8 ms·

For what it's worth, I believe that most families with kids thrive with a decently sized house and a large garden around it. I expect this is how most of HN's c

by sgt 6y ago

For what it's worth, I believe that most families with kids thrive with a decently sized house and a large garden around it. I expect this is how most of HN's crowd grew up, too. With more people and shops etc in your neighborhood comes noise and chaos.

lynguist 6y ago
Most of HN’s crowd? Hmm. Based on earlier polls I see that ca half of the visitors here are from the US and half from outside, and most in the US may have grown up like this, but outside the US, almost no one grew up in a big house. I grew up in an apartment.
- wott 6y ago
  > outside the US, almost no one grew up in a big house. Neither suburbs nor detached houses nor private houses are specific to the US. In France, primary housing is 57% individual house, 43% collective (apartments). But that's not all: if you consider families (with children), which is what matters when is "where did you grow up?", individual houses rise to 70%! In UK, flats are a tiny minority, the form that rules there is of course the semi-detached house. But even there, there are still more detached houses than flats. In the whole EU, the ratio is similar to France: flats are a minority with 46% of housing, and amongst the remaining 54%, 2 third are fully detached houses. Another angle. If we take ze city, where almost everything is apartments: Paris. There were 25% *less* inhabitants in 1990 (when a present 30-year old was born) than there were in 1920! People have fled to the suburbs there as well (which doesn't mean 100% individual house, admittedly, but anyway a much much greater proportion than inside Paris). > I grew up in an apartment. It doesn't make a statistic :-)
  - ghaff 6y ago
    And don't forget the idyllic car-free existence that almost everyone has in Europe. Meanwhile, in the actual world, I think I know one person in the UK who doesn't drive (and his wife does). European car ownership is lower than the US in general but it's a very very far way from zero.
    - sneeze-slayer 6y ago
      To be fair, National Rail seems distinctly worse compared to DB, SNCF, RENFE, etc. Greater London is an exception, but London has it's own problems with affordability near rail stations.
    - wott 6y ago
      > And don't forget the idyllic car-free existence that almost everyone has in Europe. I don't think it came up this time but indeed it is common each time there is this kind of thread here. Same thing for the fuzzy 'walkability' concept. > I think I know one person in the UK who doesn't drive I don't drive, I never did (despite having a licence), whatever place I lived in (tiny village, small town, small town in the middle of nothing, small city, big city; detached house, semi-detached-house, flat) but I know I am the odd one. I am definitely not representative, the only thing cases like mine can prove is that it is doable (under some circumstances). > European car ownership is lower than the US in general but it's a very very far way from zero. Indeed. Let me pull a few more French statistics for a minute :-) 84% of households own at least 1 car (same ratio for the 25-39 years old, roughly the Gen-Y). 36% own at least 2 cars (40% of the 25-39 years old). In 1990, when society and activity was already organised the same way as now, every home who needed a car already had one, yet owning rate raised by almost 10% since then, and the share of households who own 2 cars raised almost as much (for 3 cars it raised too). In just the last 5 years, the number of vehicles raised by 4.5% for cars, 6% for vans, 3% for lorries. Meanwhile, the population only raised by 1%. The number of vehicles has doubled since I was a kid (1980). Again, I was in the deep country and everyone who needed a car already had one. 1990, 1980, ... We had the largest superstore in Europe (or was it in the World?) a couple dozen miles away, that was already built in the 70s. France was a precursor in large supermarkets. So much for the image of the small village grocery (which exists too, but a large part (70-75%) of the consumption is made in supermarkets and superstores; even though now the largest of the latter decline, the former thrive). Still somehow beats the places where I lived in Finland where the supermarkets and their car parks are in the centre of towns. In a small town, they actually are the town centre.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - Udo_Schmitz 6y ago
