> Build environments where children can be independent, and they might even want to be.
We _have_ built these environments, you just choose not to live in them. Move to a city or other urban center. Your house might be smaller, and you might have to take public transit sometimes, but you will be happier and there will be no shortage of places for your kid to walk.
There are major US cities where this is not the cae. Atlanta is an example. I've lived there without a car, but as a single man in my early 30s. It was not easy even for someone committed to the task. Even in the most "urban" parts of the city there are very few stores within walking distance, very few people on the street, and the distances are huge. Public transport (how kids in cities get around) is terrible. A kid might be able to walk to a park were he/she to live near one bit almost no one does.
Yeah I get that, the point I trying to (snarkily) make was that we have control over where we live and raise our families. People often opine about the wonders of urbanism but then move to the suburbs!
But yeah I've heard that about Atlanta and a few other cities (mostly in Texas).
I live in what passes for a walkable residential area in the south us. A 15 min walk to a street with shops and restaurants. You meet people on the way. But the weather is definitely a factor. It bounces around freezing for a month or three and bounces around 100F for another five. That leaves the final ~5 which are torrential rains interspersed with lovely weather.
It's not really true. Almost every neighborhood in Atlanta has a cluster of shops or food hall kind of thing to walk to.
It's true that it's a massive lifestyle leap to go to no car. But walk to the park. Walk to get ice cream. Ride bike to school are all easily doable in atlanta.
It's certainly true in Atlanta. That "cluster of shops" can be a long way walking (10-15 minutes) from where one resides. It's small, incomplete, inadequate, etc.
I grew up in Atlanta proper, so know the city well, and later, by choice, lived there for a few years as an adult without a car and it was genuinely complicated. I chose a place to live near my place of work (near = it was 30 minutes solid walking). I had access to a supermarket (15 minutes walking), two (!) transit (MARTA) stations each at 15-20 minutes walking, and several bus lines (none with frequency greater than 30 minutes nor standard deviation less than 20), as well as the "cluster of shops" to which you refer. It had a bar, a few restaurants, a laundromat, and a drugstore. For real shopping other than food I took MARTA to a mall. My morning walk to work around 6 o 7 am required crossing a street used by prostitutes and drug dealers. They didn't bother me but the cops were suspicious of me for being there on foot and more than oncee I had to avoid cops with guns out chasing someone down.
People there generally considered me nuts for choosing to live this way.
I remember fondly that on my way to work there was a street full of pecan trees and at the right time of year I could get a handful from the sidewalk (there were sidewalks!).
When I was growing up (true, this was a while ago), again in the city proper, the nearest park was 3-4 km away. I went there by bike and played pickup basketball or went to the public pool, but it wasn't exactly nearby, and it wasn't walkable. Ice cream bars could be bought at a convenience store several km in a different direction. The bus stop was near the park and the bus came every 50 minutes, with considerable variance. On it it took something like 40 minutes to get to a MARTA station. A single to and back trip on public transport could easily take 3-4 hours in total so I didn't do this often. My school was around 12 hilly kilometeres away, a bit longer if one avoided the interstate. Biking there required riding on heavily congested roads with no shoulder and dealing with drivers completely incomprehending of cyclists and later crossing 8 lane roads and facing considerable danger the whole way. It could be done and I did it, but it was not particularly safe as there was no way to get there without dealing with rush hour traffic accessing the interstate.
I vaguely remember that there was a store within walking distance that sold automobile tires ...
There are some places in the US--probably Manhattan most obviously--where there's a culture that doesn't have the expectation that you have a car. But, while people living in most other cities can basically do a post-university lifestyle without one even in cities with relatively good public transit, a lot of their friends probably live outside the city, a lot of activities depend on cars, etc.
I do know an adult couple in SF who gave up their cars but I'd observe that they rely on Ubers and various rentals a lot. I don't think I know anyone in the Boston/Cambridge area who doesn't have a car. Of course, they exist but I don't know one.
Parts of Atlanta are certainly walkable today. Midtown or Buckhead would qualify.
Where is this? Our dream is to live in the city for independent access to amenities and frequently visit the woods. I have the economical means for this but the city is not the thing people say. As an example, Taipei had zero traffic deaths of children under 12 in the last 3 years. My San Francisco neighborhood alone has had 2 and Taipei has more kids.
Those were for accompanied children because San Franciscans adapt by helicoptering their kids to keep them from dying whereas I saw unaccompanied kids in Taipei everywhere and Taiwan is a basket case for fertility with a 0.7 TFR.
If we move out of SF it will be because the compensatory mechanisms required to keep my children alive here will overwhelm their freedom. But if there are cities of the Asian or European form here where children under 12 can independently move around then I’d love to know from someone who also has children in such environs. Often, online, people provide advice on this subject while being childless themselves and that’s not useful to me.
I've been priced out of these areas. I'd gladly move back in town if I could afford anything closer, but I can't. I make quite higher income than the median, so I'd be extremely surprised if this was NOT the rationale for many others.
There is a shortage of places for your kid to sleep at night though, as reflected in housing prices. It is especially bad for families because new apartments are often studios or one bedrooms.
In most US cities the kid friendly places are the suburbs not the urban centers. Those suburbs require a car to do anything, but all the kids live there, and so all the things kids do are out there too.
I’m sorry, but so few of these urban environments are affordable with good schools. I lived in Philadelphia and we chose to leave when our son was young because the schools generally aren’t good (most don’t even have libraries, but this is a whole different topic), the green space barely exists and isn’t maintained, and I’d never feel safe with my kid taking the transit.
