“Children see streets differently”

Until relatively recently, in diverse contexts, children predominantly played on their streets, rather than in parks and playgrounds.1 Streets offer particular and valuable affordances for children's play but also for sociability,2 and children continue to value their doorstep spaces for play, in preference often to more structured or commercialised spaces.3

Yet, from the present-day perspective of many UK towns and cities – and beyond – it can be difficult to imagine that streets were not made for motor vehicles, or that designing and maintaining streets for those vehicles should not be a priority. In fact, streets have always functioned as spaces not only for other forms of mobility, such as walking and cycling, but also for sociality, for dwelling and for play.4 These diverse functions have been defended by advocates of children's play, including especially women – as mothers, campaigners, activists and experts – who have argued that children have both a right to play and a right to the city.5

Children can only ever be passive participants in automobility,6 yet residential streets and neighbourhoods often form some of the most important spaces in children's everyday lives. For these reasons, children and young people are often most at risk from car dominance, as they are especially vulnerable to road violence, pollution and the erosion of public space, and this is all the more true for children in marginalised and disadvantaged communities.7

Children's outdoor play and their mobility are often intricately entangled – to find spaces to play and to meet with friends, children have to move, and their everyday mobility (the walk to school or around town) is often playful. Bourke suggests that play is the “enactment of childhood”,8 an idea reinforced by the evidence that “children will play anywhere and everywhere”.9 Children's play and mobility are inherently connected and articulated with the spaces and practices of their wider lives too – family, education, consumption and so on.

These foundational claims underline the particular value of streets for children, and for their families, highlighting how the ways that we choose to shape and use streets have a powerful effect on children's lives and their health and wellbeing, shaping important questions of social, spatial and environmental justice. In turn, the implied interconnections between family life, health and wellbeing, environmental quality and justice resonate with the increasing recognition that streets and public spaces that are child-friendly can often also facilitate family-friendly, age-friendly, accessible, healthy and sustainable urban agendas.10 Planning for children's street play should therefore form a central part of plans for Labour's ambitions for active travel, as part of a healthy, low-carbon future,11 as well as its commitment “to raise the healthiest generation of children in our history”.12

Arguing for play can often be seen as frivolous, especially in the context of global and local crises of all kinds. Insisting on the importance of play with local authorities often comes up against concerns about austerity, budget cuts and the prioritisation of statutory duties. As Hart noted in 2002, before years of austerity had had their impact,13 “play is often trivialized and placed low on the funding agenda of cities”.14

Yet, as we have suggested, and as decades of play research confirm, play is critically important for a whole range of physical, developmental and social processes,15 for children and young people of all ages, and indeed for adults too. The danger of valuing play only for its measurable impacts is that some of the less tangible, more powerful aspects of play get lost.

Hart argues that – above and beyond the rich, diverse and valuable benefits for children's development – “free play in public space is important for the development of civil society and, hence, for democracy”.16 Play on streets and in neighbourhoods facilitates children's engagement with their most proximate environments; it brings them into dialogue with diverse others as they navigate and negotiate forms and spaces of play; and it enables them to start to make sense of themselves and their worlds. As Lester and Russell argue, “play is the principal way in which children participate within their own communities”.17

Moreover, as Moore notes, “Children see streets differently”;18 they play and move on them in ways that adults rarely plan or hope for, in haphazard, stop-start, meandering ways,19 which underline wider conceptualisations of loose space that emerge in between and as alternatives to more fixed and restrictive uses of space.20

When they can play on their streets, children also act as catalysts for community, moving within and between private and public spaces.21 Jamrozik suggests that play in public has “the potential to, however briefly, bring people … together”.22 This, in turn, can enable moments of joy and sociability, but also open up “a way of questioning not only public space itself, but also how it gets used and occupied and by whom”.23

In all these ways, both play itself and the spaces it creates can be seen to prefigure political possibilities, suggesting ways in which streets might be reclaimed and/or used differently.24

We do not have to go far to find examples of how streets can be used differently and for play. For most of the 20th century, and for most children, the street was the primary space for play. In the early part of the century, concerns about children being exposed to immoral and criminal influences on the street, and a significant rise in deaths and injuries from drivers, influenced campaigns to create separate spaces for play in the form of playgrounds.25

However, in parallel, and recognising the impossibility of removing children from the street entirely, Salford's chief constable, Major Godfrey, introduced the concept of ‘street playgrounds’ or ‘play streets’ to Britain, from the US, in the 1920s.26 These were timed access restrictions on residential streets intended to allow children to play in safety on their own streets. The Street Playground Act 1938 extended this possibility to all authorities in England and Wales, with similar provision in Scotland, and by 1963, in England there were 146 play street orders designating 750 play streets.27 Many of these were in dense, working-class neighbourhoods in London, and the north-west and the north-east cities of England, where residents had limited access to proximate open or green space.28

After the second world war, architects and planners attempted to reduce the impact of cars on towns and cities by rethinking neighbourhood design. Advocates for children's play, often women social researchers, social workers and landscape architects, argued that age-appropriate play spaces were necessary to support children's development and to allow them to continue playing close to their homes.29 This resulted in the creation of housing layouts that separated children and traffic and included small open spaces for play. In this way, the whole environment would support children's play and mobility, with focal points that provided dedicated space for children to congregate. Those who have grown up in such neighbourhoods describe rich landscapes for play that supported the development of friendships, skills such as cycling, skateboarding and ball games, and strong ties with the wider adult community.30

