The city is for children to use

Is your neighborhood really kid-friendly? In this episode, we explore how traffic and poorly designed streets are robbing children of their independence. Hear from two leading researchers on why kids can’t roam freely anymore and what needs to change to create safer, more accessible cities for all.

• LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE:
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Show notes & links

• Traffic danger’s potential impact on children’s accessibility (the paper in question)
• Also listen to: Cities Book for Play
• Donald Appleyard – Livable Streets
• The City Is Here For You To Use: 100 easy pieces

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this episode pairs well with…

003 Joanne Cheung – Cities Book of Play

Cities are sites of aspirations and identities, and ‘play’ can be a means for fostering community engagement. Architect and urbanist Joanne Cheung critiques the prevailing forms of community engagement, suggesting that they are often paternalistic and fail to adequately consider the agency of individuals and communities. Joanne further discuss the implications of power imbalances, the need for co-creation, and how play can act as a ‘scaffolding’ for discussing democratic representation. Play has often become commodified causing an unequal power dynamics in society. Joanne suggests the Cities for Play is but a scaffold in tackling very hard problems democratically, and calls for meaningful engagement through more community-oriented spaces for collective action and creativity.

Cities Book of Play

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Guest Bio

Zahra Tavakoli is an urban and transportation planner with a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Polytechnique Montréal. Her work focuses on sustainable mobility, active transportation with a particular emphasis on accessibility and equity. Zahra is among the few researchers in North America developing tools to assess children’s independent mobility, ensuring cities are designed to be safer and more inclusive for all. Through her work, she tries to create urban environments that prioritize accessible and equitable mobility solutions for children and vulnerable populations.

Owen Waygood is a professor of sustainable transport at Polytechnique Montréal. He is interested in how to help shift society towards sustainable transport behaviours. As such, he studies how the built environment affects not just how