Streets Are Not For Children
But a 100 years ago they were.
Starting around the 1920s, streets were taken away from children (and then from the rest of us as well). There are very few people alive today who remember this history. Now public educations campaigns like the ones shown below are unnecessary. They have been internalized and we teach our children these lessons ourselves.
1927
1923 (Massachussetts Safety Council)
1932 (Chicago Motor Club)
1927 (AAA)
(Images taken from a great book by Peter Norton called Fighting Traffic.)
5 Responses
Wow. What utterly backwards thinking. The poster by the AAA is particularly disturbingly fascist.
The problem was not, is not, and has never been children playing in the street. It’s allowing ridiculously overpowered, heavy, polluting steel behemoths on our residential streets.
To be fair, I think that last one is directed at the motorist.
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