    What kind of house in Europe? I’d guess most non-apartment family homes in Europe are row houses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraced_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraced_house Much denser than a stereotypical US suburb.
  - desas 6y ago
    Just because a house is detached and private doesn't mean it's big. The UK average house size is 76 m2 while the US is about 200 m2
ehnto 6y ago
It's certainly how I grew up, albeit in rural Australia. But now that I rent in a true suburbia, I do wish were more pockets of commerce serving the daily needs of the neighborhood. If working from home becomes the norm, and zoning changed, I think you'd definitely see far more small coffee shops and bodegas spotted around suburbia.
- bowlich 6y ago
  Pockets of commerce is the thing that is totally gone from suburbia. I went back to the Cleveland suburbs for a grandparent's funeral several years back and I could definitely see how in the 1950s the structure of the suburb would've been great for the large Catholic families that lived there. It was centred around the VFW, several parks, and a school. Children could play in the streets. Parents could socialize at the VFW and walk home. Each corner had a shopping complex with a grocery, gas station, barber etc. It was never more than 1/2 mile to all your commercial needs -- and a safe sidewalk walk if you sent kids to go get milk or eggs. If you were working downtown there was public transit to take you from the suburb to the city center and back again. I could see how this would be a very nice set up for where my parents grew up. Today this doesn't exist. The corner shopping complexes are entirely vacant. Grocery is now only available at bigger box-stores requiring an hour of commuting in traffic on roads that don't have sidewalks. The school closed. The VFW is no longer culturally relevant.
  - bollu 6y ago
    What's a VFW? a quick google search told me it is > Veterans of Foreign Wars
    - bowlich 6y ago
      Yes. Pretty much a club house, pub, community center whose membership consisted of veterans. The suburb was built within a decade of the end of WWII and during the Korean war. So it was a safe bet that most households had a member who was a Veteran or related to a Veteran who could wave them in. As time progressed, less and less households in the neighborhood would probably qualify. So its no longer a community centerpiece.
Fricken 6y ago
More than half of adults under 30 are living with their parents. Kids thrive best when they can't afford a home. The suburbs is an Obesogenic environment, just living in it leaves people prone to weight gain, and now 73% of Americans are overwreight or obese. Kids thrive best when they're overweight or obese. The suburbs are an environmental disaster. Kids thrive best on a destroyed planet. It's important that kids thrive best. Maybe there's a better way to do it. I wouldn't know, I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas.
- imtringued 6y ago
  It's also wasting a lot of tax payer money because road maintenance costs a lot per house. Overall there is no reason for them to exist unless people pay a massive premium.
  - maxsilver 6y ago
    This generally isn't true. Road maintenance is the cheapest form of public transit in the US, and the entire road system (in cost per users) is really low (in Michigan for example, this is between $10-$20/month per person. Lower for suburbs, higher for cities and rural) If you have a county or municipality in mind, their road budget is probably public, you can probably get their actual numbers for last year and see this for yourself.
    - notfromhere 6y ago
      Road maintenance isn’t cheap, especially in low density areas. Using current figures isn’t useful because most roads in the US are very underfunded, and we get low scores on infrastructure quality as a result. Plus it’s not accounting the full cost of roads given that you need a vehicle to access them. On average, something like 15% of a households income is tied to transportation (car maintenance, loans, gas, registration, etc), which is insanely expensive just to be economically productive.
