Introduction

The objective of this chapter is to study the effects of a sustainable mobility object that has received little scholarly attention: the walking school bus (WSB). The chapter is based on a thesis work in urbanism and spatial planning (2018) and a project on the Emerging Risks of Sustainable Mobility (ANR-14-CE22-0010).

Ordinary as it may seem at first glance, the WSB has received extensive media coverage and political attention, as well as arousing genuine enthusiasm among some parents. While many have sought to promote it and advocate its qualities, it has featured little – one would say not enough – interest in the scientific community. Like other sustainable mobility objects (e.g. trams, selfservice bikes, ridesharing), this pedestrian version of the ‘school run’ has been targeted in communication campaigns intended to persuade people to shift their travel behaviours from the car to active modes, justified on the grounds of sustainable development and well-being (Pigalle 2021). Based on the concept of free modal choice, these publicity campaigns employ several discursive registers: empowerment, infantilisation, moralism or stigmatisation. They single out and classify ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behaviours, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ users. This application of ideology in public policies tends to individualise social problems and to discipline urban behaviours, an approach that undermines critical standpoints and the organisation of collective opposition to public policies (Reigner 2016). Several authors have already shown the negative effects of this type of framing in terms of socio-spatial inequalities (Reigner and Brenac 2019). This framing is found not only in mobility and transport policies, but is also observable in obesity prevention campaigns (Bergeron et al. 2019), campaigns on household waste sorting and collection (Barbier 2002; Dumain and Rocher 2017; Rumpala 1999), on lifestyle patterns justified on sustainable city grounds (Boissonade 2015), on the control of domestic energy consumption (Levy et al. 2014, 2; Roudil 2018) or on household diet where differences are in reality governed by socio-economic factors (Plessz et al. 2016).

It would therefore seem worthwhile to explore the effects of little studied objects like the WSB, which are highly sensitive and difficult to challenge when child well-being is involved.

The Journey to School as an Object of Study

The school journey is an important part of the daily lives of all children attending school. Various studies, from a wide range of disciplines, have highlighted benefits and risks related to children’s journeys to school, providing insightful data regarding modes of transportation, health and well-being issues, school organisation and legislation, safety, urban development, and so on. In the past decades, several researchers have shown the decline of children’s independent mobility, on the way to and from school too, and the increase in the number of children being driven to school by parents (Frauendienst and Redecker 2011; McDonald 2008; Pooley et al. 2005; Ross 2007). In a car, children barely have the opportunity to interact with the environment, nor to benefit from physical activity after sitting for several hours in a class. Others have highlighted the individual, social and health benefits of autonomous mobility on the way to school. Such a journey can support the links between the child and his or her social and natural environment (Hüttenmoser 2004). Realities, however, vary immensely depending on the context as well as parental fears, concerns, perceptions and attitudes towards children travelling without adult supervision. Most of these studies focus on issues related to road safety and health. Moreover, adults are the main subjects surveyed, while the voices of children are rarely heard on this object and their experiences are not seriously solicited. From the perspective of children’s rights and active participation, this book aims to highlight children’s views and voices on and about their school journeys, as a subject of study in its own right, as well as to shed light on what are the valuable inputs which can support the creation of child-friendly school journeys.

In this collective work, transitional space – also identified as third, intermediate or interstitial space – is one of the key unifying concepts through which we study the way to and from school. Such a concept allows both to make visible the conjunction of various spaces of life, often considered separate (Djaoui 2016; Flamand 2005), and to take their respective specificities into account. Transitional spaces thus testify to an otherness towards the places that frame and host them (Migliore 2014), underscoring the reciprocal relationship of influence between the individual and the environment.

Introduction

In an increasingly hectic world, the places children move through as part of their everyday geographies become more and more important. The school journey is particularly interesting from this perspective as it serves as an entry point to children’s mundane geographies and reveals the specific contexts in which children live their lives. How children get to school, whether they are able to walk on their own or are taken by car as well as the design of the neighbourhood shape how children can engage with their community.

This chapter focuses on children who walk to school. It highlights that what might seem as a rather unremarkable everyday walk to school has substantial meaning and affects identity processes, belonging and relationship to place through the many entanglements that occur between the child and place. The text is based on fieldwork performed in Stockholm, Sweden, and draws on several research projects on children’s environments and participation in urban planning (Cele 2006, 2015, 2019). This contribution focuses on children who walk unaccompanied by adults in urban environments. The interest of this study lies in the fact that if children can move around on their own, they are autonomous in their social and environmental relationships, which shape their identity, their relationships with place and their understanding of the world.

