The+Loss+Of+Outdoor+Spaces

=The Space That Doesn't Exist...= = =

As Collected By: Victoria Greco and Kevin Gold
The fact that few outdoor spaces remain for children to play, walk, or safely ride their bikes is one of the reasons indoor passive amusements are so attractive to children, according to the Alliance for Childhood. They also argue that even many playgrounds are relatively sterile, manufactured environments.

According to the federal government’s National Household Travel Survey, released in 2003, children age 5 and younger spend an average of about 65 minutes a day being driven around in vehicles. Children 6 to 18 spend about 61 minutes a day in vehicles—not including the time they spend on school buses. Daniel Swartz, former executive director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network. “We’re designing cities, school systems, neighborhoods, and life styles in a way that we can only get kids to things in cars” (3).

A traffic jam is one more stress on family life, as well as reducing the time for the best stress relievers: play and exercise.

Denying young children opportunities for physical activity and creative play can have a significant impact on their development. “It is possible,” writes Dr. Jeffrey Kane of Long Island University, “that if children do not have time to use their bodies to discover the world that they will greatly diminish, forever, their cognitive foundations for flexible, imaginative insight or understanding” (4).