Autonomy

Autonomy. 

Recently on Streetfilms I saw a video describing a progressive narrowing of children's range of mobility over the last forty to fifty years. Children who once had the freedom to explore and roam their towns and villages are now restricted to their streets, virtual prisoners to small proscribed areas in their neighborhoods.  The cause, a car centered transportation system and ultimately federal, state and local policies in thrall to the car. 

When I was young I had a great deal of autonomy in my mobility. My parents rarely had to chauffeur me anywhere. I walked to school, walked downtown, rode my bike to friends' houses and stores. I was not a rarity. It was the norm for children in my town to be independent. I was free to explore woods and fields and make little field trips. This independence nurtured autonomy:  planning what to take, contacting friends and what routes to take. Coming and going were up to us, within reason. Our independence gave us and our parents the freedom to be free of each other for a while, a healthy need. 

Children in Japan still have access to the autonomy which has been lost in America. School buses are not the norm here. Students are expected to get to school on their own. They walk, bike or take public transportation. In most of Japan, chauffeuring your children doesn't even occur to parents. Movement is one's personal responsibility here, from elementary school onward. Safety is not a concern as Japan is incredibly safe. (Safety is a given here). And most children move in groups. As a result, like me when I was a child, their activities place much less stress on their parents than their American counterparts. 

If we wish to give autonomy back to children, we must give them safe, car-free ways to move about. We need more road diets, more human-interaction-friendly streets, more separated bike lanes, more public transportation and zoning reform. This would allow the facilities children, and by extension all people, use daily to be reached within safe walking or biking distance and those long haul errands done by public transportation. 

A life of autonomous mobility recognizes our need to provide transportation that serves a broad set of values: health, equity, community, environment, safety, work, and pleasure. When we recognize that car centered design is more a burden than a liberator, then, hopefully, we will take action to change it.