European Cyclists Federation have an excellent article on supporting more children cycling. It points to the Netherlands as an example where more children cycle to school than walk. This is in contrast with all other European countries where more children walk to school. In the USA only 1% of children cycle to school and Australia does not fare much better.

So why don't more children cycle to school? The ECF article identifies 3 things that the Netherlands has implemented that appear to be a recipe for success:

• Child education and training - school children get educated and have practical on-road training in safe cycling and walking on the road network
• Safe infrastructure - a cohesive and continuous network of cycle facilities that separate cyclists from traffic is essential to getting more children cycling to school
• Driver training and legal responsibility - driver training emphasises the responsibility of the driver to be aware of pedestrians and cyclists. If a child cyclists or pedestrian is hit by a car the legal responsibility is almost automatically placed on the car driver.

This excellent blog post by Jan Garrard identifies some of the constraints to more children cycling to school. These are:

trip distance, which is supposedly greater in Australia

traffic hazards

“stranger danger”

the inconvenience of cycling compared to being driven.

Infrastructure improvements will only address one of these constraints. Our urban structure will be difficult to address. Parental fear and laziness can be addressed through education and encouragement.

Unfortunately I believe that the shift of Grade 7 to high school will further reduce the number of children walking and cycling to school in Queensland as it impacts most severely on the first of these factors.

My two children (5 and 7 years old) have just started riding and we have had great fun cycling along the cycle paths in Brisbane and surrounds on weekends. But will they cycle to school? Probably not to primary school as the school is at the top of a big hill less than 600m walk from home. But if they wanted to I don't believe it would be feasible. The school is on a busy intersection with few safe cycle routes. I also have not seen any cycle parking at the school, although I have seen a couple of kids cycling.

For high school the prospects are better as our local high school is just off the SE Bikeway, as are we. Despite this the school has awful cycle parking that looks barely used. There is much that can be done to improve cycling for school children.

I suspect (and Jan Garrard would seem to agree) though that the most effective way to get more children cycling to school is to get their parents excited about cycling.