No More Tokenism, It Is Time To Listen To Children’s Voices In Politics
Perspectives | Children in the Streets | Amsterdam, Netherlands
In July 2024, Michela Grasso followed the “Children of Woest” as they took a stand in front of the alderman’s office, dressed in bright yellow t-shirts, protesting the shrinking number and size of playgrounds in Amsterdam. Her account of the event caught the attention of BIKE TALK, sparking a deeper exploration into what this movement means and what lessons other cities can draw from it - listen to it here:
Since then, Michela has delved further into the role of children in shaping urban spaces. True to her immersive reportage style, she joined young activists once again—this time inside Amsterdam’s council chamber—where they challenged policymakers with simple yet powerful questions about street safety. Read on to discover how their voices are exposing critical gaps in urban design and reclaiming space for play, movement, and community.
Children are often disregarded as uninterested, powerless and not competent enough to engage in discussions and political actions. However, research shows that children are interested in politics and its mechanisms, but aren’t given opportunities to meaningfully learn and act in political processes (Janmaat and Hoskins, 2021; Bartos, 2015). In the European Union, many initiatives aim to engage children in decision-making processes, such as youth parliaments and children assemblies, tasked with drafting policy recommendations and voting on proposals. While commendable, these initiatives are limited to a relatively small number of children, which raises questions about who is in and who is left out. For example, research has shown that despite showing interest in politics, children growing up in families with a low-socioeconomic status, are more likely to become uninterested by the time they become teenagers (Janmaat and Hoskins, 2021).
Recently, 7 children (ages 10-11) were given front seats in the City of Amsterdam’s council chambers, to question their city’s Mayor and councilors on issues close to their hearts. Isla, Amaana, Ezra, Oumnia, Geeke, Jabir and Lois bravely spoke up, inquiring about all kind of urgent, important topics:
“What does the municipality do to ensure that all kids are safe and happy in the city?”
“What is your main goal for children in Amsterdam?”
“What is the municipality doing for climate change?”
“What are you doing for poverty in the city?”
“What exactly is the job of the mayor?”
“Is it true that there are too many tourists? What is the municipality doing about this?”
“How can you give children more freedom to be independent in the city? What are you doing to prevent cars from speeding and taking up so much space?”
One by one, their questions were “answered” by Mayor Halsema or other Councillors. The Gemeente (municipality) of Amsterdam, has been trying to further engage children in political processes more and more in past years. Recently, a Kinder Raad (children’s council) started, tasked with presenting 3 policy actions a year to ensure the creation of a safer and healthier environment for children. But besides creating policies tailored for children’s well-being, the real aim of initiatives such as Kinder Raad and KinderenVragenuur (children question hour), is to allow children to experience what politics is, and to show them how everyday citizens can participate in political processes.
How can engaging children in politics be more than symbolic?
In Amsterdam, the children's question hour happens once a year and includes a maximum of ten children. Raising doubts on the tokenism of the initiative, which seems to be more symbolic than meaningful. Does it encourage mutual learning, or simply ‘teaches’ children the performativity of politics? Nonetheless, speaking in front of the aldermen of a capital city and questioning them, not only shows great bravery from the children, but also a great willingness to participate and be part of their city’s present and future. Being able to understand the permeability of politics in everyday life, from the position of a traffic sign on a street to what is written in a newspaper, is the key to the creation of an engaged citizen, young or old. For this reason, all children should be given the possibility to be listened to by public authorities, to ensure that their needs, concerns and ideas are taken into account when making decisions for a city’s future.
What about traffic policy?
During the question hour. Isla, a 10-year old girl, asked Mayor Halsema an intricate question “How can you give more freedom to kids to move independently in the city?”. She went on to ask three more questions:
Can you make the sidewalks bigger for children to play outside, so that the parents can be more relaxed at the idea of their kids playing on the street?
Can you make the streets safer to let children play outside, with more grass and playgrounds?
Cars go very fast on the street, making it unsafe for children, can you solve that?
