"What's the point of a Secret Club if it doesn't have a Secret Fort?" Building child-friendly cities.

Or at least the rose-tinted suburbs of my youth. As a seven-year-old, I walked with my sister to the bus stop at the end of The Glade, got the 54 bus across town and walked up Foxgrove Road to school. On our own. When I wasn't at school, we'd tramp cross country (if you call the allotments, Monk's Orchard Primary playing fields and Elmers End Cricket Club 'country') exploring all the exciting things that a boy could find in that little chunk of South London suburbia.

In the other direction were Long Lane woods and what we called the golf course (it used to be one but was just open land between Bywood Lane and Addiscombe). Across the Main Road were the old sewage works - we weren't supposed to go in there but we did - that are now South Norwood Country Park.

They were happy days. The world - at least this child's world - was a happy one.

So yes, let's start building cities for children not childless, boring grown-ups:

Everyday freedoms refer to children’s ability to travel safely on foot or bike and without an adult in their neighborhood—to school, to a rec center, to a park. The “popsicle test,” in which a child can walk from their home to a store, buy a popsicle, and return home before it melts, is one way to measure this ability. Children’s infrastructure means the network of spaces and streets that can make a city child-friendly and encourage these everyday freedoms.

And let's remember this isn't just about parks and playgrounds but about the marginalia of suburbia, the little bits of scrub land, the borders between schools and playing fields, the paths of streams - places to explore, discover and adventure. Remembering that child wants you only when they want you - this was the best line is a very bad film I watched recently - "What's the point of a Secret Club if it doesn't have a Secret Fort?"

Right now we're cramming ever more 'housing units' into ever smaller spaces, recreating the hard, grazed-knees world of back-to-back terraces facing straight onto cobbled streets. We're forgetting the importance of the child's world, forgetting that it starts close to home and spreads as far as that child is brave enough to venture:

The most effective interventions are implemented at the hyperlocal level. Think front yards and neighborhoods. “On average,” the authors write, “[spaces in front of homes] make up at least 25 percent of a city’s space and have the greatest potential to encourage everyday freedoms and social interaction.” Focusing on the very local also means that more children can access the interventions.

Definitely. Make cities child friendly. Or maybe, I dunno, build suburbs again?

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