A new political landscape: making space for children: the big challenge for our public realm.
| Author | Lammy, David |
| Position | Features |
Current debates about childhood and children's place in society generally lack a coherent political narrative. They tend to be framed either by anxious reactions to specific trends--which tend to condemn the modern world as the enemy of 'real childhood'--or in notions of youth and childhood themselves being out-of-control, the enemy of civic and cultural life.
Neither response takes us much further in developing a vision that puts children at the heart of the public realm, rather than hiding them away from it. Seeking a less alarmist tone, the Children's Society last year launched its 'Good Childhood Inquiry'. The question that it asks is welcome: what are the fundamental values underlying our efforts in policy-making for children? After a decade of investment in children's services and in the wider public sphere, I believe the challenge is to connect two of this government's most successful policy agendas: children's services and local regeneration. We need to put children at the forefront of our efforts at urban renewal.
The Labour Party has always led movements to improve the lot of children in our society. In 1944, Butler's settlement raised the school-leaving age to 15, and introduced free secondary education. The 1948 Children Act transformed welfare and children's services, while successive Labour education reforms have advanced the principle that it is not just every child's entitlement to attend school, but to be given the very best chance to fulfil their potential.
Over the last ten years we have seen that tradition continued and extended. Child poverty has rightly been a priority. Educational standards have risen. Childcare has been expanded. And children have been given a voice in national debates through the creation of a Minister for Children, three Children's Commissioners across the UK and a Director of Children's Services in every area.
These reforms were dependent on political choices that could only have been made by a progressive, centre-left government. Our commitment to social and economic justice and our recognition of the limits of the market are nowhere more evident than in our policies for children and families. For all the talk of 'family values' on the Right, only the left is willing to recognise that markets, left to their own devices, don't create flexible working for parents; that they don't provide support for new families in those vital early years of a child's life; and that they don't protect children from becoming targets for advertising before they even reach primary school.
Challenges ahead
Yet earlier this year we were reminded of the challenges that lie ahead by the widely reported comparative study by UNICEF on Children and Young People across the OECD. We should not be too defensive about the report's findings, because they point to something of significance. The report reveals a poverty that runs deeper than material issues. Holland, which sat at the top of the UNICEF table, is a similar economy, in many respects to, the UK and subject to the same pressures on modern childhood. But it has an entirely different approach to children and public space. The Dutch, for example, invented the 'Home Zone' concept--the woonerf--where children are actively encouraged to play in streets that aren't so much pedestrianised as 'peopled'.
Play spaces in Dutch towns and cities are rarely in sectioned off corners of the park but dotted throughout the public realm. We need to embed the concept of child friendly planning, now at the heart of housing policy, within our own policies for the built environment and open spaces. Children should be central to spatial planning principles and playable landscapes, not just the beneficiaries of the occasional playground, built as an afterthought to the main design.
Our public spaces are far more habitable than a decade ago. When I walk through my constituency in Tottenham, I see a marked difference from a decade ago--there are signs of the better living standards, higher aspirations and revitalised local economy. But the common areas of the public realm...
To continue reading
Request your trialCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