Beside asking very complex and well articulated questions, which show that children are perfectly capable of engaging with politics when given the opportunity, Isla touched upon some very important points. Research shows that in the Netherlands, about 400,000 children between 6 and 12 years old never play outside, due to safety concerns and lack of playgrounds. For this reason, in July 2024, a children's protest to demand more playgrounds took place outside the Stopera. The questions asked by Isla are a consequence of the current situation, and of the limited space that is available for children to play. Femke Halsema responded by recognizing that compared to older generations, the children of today do not have the same possibility to be outside as their parents or grandparents. The street, which for most of human history has been a space to play and be together, is now occupied by cars and parents fear for the risk that traffic poses to their children’s safety. As explained by Halsema, Amsterdam is trying to regulate this problem, by decreasing the speed limit in the city to 30km/h, and creating more car-free areas.
The disappearance of children from public spaces is a serious issue, because it legitimizes their absence from planning practices and political forums, leaving them voiceless. By touching upon the topic of parents’ anxiety towards outdoor play, Isla inadvertently highlighted the consequence of years of car-centric discourses that have permeated the media and everyday lives. The Councillor of Traffic, Melanie van der Horst, also reacted to the question: “Moms and dads want their cars right in front of their doors. You kids need to complain about this. You need to organize. You need to protest.”
The paper “Our culturally maladaptive transport discourses are continuing to fail our children” by Gilbert and te Brömmelstroet (2024), precisely looks at this issue. When talking about maladaptive practices, the authors refer to the “propensity of a culture to influence people’s mindsets in ways that result in activities that are not only nonsensical in the extreme but also sometimes cruel, destructive and contrary to nature” quote by Boyden (2016,77). In this case, the fact that hundreds of thousands of children do not play outside, should raise great concern for parents and in government offices; especially considering that contact with the outside world is essential to children’s wellbeing and development. However, the issue of outdoor play is tackled in the wrong way, often by limiting the spaces for children and by putting the burden of safety and security not on cars (the cause of danger), but on the children and their parents (the potential victims). In addition, in recent years children’s out-of-school life has been dominated by adult-led organised activities, rather than free play; which increased a culture of car-chauffeuring and car-dependency (Silonsaari et al., 2024). This mindset led to the removal of children from public places, filling those same streets that were once the stage for creative play, with rows of parked cars next to tiny sidewalks.
“Instead of creating specific places for children, it is necessary to embed child-friendliness within everyday public spaces”. (Gilbert and te Brömmelstroet, 2024). In the same way that we can start creating a child-friendly city, where future generations can experiment and allow themselves to run around and fall without the fear of being crushed by a motorized vehicle, we need to create child-friendly spaces and discourses for children to experience democracy.
From children forums at school to design public space in a collaborative effort, to safe areas for children during protests and demonstrations for the safe expression of their concern and demands in a collective manner; children deserve the possibility to discover the value of democratic processes. What the Gemeente of Amsterdam is doing is a great start, but we must think outside the lines of the decision making processes that we are familiar with, and perhaps begin by asking children themselves how they would like to be engaged in politics. So perhaps, a new proverb can emerge, “Give a child a park, and they will play for the day; teach a child to engage in the political process to plan a park, and they will play for a lifetime”.
Written by Michela Grasso, Researcher at Urban Cycling Institute
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Sources
Bartos, A.E. (2015). Children and Young People’s Political Participation: A Critical Analysis. In: Kallio, K., Mills, S., Skelton, T. (eds) Politics, Citizenship and Rights. Geographies of Children and Young People, vol 7. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-94-1_1-1
Gilbert, Hulya, and Marco te Brömmelstroet (2023) “Our Culturally Maladaptive Transport Discourses Are Continuing to Fail Our Children.” Children’s Geographies 22 (2): 241–48. doi:10.1080/14733285.2023.2270444.
Janmaat, J. G. and Hoskins, B. (2021). “Young children all find politics engaging but by 15 this has changed- new research shows why,” on The conversation
Silonsaari,J., Simula, M., te Brömmelstroet, M., (2024) “From intensive car-parenting to enabling childhood velonomy? Explaining parents’ representations of children’s leisure mobilities.” Mobilities, 19:1, 116-133, DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2023.2200146
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