In the seventies, several movements, reacting to car-centred planning and mobility, flourished in central and north Europe. The movements were focused on socio-educational, environmental, and town planning matters aiming at urban renewal through participatory processes.

The experiences focused above all on traffic calming interventions, reducing the vehicular traffic flow and speed thus giving the streets and public spaces back to citizens. The Dutch woonerf (1976) were undoubtedly the first legislative provision going in this direction. Similar interventions were realized, among the others, in Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, and United Kingdom. In Italy, these interventions began to be applied in the nineties, especially in the northern regions. That was the same period in which participatory actions were carried out involving children in planning green spaces, safe route to school, schoolyards.

A prominent, even if disregarded, role was played by the body, regaining the public space for playing, commuting, walking, cycling in the urban public spaces. One of the strongest motivation was the aim to give back to children spaces for playing and freedom of roaming around the neighbourhoods.

Since the nineties, the growing sustainability paradigm began to offer a general frame to forward-looking countries and local authorities. Over the last decade, a new wave of overall planning approaches fostered this tendency: shared spaces, vision zero, people first, car free cities among the others.

In this light, the emergent Active Cities approach has been firstly promoted by the public health sector (Edward and Tsouros-WHO Europe, 2008), and investigated through town planning, socio-educational, and physical activity perspectives (Borgogni, 2012; SUSTRANS, 2015). The key point of the approach is to enhance the opportunities to be physically active. The original aim of the WHO was to promote active lifestyles in the urban environment to fight against inactivity-related health issues like non-communicable-diseases, aware that the development should encompass infrastructural, social, educational, and mobility policies and actions.

Despite the above-mentioned approaches and some scattered interventions, in many European cities, the groups of citizens frailer from the independent mobility viewpoint (children, elderly, disabled) are still encountering difficulties in moving autonomously. The lack of autonomy affects people’s health, directly reducing their opportunities to learn, to socialize, to be physically active in the informal contexts offered by the public space.

On this frame, the decline of children’s autonomy is a recognized concern. The comparative research Children's Independent Mobility (Shaw et al., 2015), which had been carried out in sixteen countries involving children 7 to 15 years old, shows as Finland is the country in which they are more autonomous followed by Germany, Norway, and Sweden while Italy and Portugal are the last European countries. Overall, children in Italy are about three to four years behind the first-ranked countries on the freedom to be independent in several kinds of mobility. More precisely, children’s autonomy in walk to school routes in Italy (7%) is much lower than in England (41%) and Germany (40%) (Renzi, Prisco, Tonucci, 2014).

The Italian situation is, somehow, unique: in fact, due to legal restrictions, it is not permitted for a child under 14 to roam independently. These normative restrictions have been incorporated in the primary schools’ regulations leading to an overall prohibition to exit school without being picked up by an adult. Playing (Gray, 2011), walking and cycling (Mackett, 2013) independently seem to be unperceived rights, children’s rights adults are not accustomed to respect (Borgogni, 2016).

Arduini M., Borgogni A., Capelli G. (2016). The walk to school actions and portable devices as means to promote children’s active lifestyle, in Novak D., Antala B., Knjaz D., Physical Education and New Technologies. Zagreb: Croatian Kinesiology Association, 19-25. Balzani M., Borgogni A. (2003). The Body Goes to the City project: Research on safe route to school and playgrounds in Ferrara. In Mira R.G, Sabucedo Cameselle J.M., Romay Martinez J. (eds.) Culture, Environmental Action and Sustainability, Hogrefe&Huber, Cambridge (MA-USA) e Göttingen (GER), 313-324. Borgogni A. (2012), Body, Town Planning, and Participation. The Roles of Young People and Sport. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylä University Printing House. Borgogni A. (2016). La mobilità autonoma dei bambini come atto trasformativo della città. In Dozza L., Ulivieri S. (2016), L’educazione permanente a partire dalle prime età della vita. Milan: Franco Angeli: 823-831. Edwards P., Tsouros A. D. – WHO Europe (2008). A healthy city is an active city, a physical activity planning guide. Copenaghen: WHO Europe. Gray P. (2011). The decline of play and the rise of psychopathology in children and adolescents. American Journal of Play, 3(4): 443-463. Mackett R. (2013). Letting children be free to walk. UK Department of Transport Journal, 107 on line, 2013: 1-12. Prezza M., Alparone F.R., Renzi D., Pietrobono A. (2010). Social participation and independent mobility in children: the effects of two implementations of “We go to school alone”. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 38(1): 8-25. Renzi D., Prisco A., Tonucci F. (2014). L'autonomia di movimento dei bambini: una necessità per loro, una risorsa per la scuola e per la città. Studium Educationis, 15(3): 105-119. Shaw B., Bicket M., Elliott B., Fagan-Watson B., Mocca E., Hillman M. (2015). Children’s Independent Mobility: an international comparison and recommendations for action. London: Policy Studies Institute (retrieved from http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/15650/1/PSI_Finalreport_2015.pdf, last access 22.01.2017). Shoup R., Gonyea R. M., Kuh G. D. (2009). Helicopter parents: Examining the impact of highly involved parents on student engagement and educational outcomes. In 49th Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Atlanta, Georgia (retrieved from http://cpr. iub. edu/uploads/AIR (Vol. 202009), last access 25.12.2016. SUSTRANS (2015), Designed to Move – Active Cities (retrieved from http://e13c7a4144957cea5013-f2f5ab26d5e83af3ea377013dd602911.r77.cf5.rackcdn.com/resources/pdf/en/active-cities-full-report.pdf, last access 18.01.2017).