      - fuzzfactor 6y ago
odiroot 6y ago
I was, sadly, uprooted as a teenager from a dense city to a suburb. I cannot imagine worse situation for kids to grow up. Everything you wanted to do, it took driving by your parents to get you there. Or relying on spotty public transit. I grew apart from my school-friends, as they could share their evenings on fun and play, while I had to go back earlier (commute did take quite a long time) to be able to do my homework etc. My sleep quality also plummeted as I had to wake up 1-1.5h earlier than my friends to be on time for morning classes.
- danaris 6y ago
  It sounds like you were living in the suburb, but still going to school in the city—this is definitely not the norm even for a family that has moved from a city to the suburbs. In general, if you live in a suburb, you go to school either in the same suburb or a neighboring one. Indeed, one of the classic reasons to prefer one suburb over another is which school district it's in.
  - odiroot 6y ago
    Well, there's no schools in the suburbs (at least no middle/high) so it's not like I had a choice.
    - djrogers 6y ago
      What you’re describing are not suburbs. I’ve lived in suburbs my entire life, and have never been more than 10 minutes from a high school - let alone a middle school. What your describing sounds a lot more like a remote rural town. And a small one at that!
      - odiroot 6y ago
        No, a suburb of the capital of my country, with more or less 3M population.
    - danaris 6y ago
      There are definitely schools in both suburbs and rural areas. In the area I grew up in, each suburban village/town had its own school district and at least one building each for elementary, middle, and high school, and we were right on the edge of rural (the house I grew up in, within one of the aforementioned suburban school districts, was literally a 150-year-old farmhouse, surrounded by farm fields). It's entirely possible—though quite unusual—that the specific suburbs you moved to had no schools to call their own, but it's absolutely untrue that "there's no schools in the suburbs".
watwut 6y ago
I did not. Never felt the need for house. Imo what kids need (in terms od environment) is locality with other kids to socialize with that is safe enough that they can navigate and play in independently from parents. By navigate I mean public transport or walkable distances. Whether it is house or not matters less.
kqvamxurcagg 6y ago
Totally agree. I grew up in a detached house about 1 mile from the town centre. We had fast internet, good schools and good neighbours. After moving to London I lived in apartments for a few years but decided to move back to suburbia as it's a much nicer environment to raise children in.
KozmoNau7 6y ago
Much better than a private garden is access to public parks and playgrounds. This is where they socialize and make friends, where they learn to interact with others in a group context. To you it may be "noise and chaos", to many others it's life and excitement. No matter if you live in a dense inner city or a small village, open public spaces where they can meet other children are vital to children's growth and development.
- ojame 6y ago
  I'm not sure they're _much better_ but in my experience (both as a kid and a dad) they serve different purposes. Parks and playgrounds are great, as you've mentioned (but you can also get socialisation through play groups, activity groups like swimming, school, the beach etc). My kids do lots of stuff they couldn't do in a public space and I likely wouldn't let them do inside. They have outdoor baths in summer, grow sunflowers and herbs, collect eggs from the chickens, have 'outdoor movie nights', run around naked for hours etc. There's also social things, being in a playground or park means my kids often go and find things to do by themselves, which is great (they're great at independence). Being in our backyard forces them, most of the time, to work together to solve whatever problem they have. Those problems are often far different from what happens _inside_ the house and are just as critical to their development. Last week I saw my 2.5yo up our apricot tree throwing apricots into a bucket being held by our ~5yo because they wanted to make dessert. Could probably do that in a park, but yeah.
