Can we be friends with the public space?
Once or twice a week Jon and I play basketball in the morning at park close to home. It's a good way to jump start our sleepy brains. We often meet daycare teachers and the babies they care for in the playground beside the basketball court. This morning they got me thinking. Our relationship to the urban public space is shaped by habits we acquire very early. Right from an early age, the kids in my neighbourhood learn that it is OK to go to the park to play. The teachers take their groups of toddlers there. In fact, they usually walk there, sometimes carrying the kids on a cart, other times, the kids walk holding a line so they don't go astray. They never drive! No way this would happen in São Paulo. When I was a kid, I played in the playgrounds in the daycare yard, surrounded by tall fences with spears on top. My teachers never took the students outside the premises. Trips only started to happen when I was older, in primary school, and they usually required the parents t...