They are on our side -really

 This is where I lived from the age of about 6 to 18. I and my friends used to play football here. And the tarmac strips across the street ( no humps) were the tennis net for a game of tennis.  No chance now - all given over to cars .

I  picked up on a RSS feed the blog posting about traffic engineering from the blog entry Confessions of a Recovering Engineer , on the Strong Towns website. A refreshing read.  That towns should exist for people. The first bit that struck me was :

An engineer designing a street or road prioritizes the world in this way, no matter how they are instructed: 

1. Traffic speed
2. Traffic volume
3. Safety
4. Cost

The rest of the world generally would prioritize things differently, as follows: 

1. Safety
2. Cost
3. Traffic volume
4. Traffic speed

I came across the article in the daily Mail - half of children never play in the street  .

 And then I had a look at Google Maps at the street where i grew up and used to play tennis, football, cricket and ride my bike from the age of about 8.

And the comments thread (now closed) also has some interesting comments
Much is US - inclined and centres around cheap petroleum for vehicles
some random things that struck me from the article and comments

• narrow streets = safe streets
• Mobility is related to economic prosperity ( or is it the other way round) 
• should the street ( public space) be the place were you can expect to leave  you private property  (your car )