Beyond active travel: children, play and community on streets during and after the coronavirus lockdown

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ABSTRACT

As countries have imposed lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, cities have been transformed in many ways. In this short article, we consider changes to urban residential streets in England and call for attention to be paid not only to streets as places for active travel and mobility, but also as spaces of dwelling, playing and connecting, especially for children, their families and communities. We argue that integrating these aspects into the reconfiguration of streets during and beyond lockdown requires an explicit focus on dwelling and on children, as this is vital for the health and well-being of children and of urban communities.

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© Wendy Russell 2021. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

KEYWORDS:

• Streets
• play
• children

Acknowledgements

Alison Stenning acknowledges the support of Leverhulme Research Fellowship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust [RF-2019-479].

Notes on contributors

Wendy Russell

Wendy Russell has worked in the play and playwork field for 40+ years, initially on adventure playgrounds, then in development, research, training and education with local, national and international organisations. She worked part-time at University of Gloucestershire from 2002 to 2019, where she co-developed and delivered undergraduate and postgraduate programmes on children’s play, and is now a Visiting Fellow there. She is also an independent researcher focusing on supporting children’s right to play, particularly policy, ethics and the politics of space. She co-founded the biennial international Philosophy at Play conference am on the editorial board of the International Journal of Play.

Alison Stenning

Alison Stenning is professor of social and economic geography at Newcastle University. Her research has focused in different ways on everyday and emotional geographies of community, relationships, families and neighbourhoods. This has included work on the psychosocial geographies of austerity in the UK and intergenerational relationships in the context of Brexit and austerity. Alison's current research, funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, explores how residents, of all ages, connect to the people and places on their streets when they play on them, and focuses in particular on the growing 'playing out' movement.