  - zemvpferreira 6y ago
    These experiences are all commmon in certain public parks in Lisbon. If there's political will, having meaningful natural experiences in community is easy, cheap and I'd say even more rewarding. The problem is in the communities. I remember a sunny day back in 2015 - I was living in a suburb near Redwood City with lovely, expansive parks. Naively I decided to take my shirt off while I was lying in the grass and get some sun. It took less than 5 minutes for a group of concerned mothers (whose group was yards away from me) to come berate me for "exposing myself to children". What sort of education is this?
  - 6y ago
dvdkon 6y ago
The question of the ideal environment for kids to grow up in is certainly an interesting one. I myself grew up in an apartment, but from visits to friends and family, I think I have a perspective on how having a wide, safe outdoor space can be good for kids. The problems is that as children develop, their focus and needs change. A toddler needs little more than a small space and a parent's attention (this is obviously oversimplified, bear with me). Older kids enjoy running around and playing outdoors and can play just with rudimentary objects. At some point, rocks and sticks stop being enough and the kids begin to form more specific hobbies and demand more autonomy. Group activities outside of school can be essential in developing those hobbies and now having a nice house isn't enough, you need a dense enough community to support these groups without long commutes. Safe walkable streets or public transport also help with the development of autonomy, which is at odds with the previous ideal of a large, secluded house. High schoolers might go want to go to a school tailored to their interests, which will most likely require going to a boarding school for kids who don't live near/in a city, separating them from the family probably sooner than they'd like and separating them from friends on the weekends. What's best for kids isn't easy to define and is also individualised. A kid who grows up to wanting to be a forester might appreciate living in the countryside, while a budding programmer might wish for more opportunities to meet likeminded peers. Thankfully parents' interests and the environment they live in reflect on their kids, so it's not all random, but there's probably no ideal environment for every kid, there's just pros and cons. That said, thinking about the requirements and maximising the pros isn't a bad idea, we just need to be careful to examine the problem from all perspectives.
burnthrow 6y ago
> I expect this is how most of HN's crowd grew up, too. Why. Maybe you're comforted by the thought that your experience was not abnormally privileged, but it was.
- sgt 6y ago
  Certainly privileged, but not abnormally privileged, given the sample size.
helen___keller 6y ago
> I expect this is how most of HN's crowd grew up, too. To be fair this is evidence of bias, not evidence of superiority > With more people and shops etc in your neighborhood comes noise and chaos. This isn't necessarily true. Not all urban spaces are built like manhattan. If you live on main street next to the shops, sure, but a very easy and pleasant urban form is one with a main street with shops and quiet side streets with apartments and houses. For example, a lot of the neighborhoods in Brookline, MA[0]. The bigger issue is that because there's so few neighborhoods built like this, the few that exist are incredibly expensive and desirable, atleast in greater Boston. [0] consider the map view here. Residential, tree filled streets all close to a shop-lined (and rail-lined) main street https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3396099,-71.1361021,426m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3396099,-71.1361021,426m/dat... . I lived 1 building away from the main street (just across from the school) and the only "urban noise" was the school. It was a peaceful and an amazing neighborhood. I would have moved there permanently if it wasn't like 700k for a 2 bedroom in an old building (or $3MM for a brand new 4 bedroom townhouse).
supertrope 6y ago
And waiting on mom or dad to drive you anywhere because school or the nearest store is miles away.

