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A Tale of Two Cities: Unpacking the Success and Failure of School Street Interventions in Two Canadian Cities

One innovative strategy to support child-friendly cities is street-based interventions that provide safe, vehicle-free spaces for children to play and move about freely. School streets are one such innovation involving closing streets around elementary schools to vehicular traffic to improve childre...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Smith, Laura E., Gosselin, Veronique, Collins, Patricia, Frohlich, Katherine L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517135/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36141827
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811555
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author Smith, Laura E.
Gosselin, Veronique
Collins, Patricia
Frohlich, Katherine L.
author_facet Smith, Laura E.
Gosselin, Veronique
Collins, Patricia
Frohlich, Katherine L.
author_sort Smith, Laura E.
collection PubMed
description One innovative strategy to support child-friendly cities is street-based interventions that provide safe, vehicle-free spaces for children to play and move about freely. School streets are one such innovation involving closing streets around elementary schools to vehicular traffic to improve children’s safety as they come and go from school while providing opportunities for children to play and socialize on the street. Launching these initiatives in communities dominated by automobiles is enormously challenging and little is known about why these interventions are successfully launched in some places but not others. As part of a larger research project called Levelling the Playing Fields, two School Street initiatives were planned for the 2021–2022 school year; one initiative was successfully launched in Kingston, ON, while the second initiative failed to launch in Montreal, QC. Using a critical realist evaluation methodology, this paper documents the contextual elements and key mechanisms that enabled and constrained the launch of these School Streets in these cities, through document analysis and key informant interviews. Our results suggest that municipal and school support for the initiative are both imperative to establishing legitimacy and collaborative governance, both of which were necessary for a successful launch.
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spelling pubmed-95171352022-09-29 A Tale of Two Cities: Unpacking the Success and Failure of School Street Interventions in Two Canadian Cities Smith, Laura E. Gosselin, Veronique Collins, Patricia Frohlich, Katherine L. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article One innovative strategy to support child-friendly cities is street-based interventions that provide safe, vehicle-free spaces for children to play and move about freely. School streets are one such innovation involving closing streets around elementary schools to vehicular traffic to improve children’s safety as they come and go from school while providing opportunities for children to play and socialize on the street. Launching these initiatives in communities dominated by automobiles is enormously challenging and little is known about why these interventions are successfully launched in some places but not others. As part of a larger research project called Levelling the Playing Fields, two School Street initiatives were planned for the 2021–2022 school year; one initiative was successfully launched in Kingston, ON, while the second initiative failed to launch in Montreal, QC. Using a critical realist evaluation methodology, this paper documents the contextual elements and key mechanisms that enabled and constrained the launch of these School Streets in these cities, through document analysis and key informant interviews. Our results suggest that municipal and school support for the initiative are both imperative to establishing legitimacy and collaborative governance, both of which were necessary for a successful launch. MDPI 2022-09-14 /pmc/articles/PMC9517135/ /pubmed/36141827 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811555 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Smith, Laura E.
Gosselin, Veronique
Collins, Patricia
Frohlich, Katherine L.
A Tale of Two Cities: Unpacking the Success and Failure of School Street Interventions in Two Canadian Cities
title A Tale of Two Cities: Unpacking the Success and Failure of School Street Interventions in Two Canadian Cities
title_full A Tale of Two Cities: Unpacking the Success and Failure of School Street Interventions in Two Canadian Cities
title_fullStr A Tale of Two Cities: Unpacking the Success and Failure of School Street Interventions in Two Canadian Cities
title_full_unstemmed A Tale of Two Cities: Unpacking the Success and Failure of School Street Interventions in Two Canadian Cities
title_short A Tale of Two Cities: Unpacking the Success and Failure of School Street Interventions in Two Canadian Cities
title_sort tale of two cities: unpacking the success and failure of school street interventions in two canadian cities
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517135/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36141827
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811555
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