NYC really isn't that unfriendly to kids: plenty of public transit to get places, lots of places to be a pedestrian, lots of things to do. In much of suburbia...where do you go? There isn't really much you can do until you are 15 or 16 and get a drivers license.
I chose to live in a more urban area of Seattle (Ballard) because I want my now 1st grader to be able to do things when he is a bit older. Still not as nice as Tokyo, but it could be a lot worse if we lived further north or on the east side.
I grew up in a typical suburban-style neighborhood (a few meandering roads with a lot of cul-de-sacs branching off and some connecting streets, quarter-acre lots, three-to-five bedroom ranches, two-stories, or bi-levels mostly spec-built). There was a park of about one square block, and a gas station at one of the neighborhood entrances. We rode bikes around, got soda or candy at the gas station, played in friends yards or at the park or at driveway basketball goals, nothing super exciting but kids find ways to entertain themselves. They don't need a bunch of "destinations" like adults do. This was all pre-computer, and there was nothing interesting to a kid on TV during the day.
Kids just need unstructured time with other kids, they will make up something to do. It's not really an intrisic problem with suburbia, it's a problem with hovering, overprotective adults.
I'm talking mostly about kids 8-14 or so. Older teens will get more bored and mischevious. Fortunately by that age there's more stuff they can be involved in at school or they can get a job.
I only experienced that in Sylvania Ohio (a suburb of Toledo). In Vicksburg MS, where I was living in the county...it was a real neighborhood (not the sticks) but we had no parks, well it was the deep south. In outside of Bothell Washington it was the same thing, but I could drive by then so whatever.
I guess I romanticized the big city as a kid, leading me to prefer urban over suburban living for my own kid. Maybe this will backlash and he will choose suburbia for his own kid(s).
I grew up in Madison/Ridgeland, Ms, where I did experience this. To some extent, at least. I had neighborhood friends. We rode bikes, crossed the tracks to go to the comic book store, etc.
Still, I’ve always romanticized the big city. Never lived it, though, so maybe it’s a grass-is-greener thing, but maybe I’ll be able to give it a whirl someday.
Grass is greener for me, but you have to choose the right big city, and those cities are expensive because lots of people make the same conclusions.
As a curiosity, I checked out the neighborhood I used to live in on google maps to see if they had put any parks or sidewalks since. Nope, exactly the same.
The important thing is just having some sort of space, as the article puts it.
>> As described by Ray Oldenburg, “third places” are locations where locals can meet, interact, and relax in a place that isn’t their home or place of work. In these locations, kids get the chance to socialize and develop intellectually. American suburbs don’t have these places.
There's rightfully no stipulation whether that's a corner store, mall, park, empty lot, or wild area.
The important thing is that it's accessible to kids and parents aren't around.
I was born and raised in Vicksburg, MS. As kids, we rode bikes, made makeshift dams in Clear Creek, threw dirt clods at each other in the woods, played sports in backyards, and I don't remember ever asking our parents to take us to the park or downtown. We had grass, trees, fresh air and good company. I miss those days.
"Unstructured time with other kids" is also the source of many many problems (as you acknowledge). Especially if the only destination is a gas station.
Kids need parks, sports fields, cinemas, hobby stores, places to get food, etc, and they need them within walking distance. Being virtually dependent on cars to get anywhere is very crippling for kids.
Being dependent on adults to drive cars is the crippling component.
If there were free taxi services (or other transit), kids would be fine.
And honestly, most of the evil comes from overly-empowering parents. "I don't think you should go there / do that / hang out with those friends" is toxic.
Healthier, as kids mature, for them to be able to do things that parents disapprove of... but can't stop. While still allowing prevention of serious choices.
Making kids dependent on parents' cars increases parents' power from "I can speak out about things I disagree with" to "My agreement is required for anything to happen."
And that's really not healthy, for the kid or the parent.
