Streets for Kids, The Clean Cities Campaign

Ziele/Ideen

There are a few key issues that our campaign targets. First, we advocate for school streets as they directly address child safety by implementing a variety of traffic-calming measures. These efforts help minimise the risk of accidents involving children who walk or cycle to school. Additionally, by advocating for reduced vehicle emissions near schools, the negative physical and mental impacts of poor air quality decreases. This is particularly important for children as they are more susceptible than adults to the harmful effects of pollution. School streets also promote active mobility — helping to reduce reliance on cars and championing physical activity among children. Lastly, this campaign fosters community involvement, encouraging parents, teachers, and local residents to participate in the creation of a more livable local environment. This type of engagement often raises awareness about the benefits of sustainable transport and helps build community support for long-term changes.

Kurzbeschreibung

The Streets for Kids campaign is a European urban movement dedicated to ensuring that every child can walk, cycle, and scoot to school safely, free from the dangers of hazardous roads and toxic air pollution. Launched in 2022, this initiative is united by the ambitious goal of establishing a school street in front of every urban school by 2030. By organising hundreds of impactful local activities, our campaign aims to raise awareness and drive policy changes to create safer and healthier urban environments for our children. Our inaugural Streets for Kids Day of Action saw 389 events in 233 cities in 18 countries — a wild success that highlighted how needed this campaign was across Europe. These actions — ranging from street parties to bike buses and pop-up cafés — played a vital role in spreading the word that our children need safe spaces around schools. Since then, we’ve ballooned to hosting more than 1,900 events with tangible victories throughout scores of cities.

Resultate

In the past three years since the Streets for Kids Campaign started, we have achieved a broad level of participation on the ground changes in cities all across Europe:
- 500+ groups and a total of 150,000 people have joined our days of actions
- 300+ new school streets are planned across Europe in Spain, France, Germany and Poland, with over +200 new school streets promised in Italy alone. Over 80 projects were submitted and approved by the city of Milan and their mobility and urban planning agency
- 50+ school streets have been implemented due to our efforts in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, UK, Poland, Belgium and Hungary
- School streets have been introduced in the Austrian traffic law, recently permitted in North Rhine-Westphalia
- Creation of a working group planning future school streets with the Warsaw Road Transport Secretariat
- Presented the campaign at EU national transport ministries meeting facilitated by the EU Commission at the EU High Level Group on Road Safety

Partner

Kidical Mass Köln Germany: Active partnership

Respire Association Paris: Streets for Kids grantee, partner

La Rue Est À Nous Lyon: Streets for Kids grantee, partner

Rodzic w mieście Poland: Active partner

Revuelta Escolar Barcelona Eduardo: active partner

Filter Café Filtré-Atelier Belgium: active partner