by sgt 6y ago

lynguist 6y ago

Most of HN’s crowd? Hmm. Based on earlier polls I see that ca half of the visitors here are from the US and half from outside, and most in the US may have grown up like this, but outside the US, almost no one grew up in a big house. I grew up in an apartment.

wott 6y ago
> outside the US, almost no one grew up in a big house. Neither suburbs nor detached houses nor private houses are specific to the US. In France, primary housing is 57% individual house, 43% collective (apartments). But that's not all: if you consider families (with children), which is what matters when is "where did you grow up?", individual houses rise to 70%! In UK, flats are a tiny minority, the form that rules there is of course the semi-detached house. But even there, there are still more detached houses than flats. In the whole EU, the ratio is similar to France: flats are a minority with 46% of housing, and amongst the remaining 54%, 2 third are fully detached houses. Another angle. If we take ze city, where almost everything is apartments: Paris. There were 25% *less* inhabitants in 1990 (when a present 30-year old was born) than there were in 1920! People have fled to the suburbs there as well (which doesn't mean 100% individual house, admittedly, but anyway a much much greater proportion than inside Paris). > I grew up in an apartment. It doesn't make a statistic :-)
- ghaff 6y ago
  And don't forget the idyllic car-free existence that almost everyone has in Europe. Meanwhile, in the actual world, I think I know one person in the UK who doesn't drive (and his wife does). European car ownership is lower than the US in general but it's a very very far way from zero.
  - sneeze-slayer 6y ago
    To be fair, National Rail seems distinctly worse compared to DB, SNCF, RENFE, etc. Greater London is an exception, but London has it's own problems with affordability near rail stations.
  - wott 6y ago
    > And don't forget the idyllic car-free existence that almost everyone has in Europe. I don't think it came up this time but indeed it is common each time there is this kind of thread here. Same thing for the fuzzy 'walkability' concept. > I think I know one person in the UK who doesn't drive I don't drive, I never did (despite having a licence), whatever place I lived in (tiny village, small town, small town in the middle of nothing, small city, big city; detached house, semi-detached-house, flat) but I know I am the odd one. I am definitely not representative, the only thing cases like mine can prove is that it is doable (under some circumstances). > European car ownership is lower than the US in general but it's a very very far way from zero. Indeed. Let me pull a few more French statistics for a minute :-) 84% of households own at least 1 car (same ratio for the 25-39 years old, roughly the Gen-Y). 36% own at least 2 cars (40% of the 25-39 years old). In 1990, when society and activity was already organised the same way as now, every home who needed a car already had one, yet owning rate raised by almost 10% since then, and the share of households who own 2 cars raised almost as much (for 3 cars it raised too). In just the last 5 years, the number of vehicles raised by 4.5% for cars, 6% for vans, 3% for lorries. Meanwhile, the population only raised by 1%. The number of vehicles has doubled since I was a kid (1980). Again, I was in the deep country and everyone who needed a car already had one. 1990, 1980, ... We had the largest superstore in Europe (or was it in the World?) a couple dozen miles away, that was already built in the 70s. France was a precursor in large supermarkets. So much for the image of the small village grocery (which exists too, but a large part (70-75%) of the consumption is made in supermarkets and superstores; even though now the largest of the latter decline, the former thrive). Still somehow beats the places where I lived in Finland where the supermarkets and their car parks are in the centre of towns. In a small town, they actually are the town centre.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- Udo_Schmitz 6y ago
  What kind of house in Europe? I’d guess most non-apartment family homes in Europe are row houses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraced_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraced_house Much denser than a stereotypical US suburb.
- desas 6y ago
  Just because a house is detached and private doesn't mean it's big. The UK average house size is 76 m2 while the US is about 200 m2

ehnto 6y ago

It's certainly how I grew up, albeit in rural Australia. But now that I rent in a true suburbia, I do wish were more pockets of commerce serving the daily needs of the neighborhood. If working from home becomes the norm, and zoning changed, I think you'd definitely see far more small coffee shops and bodegas spotted around suburbia.

bowlich 6y ago
Pockets of commerce is the thing that is totally gone from suburbia. I went back to the Cleveland suburbs for a grandparent's funeral several years back and I could definitely see how in the 1950s the structure of the suburb would've been great for the large Catholic families that lived there. It was centred around the VFW, several parks, and a school. Children could play in the streets. Parents could socialize at the VFW and walk home. Each corner had a shopping complex with a grocery, gas station, barber etc. It was never more than 1/2 mile to all your commercial needs -- and a safe sidewalk walk if you sent kids to go get milk or eggs. If you were working downtown there was public transit to take you from the suburb to the city center and back again. I could see how this would be a very nice set up for where my parents grew up. Today this doesn't exist. The corner shopping complexes are entirely vacant. Grocery is now only available at bigger box-stores requiring an hour of commuting in traffic on roads that don't have sidewalks. The school closed. The VFW is no longer culturally relevant.
- bollu 6y ago
  What's a VFW? a quick google search told me it is > Veterans of Foreign Wars
  - bowlich 6y ago
    Yes. Pretty much a club house, pub, community center whose membership consisted of veterans. The suburb was built within a decade of the end of WWII and during the Korean war. So it was a safe bet that most households had a member who was a Veteran or related to a Veteran who could wave them in. As time progressed, less and less households in the neighborhood would probably qualify. So its no longer a community centerpiece.