NYC and Boston seem like the only east coast options and those are very expensive. What other options are there on the East Coast?
Philadelphia is absolutely an option, but it depends on the neighborhood. Eg if you live in the penn alexander, greenfield, or meredith catchments you have a great elementary/middle school and there are lot of kids of late elementary/early middle school age moving around the city independently.
I live in west philly and it is great: the park is excellent and lots of kids safely go there by themselves, the local school is very good. Transit (specifically the trolley) is good and safe.
Happier? In a city? Have you been to big US cities? Angry people, crime, homeless, mentally ill people, lack of police.
Yes, it's exactly these (not necessarily wrong, but exaggerated) preconceptions about big cities that drive people to not let their kids outside. Thanks for providing a sample that supports the article's point!
It's hard to understate how shocking it is for someone who grew up in a more rural area it is to be yelled at by a crazy homeless person. I think urban people are just so desensitized to it its hard to understand how big a deal it is to people who have never experienced that.
There's lots of other major culture shock moments too, like finding out public bathrooms in parks are NOT for kids or the general lack of unlocked freely available clean bathrooms in businesses.
It's also shocking to have someone roll coal or call you a gendered or racist or homophobic slur in the country because you look a little different.
Or seeing the expansive yards filled with decaying cars, appliances, and other metal scrap.
Both urban and rural life have people suffering from poverty, mental health issues, and drug addiction. It just looks different.
> It's hard to understate how shocking it is for someone who grew up in a more rural area it is to be yelled at by a crazy homeless person
Is it? I never struggled with this, been yelled at countless of times by crazy people on the street, both growing up in a very rural area and now living most of my adult life in a metropolitan area. I don't think it's much of a shock to most, we know there are mentally unwell people out there already.
> There's lots of other major culture shock moments too, like finding out public bathrooms in parks are NOT for kids
What? What kind of city would limit the age of who can use the bathroom? Sounds bananas.
> What? What kind of city would limit the age of who can use the bathroom? Sounds bananas.
I think this was another comment about homelessness, not an implication about the law.
Hmm, in what way? How is homelessness related to public bathroom besides the fact that homeless people use public bathrooms? Not sure how that's related to the age of the person using the bathroom, but surely I'm missing something here.
They are saying that homeless people are scary or messy. Or that drug use happens sometimes in a bathroom, etc.
Obviously, this attitude is born from some incorrect assumptions, but it's a pretty standard feast from folks out of town.
So homeless people use bathrooms to do drugs and somehow that means there is a age limit? I'm sorry but this makes no sense, how are they at all related? Why would it matter what someone does before you use the bathroom, it's not like drugs stick around in the air and impact people entering the room afterwards...
The last time I was in a major city with my kids I went to a major, nice park. They had to use the bathroom. There were ample bathrooms but every single one of them was filled with human feces, covering practically every surface, and littered with needles.
There is absolutely no reason to tolerate this in a civilized society, and it’s completely unheard of in the region I’m from, a major culture shock - along with the attitude that I should just get over it.
> There were ample bathrooms but every single one of them was filled with human feces, covering practically every surface, and littered with needles.
What the hell? No offense, but was this in a slum somewhere or something? Not saying it doesn't happen in other places, but I think I've came across that once in my ~35 years, visiting countless of public bathrooms, cities and towns, admittedly mostly around in Europe, South America and Asia, but still...
I don't think that's a "city" thing, that might be very local to the specific city you visited, or the specific area.
I’ve definitely heard that other countries don’t tolerate this sort of thing, but the thread is about US cities. Of course YMMV, my understanding is many European cities have very few or only paid public bathrooms.
>Have you been to big US cities?
Yes, I live in one, and it's a city that often gets used as the poster child for urban crime.
I don't feel in danger. What I am most worried about when walking with my kids outside is them getting hit by a car.
This is funny, as it almost doesn’t pass Poe’s test.
I also find people are much angrier and misanthropic in the suburbs and exurbs as they spend their entire days in metal death cages that dehumanize everyone around them and turn every interaction into a confrontation.
Guess that misanthropy hypothesis gets another check in the anecdata column.
I've been in my city (Seattle) for 40 years. Homelessness has increased faster than population growth. Crime rates are way down. Like half what they used to be.
Mental health is down everywhere, nationwide, and we spend an absurd amount of money on our police.
I love it here, great city. It's not perfect, but I can't imagine living elsewhere.
No one wants to live in cities any more. They’re too crowded, housing is too expensive, and the traffic is too bad.
If you actually look at US statistics, per capital crime rates are often higher in rural areas than urban one. Just, you know, more people in cities so bigger numbers.
It’s not just innocent ignorance of statistics. There’s also deliberate lying in mass media, both for partisan political goals and simply because sensationalism attracts eyeballs.
>Happier? In a city?
Yes.
>Have you been to big US cities?
Whoever said anything about the US?
Rural people are absurdly scared of own imagination. And if urban people talked about rural areas the way they talk about cities, we would get 234 think pieces about how inappropriate and out of touch it is.
Idk, I’ve seen Deliverance, plus all those horror movies that start out on some desolate road in the woods at night. Seems likely a fair depiction of country living.
No thank you, I’ll stay in Manhattan and not get kidnapped and murdered by monsters tyvm.
Rural people have all been to the cities and seen what it's like with their own eyes. There's no mystery.