This text focuses on how the school journey provides an excellent opportunity to engage with the local environment. The three concepts encounters, interactions and relationships are central to the chapter. These concepts are a starting point for describing how place experiences unfold during children’s walks to school. While walking the environment presents itself to the child through various encounters that can be social, material or sensory. Through these encounters, some of which are transient whereas others are more important, the child interacts with the surrounding world. The concept of interaction stresses the importance of a physical and embodied meeting between the child and place. Through this interaction, relationships are formed with the material world, the people, the community as well as with plants and animals. Some of these relationships are physical interactions or social encounters, but it is important to recognise that some of these relationships partly take place within the child.

Introduction

This chapter explores how girls between the ages of 10 and 17 in Cape Town and Abuja conceptualise dangers during their daily experiences of travelling, particularly when walking or taking public transport to school or an after-school club. Within particular areas of these cities, girls fear various dangers when travelling to school, such as rape, gun violence, traffic accidents, human trafficking or theft, and sometimes are exposed to severe insecurities on those journeys.

This data shed light on how young girls in Cape Town and Abuja talk about dangers. Still, it is essential to bear in mind that their experiences in these locations are unique and not representative of people living in other parts of the respective cities. Older women in Abuja and Cape Town emphasised the unreliability and cost of transport in their area as a key concern and mentioned harassment or dangers less frequently but emphasised that they still needed to travel despite these difficulties (Porter et al. 2021).

The children in Cape Town came from within and close by our two focus study sites (one inside and one outside the city boundary). Some of the children who participated in the focus group discussions – but not all – were from an area with a long history of gang violence – which is not necessarily typical of other townships around the city. In Abuja, our respondents, who were all girls, came from a satellite town outside the city boundary and another low-income neighbourhood located within the city boundary. In both sites, there are limited transport options, violence and traffic insecurities that were not commonplace all over the city. Just like many others, the respondents frequently travelled into the city centres, or travelled to school in their neighbourhoods.

In this chapter, Oldenburg’s theory of the third place is discussed in relation to studies of transport and security in the research’s city contexts, bearing in mind that his theory is developed in a very different setting. In his famous essay ‘The Third Place’, Oldenburg (1999) details how people in the United States enjoy so-called third places that allow them to meet informally – for instance, supermarkets, pubs or a street corner.

Introduction

When children’s well-being is compromised by their urban environments, the social sustainability of our cities is in question. Neighbourhoods are the fundamental unit of everyday experience for most children outside of home and school, offering varying opportunities for safe independent mobility, outdoor play and social interaction (Carroll et al. 2015). They not only determine the routines of everyday life but also strongly influence children’s physical, social and cognitive development and well-being (Lalli 1992; Min and Lee 2006; Tranter and Pawson 2001). Children learn through playful interaction with their surroundings and experiences of place contribute to child development (Moore 1986; Waygood et al. 2017). Play has often been called ‘the work of childhood’ (Piaget 1982).

Being out and about and playing in the public domain, once considered ‘a rite of passage of childhood’ (Alexander et al. 2014), has decreased in Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ) as elsewhere (Carroll et al. 2015; Egli et al. 2020). So has that other childhood ‘rite of passage’, walking to and from school (Ministry of Transport 2009; Shaw et al. 2015). As walking to and from school affords many occasions for play and socialising along the way (Smith et al. 2020), these opportunities have diminished with its decline – including socialising with shop owners and other adults in the community (Carroll et al. 2015; Waygood and Friman 2015; Wood et al. 2010).

Cities are largely designed for adults and motor vehicles, not for children; ‘child blind’ urban planning (Gleeson and Sipe 2006) and safety discourses combine to limit children’s presence and play outside of home, school and child-designated destinations such as sportsgrounds, playgrounds and skateparks (Freeman and Tranter 2011; Randolph 2006; Woolley 2017). Indeed, children are rendered largely out of place in other public space, even though a city’s streets, alleyways, footpaths and verges – the places between destinations – remain important for everyday play and independent mobility. Formerly sites for play, city streets have been essentially transformed into ‘adult-only’ spaces (Karsten 2005). However, for some children at least, ‘the street’ still trumps backyards, sportsgrounds, parks and playgrounds as preferred outdoor space for play and hanging out with friends (Thomson and Philo 2004).