Meanwhile, many mothers living in older neighbourhoods also campaigned for safe streets, as motor traffic levels increased significantly between the 1930s and 1960s, with two million cars registered in Britain in 1938, rising to more than 11 million in 1969.31 In North Tyneside and Newcastle, as in other towns and cities, mothers defended children's right to play on their streets and demanded play streets, often through petitions and barricading streets with bins, furniture and prams.32 But, when play streets were introduced following such campaigns, the signs were often not enough to deter drivers and further campaigns led to road closures.33

Planners also turned their attention to transforming older neighbourhoods to sustain street play and adult amenity in the 1960s and 1970s. Revitalisation efforts included housing and environmental improvements, with comprehensive landscape schemes removing through-traffic and introducing allocated parking spaces, trees, benches and play spaces. This drew on ideas about neighbourhood traffic segregation popularised in a government report, Traffic in Towns, often referred to as the Buchanan report, and better known for its ideas about urban motorways.34 Such ideas were rolled out nationally by Harold Wilson's Labour government through the introduction of general improvement areas in the Housing Act, 1969. The 1970s would see many working-class neighbourhoods transformed in this way, with a focus on providing family-friendly neighbourhoods.35

Between 1980 and 2000, children's neighbourhood play was largely neglected, with efforts to design out antisocial behaviour often reducing space for play. Children's street play dramatically decreased as traffic levels continued to rise.36 In 2000, there was a brief revival of interest in streets for play, with the introduction of ‘home zones’ by New Labour – reconfigured street layouts that eliminated through-traffic and prioritised play.37 This concept influenced new street design guidance in the Manual for Streets,38 but few older streets were converted. In contrast, such zones are now widespread in other countries in northern Europe, in new and old residential neighbourhoods and even in town centres.

The contemporary play streets movement emerged in 2010 when two Bristol mothers, Alice Ferguson and Amy Rose, decided that they were “[u]nwilling to accept the status quo and the implications for [their] children's health and well-being – and their rights as citizens” and sought to find a way to replicate the doorstep play of their childhoods for their own children.39 Using temporary traffic orders, legal road closures and wheelie bins, in an echo of earlier women's activism around play and streets, Alice and Amy developed a regular practice that worked to afford the children on their street time, space and permission to play.

The model spread throughout Bristol and spurred the formation of a new movement, Playing Out, which supported growth across the UK and beyond, enabling communities to set up their own play streets, in turn supported by local authorities and/or voluntary and community groups nationwide. By the summer of 2024, Playing Out estimated it had supported, directly and indirectly, more than 1,650 play streets in 102 local authority areas, translating to more than a million additional hours of children's doorstep play across the UK.40

Playing Out seeks to reimagine residential streets both temporarily and through longer-term advocacy and cultural change. From week to week, each play street enacts something new, bringing play and sociability to the street in ways that support a range of powerful impacts, from shaping children's physical and mental health, to building community for neighbours of all ages, and creating conversations about other ways of using streets.41 In 2019, research concluded that the play streets model “transforms the streets where neighbours play out; not a single respondent suggested in any answer that playing out had changed nothing on their street”.42

In the longer term, Playing Out sees the play streets model as a means to an end, demonstrating the desire, need and possibility to achieve more substantive change (see Figure 1). Through increasing and normalising the visible presence of children's play on neighbourhood streets, raising awareness around the value of children's play and reshaping street communities for children and adults, Playing Out hopes that play streets will help to create safer doorstep environments, through social and cultural support for children's play at every scale and through policy work, such that children can play out every day, without the need for organised and stewarded play streets.

At around the same time that Playing Out was developing the contemporary play street model, a new wave of cycle campaigners began to demand infrastructure for cycling and a reduction in car dominance in urban streets.44 Over the past decade, cycle lanes, low-traffic neighbourhoods and school streets have moved from being a niche issue to being widely supported by politicians, advocates, public health experts, transport planners and many others. These groups often reference children and their play in their support for what is now termed ‘active travel’ and their desire to see a reduction in road danger. Campaigns for safer streets for children and families, including the growing Kidical Mass movement, have garnered the vocal support of many parents.

We have illustrated here the long history of children's street play, demonstrating how important it is for children, their parents and their communities, and how it is inextricably linked to children's mobility.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, calls for safe streets for children's play and mobility have increased in volume and urgency, not least because the pandemic exposed stark inequalities in children's access to space to play.45 These post-pandemic concerns sit alongside wider and growing concerns about public health, climate change and sustainability that are influencing government policies in support of active travel. Yet, play is missing from this agenda46 and Active Travel England has yet to prioritise research into children's mobility or consider the importance of streets in children's play.47

In 2023, a House of Commons’ Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee inquiry focussing on children, young people and the built environment was established in response to such calls. Evidence to this committee came from a wide range of sources, from advocacy groups to health professionals, from geographers to architects and planners,48 but the inquiry was disbanded as the 2024 general election was called. While many are involved in trying to deliver a report that reflects the evidence gathered, the recently launched Raising the Nation Play Commission is also seeking to “to move play up the political agenda”, with a strong and cross-cutting focus on places to play.49 Much of this work echoes Playing Out's own manifesto, which makes the case for a cross-government approach to play, spanning public health, transport, planning, housing, environment and children,50 and growing calls for the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into English law, coupled with play sufficiency legislation founded on “a duty to assess for and secure sufficient play and recreation opportunities”.51

To realise the full potential of our streets across the range of policy outcomes described here, the current government must call on the Department for Transport, Active Travel England and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to work together, and with advocates and researchers, to ensure that all children have access to safe space to play on their doorsteps and can move around the places they live in without fear of road danger.

Returning the street to a place that supports a diversity of functions is vital if we are to move away from car dependency and its numerous negative social and environmental impacts. Children and their play could and should be a central part of this reimagining.