Take back the streets
Long before helicopter parenting and liability-averse city councillors and bureaucrats, there was a special sound to summer. It was the laughter, cheers and whoops of delight from kids as they played ball hockey and basketball on neighbourhood roads until the street lights came on and their parents summoned them home from nearby front porches or balconies.
Now, with street hockey and basketball banned by the City of Toronto, the roadways are practically empty of all but motorized vehicles. Children have fewer opportunities to meet other kids in the neighbourhood and play the games that used to enthrall them for hours on end.
Where they once happily played outside their own homes, they now must be driven to organized activities where they interact with kids — who likely live nowhere near them — for an hour or two. Or they can always stay inside on a gorgeous summer day and watch TV or stare at a computer screen.
There’s a chance this could all change for the better this week if Toronto’s city council has the courage to say “yes” to letting kids play on local streets and “no” to a recommendation from the city’s transportation services department that it uphold the municipal code rule that bans street hockey and basketball.
What’s more, city councillors who favour allowing road play on local streets with speed limits of 40 km/h or less, including Christin Carmichael Greb and Josh Matlow, have a new ally: Ontario’s children and youth services minister, Michael Coteau. He is rightly urging city council to lift the road-sports ban.
Coteau points to the obvious health benefits of play as well as the relationships kids build and the sense of belonging they acquire by spending more time playing in their own neighbourhoods. They gain “an understanding of social rules, relationship building, learning how to compromise with others, patience and perseverance, teamwork and a sense of belonging.”
Informal street play has other benefits, the minister notes: it can “strengthen community bonds, bring parents together and put more ‘eyes on the street.’ ” It can also reduce speeding and reckless driving on side streets.
As a provincial minister, Coteau has no formal voice in what city council does. But he has done a service by pointing out the obvious. It’s high time kids and families were allowed to take back their neighbourhood streets. City council should vote to allow them to do so.