Traveling safely in the city
Big cities and city centers are becoming more and more attractive to families with children. But some of these areas aren't child-friendly thanks to traffic and city planning ignoring the needs of families for too long. Not having enough free space restricts the development of the young ones. New ideas of how to make streets in city centers more attractive, but most of all safer for children are required.
Move to the country? No, not for Sandra and Stefan Hartmann*. They both love living in Berlin and have done for 15 years. They met here, studied here, made lots of friends and found good jobs. And started a family. With their two daughters, the confirmed city dwellers live in a typical area of old buildings in the south of the former working-class area Friedrichshain.
"An estate of terraced houses in the suburbs would be too boring for us. We may be parents but we still want to enjoy life," explains father Stefan, who works as a graphic designer in an agency in Berlin Mitte. Cinema, theatre, museums and concerts, specialist supermarkets and quirky designer shops – the city offers great diversity just around the corner. There is also a large selection of schools and care facilities, meaning that both parents can work and still offer their children individual education and learning.
The trend for urban living
Cities are attractive as places for families to live, since with the change from an industrial to a service society, new living and working patterns have evolved in the urban environment, enabling parents to balance work and family life and maintain a lifestyle that is as individual as possible. However, it is not unusual for parents to discover that this freedom can restrict their children's mobility.
"For example, Laura would like to cycle to school in the mornings, but we don't want her to," explains 37-year-old Sandra Hartmann. "The route from Friedrichshain up to Prenzlauer Berg is so busy and on some parts there is no cycle lane, it's just too dangerous for a 12-year-old." The street where the Hartmanns live is away from the trendy bars, it isn't a shopping or business street, nor a main street but still: "Playing on the street - no way!" says the medical and nursing trainer. "Maybe on the pavement, but cyclists often ride there since the cobblestone street is so uncomfortable." They have practised being streetwise with their children again and again and Laura and her eight-year-old sister Pia are very aware when out on the street. "It is important to let the children have their own experiences in traffic but I still always feel uneasy when they are out on their own without us."
Particular problems in city traffic
Statistics recorded over 30,000 traffic accidents involving children under 15 in 2009. The majority were in cities. "Cities have three big problems," explains traffic scientist Reinhold Maier from TU Dresden: "Too much traffic that does not belong here, such as transit or commuter traffic. There is often also not enough eye contact between road users, for example when parking cars separate pavements from roadways or junction areas are blocked. And finally, excessive speeds endanger road users."
Anyone who drives in a city knows how stressful a traffic situation can be here: On some large, multi-lane main routes, cars share space with trams and buses, a forest of signposts and traffic lights ensure additional confusion, constantly changing roadworks or road closures for large events or demonstrations exacerbate the situation. Anyone who is in a hurry, maybe because they had to work longer for a change and their child is already waiting at school, quickly panics. This increases the risk of accident, when changing lanes, turning off and in stop-and-go traffic. Technical developments in the vehicle can help to improve the handling of critical situations (see interview), but to make city streets safer for all road users, city and transport planners are also required.
Anyone who drives in a city knows how stressful a traffic situation can be here: On some large, multi-lane main routes, cars share space with trams and buses, a forest of signposts and traffic lights ensure additional confusion, constantly changing roadworks or road closures for large events or demonstrations exacerbate the situation. Anyone who is in a hurry, maybe because they had to work longer for a change and their child is already waiting at school, quickly panics. This increases the risk of accident, when changing lanes, turning off and in stop-and-go traffic. Technical developments in the vehicle can help to improve the handling of critical situations (see interview), but to make city streets safer for all road users, city and transport planners are also required.
"In transport planning, it is exceptionally important to clearly distinguish between what we call connecting roads and access roads," explains Maier. A street with a connecting function is designed to carry the transit traffic, connect individual city areas with each other or connect surrounding towns to the city. Traffic has to flow, a speed limit of under about 50 km/h would be counterproductive. Access roads, on the other hand, lead to residential areas, to businesses or doctor's practices. Here, speed restrictions and especially parking spaces are required.
"About a quarter to a third of city streets would be enough connecting roads, traffic-calming could take place on the remainder," according to Maier. "Residential areas built in the 1960s or 70s are often planned so that there is no transit traffic, either using crescents or dead ends." The areas from the Wilhelmenian period, however, popular residential areas for families with their charming old buildings, are often laid out in rectangles and invite shortcuts or detours when the main arteries are clogged. The Hartmann family is also familiar with this problem. The speed limit outside their house is actually 30 "but people really race through here sometimes," says father Stefan, "we have a lot of transit traffic, especially if Warschauer Straße is too busy again."
Mobility is important for a happy childhood
Laura and her eight-year-old sister Pia therefore go to the playground in the afternoon. It is fenced in, safe and easy to walk to. But also a bit boring. Climbing frame, sandpit, see-saw, swings, and adults sit around the edge on benches and watch over them. All this doesn't encourage free playing, discovering the world and trying things out.
It is important for the healthy development of children that they can spend time freely in public areas without danger, emphasise experts. Instead, public order often prevents children's development, believes Baldo Blinkert, a social scientist from Freiburg. According to Blinkert, our offspring no longer have space for their own activities, places that are easy and safe to reach, places that are not thoroughly structured but flexible in their use and that are good for meeting other children without adults always having to be around.
In addition to the increase in traffic in cities over decades, this is also due to town planning that ascribes a fixed function to every location and ignores the needs of children. A study by Blinkert suggests that the results can be noticed directly after investigating the relationship between the immediate living environment and the recreational behavior of 4,000 children in Freiburg between about five and ten years of age: The more child-friendly the immediate environment, the more time the children spent outside without parental supervision and the less they watched television in the afternoon. Even the amount of organized childminding after school decreased.
New opportunities for cities through changes in society
Over the past years, more and more industry has withdrawn from cities, at the same time old railway tracks, superfluous barracks and dilapidated housing estates have been knocked down or removed. Experts are also predicting a decrease in the German population over the coming decades, many cities already have decreasing numbers of inhabitants or are not growing as fast as in the past century. Free space and new utilization emerge, here there is space for alternative traffic ideas and urban-planning measures to design the neighbourhood to be more child-friendly and safer again, even in the highly congested urban areas. To make sure that planning covers the needs of those affected, town planners are now focussing on working together with children, parents and other residents in the areas. (See text). Participation is requested and the MobileKids Safety Map invites you to do so.
To improve the quality of life in cities, environmentally-friendly means of transportation are also required, a better, more intelligent interaction between individual transport as well as public transport or emission-free means of transportation such as electric cars are important approaches here that MobileKids will also report on in the coming months.
*Name changed