Fricken 6y ago

More than half of adults under 30 are living with their parents. Kids thrive best when they can't afford a home. The suburbs is an Obesogenic environment, just living in it leaves people prone to weight gain, and now 73% of Americans are overwreight or obese. Kids thrive best when they're overweight or obese. The suburbs are an environmental disaster. Kids thrive best on a destroyed planet. It's important that kids thrive best. Maybe there's a better way to do it. I wouldn't know, I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas.

imtringued 6y ago
It's also wasting a lot of tax payer money because road maintenance costs a lot per house. Overall there is no reason for them to exist unless people pay a massive premium.
- maxsilver 6y ago
  This generally isn't true. Road maintenance is the cheapest form of public transit in the US, and the entire road system (in cost per users) is really low (in Michigan for example, this is between $10-$20/month per person. Lower for suburbs, higher for cities and rural) If you have a county or municipality in mind, their road budget is probably public, you can probably get their actual numbers for last year and see this for yourself.
  - notfromhere 6y ago
    Road maintenance isn’t cheap, especially in low density areas. Using current figures isn’t useful because most roads in the US are very underfunded, and we get low scores on infrastructure quality as a result. Plus it’s not accounting the full cost of roads given that you need a vehicle to access them. On average, something like 15% of a households income is tied to transportation (car maintenance, loans, gas, registration, etc), which is insanely expensive just to be economically productive.
    - fuzzfactor 6y ago

odiroot 6y ago

I was, sadly, uprooted as a teenager from a dense city to a suburb. I cannot imagine worse situation for kids to grow up. Everything you wanted to do, it took driving by your parents to get you there. Or relying on spotty public transit. I grew apart from my school-friends, as they could share their evenings on fun and play, while I had to go back earlier (commute did take quite a long time) to be able to do my homework etc. My sleep quality also plummeted as I had to wake up 1-1.5h earlier than my friends to be on time for morning classes.

danaris 6y ago
It sounds like you were living in the suburb, but still going to school in the city—this is definitely not the norm even for a family that has moved from a city to the suburbs. In general, if you live in a suburb, you go to school either in the same suburb or a neighboring one. Indeed, one of the classic reasons to prefer one suburb over another is which school district it's in.
- odiroot 6y ago
  Well, there's no schools in the suburbs (at least no middle/high) so it's not like I had a choice.
  - djrogers 6y ago
    What you’re describing are not suburbs. I’ve lived in suburbs my entire life, and have never been more than 10 minutes from a high school - let alone a middle school. What your describing sounds a lot more like a remote rural town. And a small one at that!
    - odiroot 6y ago
      No, a suburb of the capital of my country, with more or less 3M population.
  - danaris 6y ago
    There are definitely schools in both suburbs and rural areas. In the area I grew up in, each suburban village/town had its own school district and at least one building each for elementary, middle, and high school, and we were right on the edge of rural (the house I grew up in, within one of the aforementioned suburban school districts, was literally a 150-year-old farmhouse, surrounded by farm fields). It's entirely possible—though quite unusual—that the specific suburbs you moved to had no schools to call their own, but it's absolutely untrue that "there's no schools in the suburbs".

watwut 6y ago

I did not. Never felt the need for house. Imo what kids need (in terms od environment) is locality with other kids to socialize with that is safe enough that they can navigate and play in independently from parents. By navigate I mean public transport or walkable distances. Whether it is house or not matters less.

kqvamxurcagg 6y ago

Totally agree. I grew up in a detached house about 1 mile from the town centre. We had fast internet, good schools and good neighbours. After moving to London I lived in apartments for a few years but decided to move back to suburbia as it's a much nicer environment to raise children in.

KozmoNau7 6y ago

Much better than a private garden is access to public parks and playgrounds. This is where they socialize and make friends, where they learn to interact with others in a group context. To you it may be "noise and chaos", to many others it's life and excitement. No matter if you live in a dense inner city or a small village, open public spaces where they can meet other children are vital to children's growth and development.

