I love walking - both in places as a tourist, in NYC where I lived most of my life, and in my small north shore Long Island town today.
But similar to any other "product" the evaluation depends on the user's needs. As a single guy I loved that NYC was dense and walkable - because that meant (among other things) literally millions of date-able women within a 30 minute walk radius of my house. Great! Now as a dad of 3 I don't care about that at all - and the lower density suburb let's me have a backyard for my kids and makes shopping easy, or taking the kids to activities (yes you can do all those things without a car but people chose not to when they have choice)
There should be some sort of mom-friendliness factor in these conversations. If my whole town is old people, terminally single younger people and migrants (as seems to be the case for the city in question) then high density walk ability is perfect. What's the density and transportation situation in places people actually have kids?
I share this sentiment as well, but while living in a relatively small city with only around 150k people in northern Europe. I moved out to the "suburbs" after having my first kid and find enormous quality of life in being able to have a car and a house. The city center is getting increasingly more "hostile" to car traffic but there's nothing to be had there anyway. A side from restaurants and coffee shops you can get anything you need from the shopping areas on the city outskirts. In a sense I feel this is the best of both worlds: cities for city people, suburbs for suburbians.
As a fellow parent I find dense cities are worse. My kids are not welcome in most of the restaurants, bars, or shops - which is just as well because I couldn't afford to pay for regular family meals at any of them anyway. Even the parks are more art orientation - great for adults but no playground that my kids would enjoy. Not that it matters as 3 bedroom apartments are rare, and more than that impossible to find. They are often food deserts - it is easier for a farmer to get to a grocery store (they expect to drive but the uncontested roads are fast), you often need to drive to a grocery store as there is no option, of if there is one it is the expensive high end store not the discount supermarkets.
Note that most dense cities have within the same city limits less dense areas that look like suburbs. These are often called "inner city" they are generally affordable but because the schools are bad are not places I'd want to live. For this discussion I'm going to count them as suburbs...
It doesn't have to be like the above. I've seen dense cities around the world that are very family friendly. However not in the US.
There is also a gradient of density and walk/bike-ability between NYC, one of the densest cities in the country, and super spread-out car-dependent cul-de-sac suburbs, but the US often skips those middle steps.
Small towns where your kids can get to their friend's house by walking or biking a couple of blocks over can be great for raising a family, as opposed to all of their friends' houses being in a different gated communities up and down a 4-lane 45mph highway and where the line of cars picking up kids from school each day backs out onto the road and blocks traffic.
They exist, but in New Jersey -- most of the "cities" (with the exception of downtown Jersey City and downtown Newark) would be called streetcar suburbs in an earlier time. I live in one of them, and it's great: I have a small, private backyard, but I'm also <15 minutes on foot from multiple public parks, restaurants, shops, etc.
Sadly, it's illegal to build streetcar suburbs in most of the US today, because outfitting every house with a private driveway, setbacks, etc., would move everything far apart enough to significantly hurt walkability.
And the cost to buy into these developments where they do exist suggests a supply and demand imbalance. Near me a new-ish 'town center' development with a mix of apartments, shops, restaurants, grocery store, townhouses, and single-family homes is easily double or triple the price of an equivalent house in a standard cul-de-sac neighborhood a 15 minute drive away.
I understand what you are saying. I raised my kids in an American suburb. But I grew up in a European town.
In places like Pontevedra, the kids can walk on their own to all the activities, once they are old enough. And nobody really needs a car. I didn't learn to drive until I was 23.
I grew up in Paris and that’s where I’m raising my son right now. I think there couldn’t be a kid-friendlier place (other than cost):
- I can walk to a gigantic park with many playgrounds in 5 minutes - I can walk to a small little park with a few swings and a slide in 1 minute - I can walk to a pool in 15 minutes - I can walk to my son’s future kindergarten and elementary school in 2 minutes - I can take public transportation to a gigantic zoo in a bit over 30 minutes (also a gigantic aquarium, playgrounds, etc. in the same area) - I can take public transportation to a world-class kid science museum in under 30 minutes (also a kid-centered movie theater, indoor skydiving, bowling, many more play areas, etc. in the same spot) - I can take public transportation to an amusement park in 45 minutes (1h to a second one, Disneyland Paris) - There are tons of indoor play areas for days it rains I can walk to or take public transportation - I have pediatrician and world-class pediatric hospitals walking distance, or a 5 minute wait away for EMS
And all of that much more safely than if I had to drive my kid everywhere (leading cause of death from 4 year onward IIRC. Once my son is old enough, he'll also be able to independently go to all that (say when he’s 12), which would be completely impossible in suburbia.
The only thing you can do in the suburbs is try to privatize all these resources, which is what a backyard is more-or-less (and a private pool, a home theater, buying tons of toys, etc.), but you inevitably get lesser versions as a result.
See, I'd almost see that the other way around, that it's easier for kids in a city with good public transport links because they can get around without having to drive. I live in a medium-sized city in Germany, and kids here can be really independent - you'll regularly see them on the trams in the morning going to school, or hanging out with friends in public spaces. My wife, who grew up here, used to make plans with her friend every summer where they'd figure out all the summer activities they wanted to do and how they'd get there and which buses they needed to take, and then they were basically set free to do that.
The other aspect is having things to do. A backyard is nice, but we have so many parks and playgrounds and cafes and museums and kids' clubs within 15-20 minutes of us that I don't think there's any danger of kids getting bored. And all of that is available on foot or by tram. With the Deutschland-Ticket in Germany, you don't even need to worry about tickets, just hop in and go. As someone who moved here from the UK where these sorts of cities are much less common, the high density and accessible public transport is one of the reasons my wife and I ended up staying here to have children rather than moving back to the UK.
I grew up in the city in France and man it was so much fun, I was outside all the time visiting my friends, I don't understand how kids can grow up in the suburbs tbh