Children In The City

Many families do not feel it is safe enough for children to live in the city. Sensational stories sell papers and when anything bad happens to one of our planet's children we are instantly told. Thus, as many have mentioned recently, we do not let our children roam free to play in neighborhoods and time is too structured for them in many places.

Just as traffic is carefully designed to move from slow streets to faster and faster ones, safety can be designed in the city in similar fashion. City planners can designate a hierarchy of street safety with well lit, officer on each corner streets giving way to streets well lit with officer viewable stations at strategic places to streets with storefront glass and well lit to only well lit. 

There is no reason why we cannot approach child's safety with the same intensity and engineer-like methodology as the attention traffic gets. This is the first step to establishing a sustainable compact neighborhoods way of life here in Maine.