ojame 6y ago
I'm not sure they're _much better_ but in my experience (both as a kid and a dad) they serve different purposes. Parks and playgrounds are great, as you've mentioned (but you can also get socialisation through play groups, activity groups like swimming, school, the beach etc). My kids do lots of stuff they couldn't do in a public space and I likely wouldn't let them do inside. They have outdoor baths in summer, grow sunflowers and herbs, collect eggs from the chickens, have 'outdoor movie nights', run around naked for hours etc. There's also social things, being in a playground or park means my kids often go and find things to do by themselves, which is great (they're great at independence). Being in our backyard forces them, most of the time, to work together to solve whatever problem they have. Those problems are often far different from what happens _inside_ the house and are just as critical to their development. Last week I saw my 2.5yo up our apricot tree throwing apricots into a bucket being held by our ~5yo because they wanted to make dessert. Could probably do that in a park, but yeah.
- zemvpferreira 6y ago
  These experiences are all commmon in certain public parks in Lisbon. If there's political will, having meaningful natural experiences in community is easy, cheap and I'd say even more rewarding. The problem is in the communities. I remember a sunny day back in 2015 - I was living in a suburb near Redwood City with lovely, expansive parks. Naively I decided to take my shirt off while I was lying in the grass and get some sun. It took less than 5 minutes for a group of concerned mothers (whose group was yards away from me) to come berate me for "exposing myself to children". What sort of education is this?
- 6y ago

dvdkon 6y ago

The question of the ideal environment for kids to grow up in is certainly an interesting one. I myself grew up in an apartment, but from visits to friends and family, I think I have a perspective on how having a wide, safe outdoor space can be good for kids. The problems is that as children develop, their focus and needs change. A toddler needs little more than a small space and a parent's attention (this is obviously oversimplified, bear with me). Older kids enjoy running around and playing outdoors and can play just with rudimentary objects. At some point, rocks and sticks stop being enough and the kids begin to form more specific hobbies and demand more autonomy. Group activities outside of school can be essential in developing those hobbies and now having a nice house isn't enough, you need a dense enough community to support these groups without long commutes. Safe walkable streets or public transport also help with the development of autonomy, which is at odds with the previous ideal of a large, secluded house. High schoolers might go want to go to a school tailored to their interests, which will most likely require going to a boarding school for kids who don't live near/in a city, separating them from the family probably sooner than they'd like and separating them from friends on the weekends. What's best for kids isn't easy to define and is also individualised. A kid who grows up to wanting to be a forester might appreciate living in the countryside, while a budding programmer might wish for more opportunities to meet likeminded peers. Thankfully parents' interests and the environment they live in reflect on their kids, so it's not all random, but there's probably no ideal environment for every kid, there's just pros and cons. That said, thinking about the requirements and maximising the pros isn't a bad idea, we just need to be careful to examine the problem from all perspectives.

burnthrow 6y ago

> I expect this is how most of HN's crowd grew up, too. Why. Maybe you're comforted by the thought that your experience was not abnormally privileged, but it was.

sgt 6y ago
Certainly privileged, but not abnormally privileged, given the sample size.

helen___keller 6y ago

> I expect this is how most of HN's crowd grew up, too. To be fair this is evidence of bias, not evidence of superiority > With more people and shops etc in your neighborhood comes noise and chaos. This isn't necessarily true. Not all urban spaces are built like manhattan. If you live on main street next to the shops, sure, but a very easy and pleasant urban form is one with a main street with shops and quiet side streets with apartments and houses. For example, a lot of the neighborhoods in Brookline, MA[0]. The bigger issue is that because there's so few neighborhoods built like this, the few that exist are incredibly expensive and desirable, atleast in greater Boston. [0] consider the map view here. Residential, tree filled streets all close to a shop-lined (and rail-lined) main street https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3396099,-71.1361021,426m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3396099,-71.1361021,426m/dat... . I lived 1 building away from the main street (just across from the school) and the only "urban noise" was the school. It was a peaceful and an amazing neighborhood. I would have moved there permanently if it wasn't like 700k for a 2 bedroom in an old building (or $3MM for a brand new 4 bedroom townhouse).

supertrope 6y ago

And waiting on mom or dad to drive you anywhere because school or the nearest store is miles away.