Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we put our kids in charge of the village.
I say that not to take anything away from the grown-ups who make the brave choice to enter into the thankless yet vital job of public service. But to paraphrase Fran Lebowitz: Little children are more original than adults because they aren’t yet filled with cliches.
Our children are unencumbered by the status quo, by the way things have always been done. They bring a clear-eyed vision to what could be, and they state it plainly.
My 8-year-old daughter intuitively grasps concepts that many adults refuse to see, no matter how strong the evidence. One night my husband and I were discussing the challenges Oak Park is facing around homelessness, and she overheard us. Without lifting her pencil from her drawing, she piped up matter-of-factly: “It’s because we have too many houses.”
I looked at her incredulously. Too many houses? Say more about that, Naomi!
“We need more apartments. They’re cheaper and you can have more of them.”
I stood up and gave her a slow clap right there in the dining room. Naomi, are you referring to research that shows cities with restrictive single-family zoning have higher homelessness rates because limiting apartments drives up housing costs for everyone? And that allowing more apartments increases housing supply, keeps rents affordable, and prevents the cycle of eviction and housing loss that leads to homelessness?
Of course she wasn’t. The concept just made logical sense to her, and she came to it on her own.
Someone get Naomi on the Shape Oak Park Steering Committee, stat! Perhaps what we’ve needed all along is an 8-year-old to finally put the tired concerns about parking and property values in perspective.
And don’t count my 5-year-old out. Children see the world very differently than we do, giving us new perspectives on things we take to be normal. The other day we drove by a crossing guard, and she wondered out loud, “Why is that stop sign connected to a human?”
Why indeed, Margot? Is that stop sign connected to a human because we’ve designed streets for cars to move quickly rather than for people to cross safely? Because our car-centric culture means we cannot trust our fellow humans to safely drive 4,000 pound weapons of mass destruction around our community? That our solution to keeping kids safe is deploying an army of human-connected stop signs, putting their own bodies at risk every day for the sake of our children?
Calling Public Works! Our implementation of the Vision Zero plan needs Margot’s bold questions at the table. Our infrastructure decisions could use a few 5-year-olds relentlessly asking us “Why?” a dozen times to challenge our assumptions and pave the way for new understanding.
Here’s my bold idea: an elementary school council that weighs in on all of the village’s planning efforts and infrastructure decisions. Their perspective would weigh just as heavily as any other group, their ideas perhaps taken even more seriously.
If the children are the future, let’s let them take a leading role in designing it.
Nicole Chavas is an Oak Park resident who leads a sustainable planning and design firm. She is also an unbelievably proud Mom.