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3 days ago
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In the debate about fairer mobility, one aspect that has long been overlooked is increasingly coming to the fore: the systematic discrimination of children in public spaces — an expression of adultism*, i.e. the structural dominance of adults over children.
This power mechanism is particularly visible in car-centric transport systems. In my book ‘Raus aus der Autokratie’ (Out of Autocracy), I describe how deeply adultism is ingrained in our cities — and how it robs children of what they need most: freedom, movement and self-efficacy.
This was not always the case.
In the 1950s, it was still normal for children to walk to school alone, play in the streets and explore their surroundings on foot or by bike. The street was a living space, not a thoroughfare. However, with the rapid increase in motorised private transport, the picture changed fundamentally: street space became increasingly subordinated to cars. Pavements became narrower, play streets disappeared, and suddenly children moving around in public spaces were considered a traffic hazard.
This development was not accidental.
It is an expression of a mindset that idealises the car as a symbol of progress, freedom and prosperity — and marginalises people who do not conform to this norm. For children, this means that their freedom of movement is restricted and their needs for safety, play and participation are ignored. Instead of walking or cycling independently, they are transported by their parents — often out of fear of the car traffic that prevents them from walking in the first place.
This is where adultism manifests itself in two ways:
on the one hand, in the infrastructural priority given to adults and their mobility needs by car. On the other hand, in the disempowerment of children, who are not trusted to move around independently in public spaces — even though this is essential for their physical health, social skills and cognitive development. Studies show that children who regularly travel alone develop better orientation skills, strengthen their personal responsibility and experience self-efficacy. The daily journey to school on foot or by bike is much more than just transport — it is education in the best sense of the word.
But in a car-friendly city, there is hardly any room for this.
The street becomes a high-risk area where children are taught to be passive road users — protected by parent taxis, fenced-off playgrounds or road safety lessons that mainly teach them how dangerous everything is. What they need most of all is a city that gives them space. Traffic-calmed zones, safe cycle paths, school streets without car traffic — these would be steps towards a child-friendly city and, at the same time, an act of de-adultising transport thinking.
Adultism does not begin with personal condescension towards children, but where their needs are systematically ignored. A car-centric transport system is not only harmful to the climate and socially unjust, but also hostile to future generations. It creates dependency, isolation and a lack of exercise — and reinforces a power imbalance that reduces children to objects of traffic welfare instead of enabling them to participate fully.
A mobility transition, as I am calling for, is therefore also a cultural policy measure.
It means giving children back the space that an adult, car-obsessed society has taken away from them. And it means criticising adultism not only in educational contexts, but wherever it has a structural impact — including on the streets. Because freedom begins with movement. And that belongs to everyone. Even the youngest among us.
Children must constantly adapt to our adult world; only in spaces created for them does this world correspond to their reach and grasp. This means that our world is full of barriers that prevent children from going on their own journeys of discovery. In some cases, our world is even designed to be so hostile to them that they can only navigate it when accompanied by adults. ‘This reinforces the dependence of the smaller on the larger. But adult norms are not only reflected in architecture. For example, […] the inlet of pollutant measuring stations must ‘always be at a height between 1.5 metres (breathing zone) and 4 metres above the ground’, even though smaller children in a phase of physical development suffer significantly more from exhaust fumes than adults.”19
What do you think as you read this? Are you breathing as deeply as I always do when I come across facts like this? Not only are children one of the most vulnerable groups in a transport system that has surrendered to the car, not only do they spend almost their entire childhood accompanied by adults, but even their physical health is being put at risk by adult ‘rules of the game’. Anyone who knows children knows that they breathe much faster than adults. Air pollution therefore affects them more, not only because they breathe where the exhaust fumes are, but also because they breathe more often than we do as adults. Children breathe the air they need to live where exhaust fumes and the world’s largest source of microplastics are found: car tyres.
The Manifesto of the Free Road states: ‘Babies and toddlers in prams inhale up to 44 per cent more pollutants than the adults accompanying them. Since children’s bodies are also more susceptible to inflammation and other diseases caused by air pollutants, the consequences can be lifelong. Studies also show that fine dust pollution reduces lung growth in children living on main roads compared to children living 1.5 kilometres or more away from them.”20
I also remember the silence after the noise, the world in lockdown during the first phase after the outbreak of the pandemic. As we moved back towards a long-awaited new normality, many people around me had become very sensitive to noise. They first had to get used to how loud life is next to cars, even though they had hardly noticed the annoying noises before.
‘Children are particularly sensitive to constant noise because they are less able to compensate for chronic stress than adults. Concentration problems in children exposed to noise are therefore particularly frequently described in scientific literature,’ explains Mazda Adli. ’For every five decibel increase in aircraft noise at school and at home, it took two months longer for children to learn to read.’
At this point, I would like to return to Maria Vassilakou. Her vision is a city ‘where we live because we want to, not because we have to. One of the reasons young couples leave the city when their first child is on the way is that they say: Well, now we have to get a little house in the countryside so that our child can have a happy childhood. And then they spend the rest of their lives in their cars. That’s why I say: before our cities spread out like a carpet of single-family homes into the prairie, we have to offer these qualities within the city. And if you want to do that, you very quickly realise that there isn’t enough space. Space is a limited commodity in the city.’ So space has to be redistributed and redesigned. For example, by drastically reducing parking spaces in public spaces and accommodating cars elsewhere wherever possible: in collective garages, for example, wherever possible outside, on the outskirts of neighbourhoods. ‘You’ll have to speed up public transport, you’ll have to invest in cycling, and you’ll inevitably realise, also in the wake of global warming, that roads are the arteries of a green space network.’
It is becoming clear that the entire urban fabric can change for the better for everyone if the city no longer revolves around cars, but around children. Anyone who is serious about making a city child-friendly has a lot of work ahead of them. ‘Getting out of the car-friendly city’ is certainly not a quick task, but with the appropriate political will, there is a clear direction: reversing the current spatial injustice that prioritises cars in favour of a people-friendly city that focuses on children. So many things are shaped during childhood — it is disastrous that we have adjusted our spaces in such a way that they are diametrically opposed to children’s movement patterns, which encourage them to look into corners with curiosity and want to find and experience their own paths.
Excerpt from my second (german) bestseller, ‘Raus aus der Autokratie — rein in die Mobilität von morgen!’ (Out of Autocracy — Into Tomorrow’s Mobility!), which I still hope will soon be published in other languages. After all, the problems and solutions of a car-centric world are global.
Contact me, if you are an international publisher!
*Adultism is understood as the oppression experienced by children and young people at the hands of adults and adult-produced/adult-tailored systems. It relates to the socio-political status differentials and power relations endemic to adult-child relations. Adultism may include experiences of individual prejudice, discrimination, violence and abuse as well as and systemic oppression. At an individual level, it is characterized by adult authoritarianism towardsocial control children and adult-centric perspectives in interacting with children and in understanding children’s experiences. Systemic adultism is characterised by adult-centric legislation, policies, rules and practices that are embedded within social structures and institutions which impact negatively on children’s daily lives and result in disadvantage and oppressive social relations.