Do you have any evidence of that? Asian American parents generally strictly control their kids’ choices, and they have much better outcomes than white American kids.
I think it would be great if kids could take themselves to gymnastics practice on public transit. But giving them the choice between that and smoking pot with friends? I think the choice hurts rather than helps.
What do you mean in the second paragraph about gymnastics practice? It's implying kids cannot take public transit, but why? That was fairly common, even recently, and I'm trying to understand if something has changed in some regions.
My roaming range on my bike was about 5 miles in any direction. All of those places cost money. I'm not sure what kind of childhood you had, but I didn't have a job at 14, and those are places I rarely went. What you seem to be advocating for is a credit card more than a ride.
Yeah, this. There are many arguments against suburbs, but they're relatively good places for kids. Big gardens, quiet roads, full of young families with similar age kids, and relatively free of the stuff people don't want their kids interacting with like bars and liquor stores, gang culture and street crime, "bad example" young adults and places they really shouldn't be exploring, so if anything they're a reason for parents to be less protective about letting kids go off on their own.
Kids aren't glued to their phones because there isn't a street of coffee shops and delis to buy £5 drinks and £10 sandwiches or a nightclub scene, and they wouldn't tend to go to the art gallery or library to play if moved somewhere more urban, they'd hang around on street corners, head to small parks that aren't dissimilar to the suburban ones or go explore the relative abundance of derelict buildings, industrial sites and railway sidings.
Particularly amusing to see British style terraced housing painted as a solution, as if the street corners the kids who grow up there hang out on (if they go outside at all) are some kind of idyll suburbia is depriving them of with its gardens and lack of corner stores that'll sell them vapes.
> I'm talking mostly about kids 8-14 or so. Older teens will get more bored and mischevious. Fortunately by that age there's more stuff they can be involved in at school or they can get a job.
In my experience, at least, this is a large contributor to the drug epidemic. You could get a job, or you could get high. For a lot of people, it's an easy choice.
Growing up in a suburban environment was pretty boring. Bikes made it a bit better because we could at least ride around the place but with no malls or activity zones (lakes/pools/forests etc) around it just meant that we wandered a lot.
I feel like that's more true of ex-urbs. I lived in sububia and there were creeks, schools, pools, malls, a graveyard, train tracks, sport courts and churches, all within a 15-20min bike ride. Half of that was within a 15-20min walk, including the houses of half of my friends. "Downtown" was most of a mile walk and a 30-40min bus ride. Granted, it was old suburbia from the 50s-60s rather than new 90s builds, but there wasn't more than a 2 story building within a mile in any direction.
It's still that way, only with more bike lanes and fewer kids outside.
So usually people who talk about suburbs refer more to the sprawling burbs of like late 60s+. What you’re referring to sounds like a “streetcar suburb”, which urbanists usually like
I follow this debate often on HN and I've learned that those who say you can't walk or bike anywhere in a suburb are talking about areas I consider rural.
Or different suburbs than you’re used to. The ones nearest to where I live in DC are more urban than the California suburbs I grew up in (which were by no means rural) but they were designed without sidewalks or direct routes so kids need to be comfortable biking in the street with huge SUVs and pickups passing a foot away at 40mph – unsurprisingly they don’t and that’s probably the right call because multiple times a year someone in those safe suburbs is killed at a place where their city felt street parking was more important than sidewalks.
You can still walk and bike in the suburbs I’m thinking of- it’s just dangerous and/or extremely inefficient a lot of the time. And getting worse because of larger cars and road design prioritizing vehicle speed over everything.
Same for Munich. Englisch Garden hosts packs of children in the park during summer, including joyous play on the circuit of floating the river and taking the tram back to the start while dripping wet. I'm no longer a child, though I enjoyed the river float circuit!
I chose to live in a more urban area of Seattle (Ballard) because I want my now 1st grader to be able to do things when he is a bit older. Still not as nice as Tokyo, but it could be a lot worse if we lived further north or on the east side.