When We Were Kings and Queens…* collaborative project explores the ways in which people travelled to school, generally unsupervised by adults, when there was less reliance on cars as a means of transport, where children could safely and freely cycle their bikes around the roads without high levels of imminent danger, and indeed when we turned more to physical or pedestrian modes of transport, or buses, rather than an increased use of cars.

‘When We Were Kings and Queens of the Road’ emerges as a critical intervention in contemporary debates about children’s spatial agency and urban design. The project uses perspective as a diagnostic tool to understand what we’ve perhaps lost and what we might reclaim in terms of children’s autonomous mobility.