Concrete Human
André Clemetsen
The gutter was my playground
The gutter was my playground and gave me a view over a neighbourhood that never carried hope in its eyes.
We lived between old timber and concrete blocks that felt like a war that was never won.
In 36 Barcelona schools, the parents of 2,111 children reported how much time each child spent playing in green space, and parents and teachers scored the same children's behaviour. The environmental epidemiologist Elmira Amoly and colleagues set the two against each other. The children who played out about an hour and a half more a day scored 8.2% lower for emotional symptoms and 15.4% lower for trouble with other children.
Elmira Amoly and others, Environmental Health Perspectives, 2014
doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1408215