So, a for profit company that has the sole purpose of taking taking money from people and sponsors in order to create "think pieces" about walkable cities, pushes a propaganda piece with a major premise being that our suburbs are bad for kids because of our reliance on cars.
However .. the entire premise instantly falls apart when you ask why we didn't have the same problem in the past when we were even MORE based around cars than we are today.
I don't have a problem with the cynicism about the article... but as for not having the problem in the past - Rush: Subdivisions was effectively a pop culture essay on this problem from 1982.
"Subdivisions" is a song about a nerdy kid finding it hard to fit in, and the similarity of the houses in large developments is treated as a metaphor for the limited range of identities kids could adopt if they didn’t want to be socially excluded. The song says nothing about kids finding it hard to play together, because in lyricist Neil Peart’s childhood all the way to the 1990s, children were finding things to do together in those suburbs regardless. Moreover, the perspective of the song is a high-school one (“…in the basement bars, in the backs of cars…”, plus see the music video), not younger children.
However .. the entire premise instantly falls apart when you ask why we didn't have the same problem in the past when we were even MORE based around cars than we are today.