The first time I was allowed to go anywhere by myself was at age 8, when my family lived in Georgian Towers in downtown Silver Spring. But it’s not like the car-bound kids in Germantown and Olney weren’t doing that, and it’s a lot harder to hide destructive behaviors when you’re not in a two-ton vehicle.
#UNWALKABLE NEIGHBORHOODS MOVIE#
Some of the kids who walk to downtown Bethesda, for instance, might’ve gone to buy drugs at the movie theatre on Wisconsin Avenue. Of course, kids who can actually get around on their own two feet might do some unsavory things. Scott Doyon at the PlaceShakers blog also notes that these places give kids the valuable opportunity to make mistakes:įor a child, having increasing opportunities to navigate the world around them, explore, invent, fall down, scrape knees, make decisions, screw up, get into - and solve - conflicts and, ultimately, achieve a sense of personal identity and self-sufficiency is a good thing.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/45980762/shutterstock_204649942.0.0.jpg "unwalkable neighborhoods")
Rockville, with its new town center and excellent bike network, isn’t far behind. That sounds a lot like Takoma Park, Bethesda, or below-the-Beltway Silver Spring. So the ideal place for a teenager is probably a neighborhood with sidewalks and bike lanes, ample public transit, and one which has schools, shops, and hangouts located within close range to home. They’re given the tools for their own independence and self-discovery. A 15-year-old who can get around town on foot, on transit, or by bike or skateboard isn’t just a convenience for their parents, who don’t have to shuttle them around after school. What do teenagers need? The ability to get around without a driver’s license, for starters.
There is nothing for them to do on their own. There is no place to which they can escape and join their own kind.
He or she paces, looks unhappy or uncomfortable, and by the second day is putting heavy pressure on the parents to leave. The adolescent houseguest, I would suggest, is probably the best and quickest test of the vitality of the neighborhood the visiting teenager in the subdivision soon acts like an animal in a cage. Twenty years ago, sociologist Ray Oldenburg wrote in The Great, Good Place that teenagers are a litmus test for a neighborhood’s “vitality”: But good, urban neighborhoods can produce good kids as well. We assume that kids belong in the suburbs, where they’ve got yards to play in and great schools to learn in.
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