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The area your talking about, where there's little places where kids can play: it's called the Suburbs. Growing up in the suburbs, cars went slow enough that we

The area your talking about, where there's little places where kids can play: it's called the Suburbs. Growing up in the suburbs, cars went slow enough that we could play in the street. The neighborhood grocery was about two miles away and we could walk or ride our bikes, and we had plenty of friends houses along the route should we need to stop. There's not the density of little shops that you might find in SF, but as a kid you don't need that density (I don't need it as an adult; the suburbs I live in have a nice downtown, but if I need serious shopping, I have Amazon) Suburbs, much reviled here, are the answer to all of the density problems that people are complaining about. Mass transit works with commuter rail. There's no argument except prestige to stay in the city.

amatecha 8y ago
+1, grew up in the suburbs (which are regularly the butt of jokes in "the city"), actually explored all around town with my friends without fear of being run over or really any other problem endemic to high-density living. Plus, the older I get the less I appreciate a dense city, and realize just how unnatural and problematic that kind of living is.
lloydde 8y ago
> Suburbs, much reviled here, are the answer to all of the density problems that people are complaining about. urban sprawl? What does that commute time look like, particularly for the poor?
wahern 8y ago
I also grew up in the suburbs in the 1980s, both in Florida (more rural northwest) and Illinois (Chicago suburbs). The suburbs of my youth don't exist anymore; certainly not the ones I actually lived in. The streets are far more dangerous because cars drive faster and they seem to be more reckless (e.g. idiot kids or grumpy adults racing down the block in cars that outperform sport cars from 20 years prior). I used to regularly walk 2 miles to high school (when I slept late and missed the bus), a portion of which required walking on the side of a main thoroughfare without a sidewalk. Cars today drive 50mph or 60mph on that road whereas they once drove 30mph. I wouldn't walk that route as an adult today, and sure as heck wouldn't let a kid walk it regularly. They do exist in some places. I've seen them and have visited friends living there. Cul de sacs in subdivisions still on the city periphery, predominately Mormon neighborhoods in Utah where people expect kids to dart into the street, or tony gated communities. But they're just not as common. And in any event, even when they can, kids these days don't spend much time outdoors. In places where I did (and kids still can) spend all day roaming around in the woods or riding their bikes across town, today's kids spend all day playing video games or chatting online. Even if I my kid chose to hang outside, he'd be playing alone much of the time. As someone else mentioned on HN a couple of years ago, you can optimize for a kids ability to play in the streets when he's < 10 years old. Or you can optimize for a 10+ year old to have the freedom to get around an entire city by himself. These days you can't have both, unfortunately, whereas once upon a time the city offered both (when kids could play in the street because drivers and cars were less threatening). Times are different. I don't dislike the suburbs, I just don't think they're sustainable. Most often suburbs deteriorate quickly within a decade or two. The qualities that make them livable disappear once they're subsumed by a new ring of suburbs, bringing increased cross traffic and a new generation of childless homeowners.
sebringj 8y ago
There has to be that balance of market places and convenience, not just a bunch of houses spaced far apart and wide streets. That isn't scalable. The suburbs are too sprawled where driving is necessary to get to anyplace useful if you need to shop or get stuff.
tomtheelder 8y ago
> The neighborhood grocery was about two miles away and we could walk or ride our bikes, and we had plenty of friends houses along the route should we need to stop. This doesn't sound like the typical American suburban experience, and I think what you are describing is almost heading in the direction of the best existing solution for non-city living, which is the "village" style denser towns that you see in Europe. The idea basically being that you turn a fairly evenly distributed suburban population into one that clusters around small to medium sized town centers that are walkable and bikable, but contain and are surrounded by large areas of communal countryside and green space. It necessitates a sacrifice in lot size (and potentially house size), but in return you get a quiet, safe, traversable town with plentiful access to the countryside, and it also helps immensely with things like logistics, infrastructure (electricity/gas/internet in the suburbs is a nightmare), and, potentially most importantly, transportation, since a strong commuter rail system can actually service that sort of layout effectively. Many if not would still describe this as a suburb. There are definitely places (I'm aware of ones in the North East) that follow this model that are called suburbs. When people complain about suburbs, they are complaining about the model that dominates the US, not the concept of a less dense population area surrounding a metropolis.
- justtopost 8y ago
  Having lived in dozens of suburbs moving around in life, it seems very typical to me. Even challenging neighborhoods buried in sprawl would lead to local zoning opening up for shops. The problem often solves itself. Where I live now only had one nearby market within driving distance, but market pressure opened 2 more. Its almost as if there is profit in these overlooked planning issues and people like to win it. This urban-centric thinking is odd to me. I do not want to live so far away from the natural phenomenon of earth, and I think it is unhealthy that so many want to push that lifestyle on everyone. It rings absolutely hollow to me to have effortless transport to a thousand places all manmade, and mostly devoid of non-domesticated plant and animal life.

amatecha 8y ago

+1, grew up in the suburbs (which are regularly the butt of jokes in "the city"), actually explored all around town with my friends without fear of being run over or really any other problem endemic to high-density living. Plus, the older I get the less I appreciate a dense city, and realize just how unnatural and problematic that kind of living is.

lloydde 8y ago

> Suburbs, much reviled here, are the answer to all of the density problems that people are complaining about. urban sprawl? What does that commute time look like, particularly for the poor?

wahern 8y ago

I also grew up in the suburbs in the 1980s, both in Florida (more rural northwest) and Illinois (Chicago suburbs). The suburbs of my youth don't exist anymore; certainly not the ones I actually lived in. The streets are far more dangerous because cars drive faster and they seem to be more reckless (e.g. idiot kids or grumpy adults racing down the block in cars that outperform sport cars from 20 years prior). I used to regularly walk 2 miles to high school (when I slept late and missed the bus), a portion of which required walking on the side of a main thoroughfare without a sidewalk. Cars today drive 50mph or 60mph on that road whereas they once drove 30mph. I wouldn't walk that route as an adult today, and sure as heck wouldn't let a kid walk it regularly. They do exist in some places. I've seen them and have visited friends living there. Cul de sacs in subdivisions still on the city periphery, predominately Mormon neighborhoods in Utah where people expect kids to dart into the street, or tony gated communities. But they're just not as common. And in any event, even when they can, kids these days don't spend much time outdoors. In places where I did (and kids still can) spend all day roaming around in the woods or riding their bikes across town, today's kids spend all day playing video games or chatting online. Even if I my kid chose to hang outside, he'd be playing alone much of the time. As someone else mentioned on HN a couple of years ago, you can optimize for a kids ability to play in the streets when he's < 10 years old. Or you can optimize for a 10+ year old to have the freedom to get around an entire city by himself. These days you can't have both, unfortunately, whereas once upon a time the city offered both (when kids could play in the street because drivers and cars were less threatening). Times are different. I don't dislike the suburbs, I just don't think they're sustainable. Most often suburbs deteriorate quickly within a decade or two. The qualities that make them livable disappear once they're subsumed by a new ring of suburbs, bringing increased cross traffic and a new generation of childless homeowners.

sebringj 8y ago

There has to be that balance of market places and convenience, not just a bunch of houses spaced far apart and wide streets. That isn't scalable. The suburbs are too sprawled where driving is necessary to get to anyplace useful if you need to shop or get stuff.

tomtheelder 8y ago

> The neighborhood grocery was about two miles away and we could walk or ride our bikes, and we had plenty of friends houses along the route should we need to stop. This doesn't sound like the typical American suburban experience, and I think what you are describing is almost heading in the direction of the best existing solution for non-city living, which is the "village" style denser towns that you see in Europe. The idea basically being that you turn a fairly evenly distributed suburban population into one that clusters around small to medium sized town centers that are walkable and bikable, but contain and are surrounded by large areas of communal countryside and green space. It necessitates a sacrifice in lot size (and potentially house size), but in return you get a quiet, safe, traversable town with plentiful access to the countryside, and it also helps immensely with things like logistics, infrastructure (electricity/gas/internet in the suburbs is a nightmare), and, potentially most importantly, transportation, since a strong commuter rail system can actually service that sort of layout effectively. Many if not would still describe this as a suburb. There are definitely places (I'm aware of ones in the North East) that follow this model that are called suburbs. When people complain about suburbs, they are complaining about the model that dominates the US, not the concept of a less dense population area surrounding a metropolis.

justtopost 8y ago
Having lived in dozens of suburbs moving around in life, it seems very typical to me. Even challenging neighborhoods buried in sprawl would lead to local zoning opening up for shops. The problem often solves itself. Where I live now only had one nearby market within driving distance, but market pressure opened 2 more. Its almost as if there is profit in these overlooked planning issues and people like to win it. This urban-centric thinking is odd to me. I do not want to live so far away from the natural phenomenon of earth, and I think it is unhealthy that so many want to push that lifestyle on everyone. It rings absolutely hollow to me to have effortless transport to a thousand places all manmade, and mostly devoid of non-domesticated plant and animal life.