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Yeah, you're right there are other factors. My neighborhood had busy roads on both ends, and was mostly empty-nesters. There are certainly worse places to gro

Yeah, you're right there are other factors. My neighborhood had busy roads on both ends, and was mostly empty-nesters. There are certainly worse places to grow up, but I don't think we should be satisfied with the baseline set by suburbs either. In places like Germany and Japan, children walk themselves to school as young as 6 years old! I only experience that freedom after getting a license at 16!

dfadsadsf 5y ago
I live in fairly typical wealthy US suburb, my kid is 7 (1st grade) and goes to school on her own - school is around 0.5 miles away. I have to pick her up from school (parents are required until 3rd grade to check out kid) but often just leave her on playground to play with other kids (unless she has activities that day - which frankly she has more and more of - chess, math, soccer, gymnastics and ballet right now). She walks back home whenever she is done playing. I see kids 10-12 years old biking everywhere and hanging out in Starbucks/restaurants on their own. There are busy roads but you can go around them on secondary roads with low/non existent traffic. While not majority, there are quite a few people who give the same freedom to kids as us. So far we had zero problems but i am thinking about getting smart watch with GPS for piece of mind.
- CalRobert 5y ago
  Might I ask roughly what region this is, or when it was developed? This sounds kind of like old-style suburbs, which were indeed quite nice. In most of California you can't buy a quart of milk without going over half a mile.
  - dfadsadsf 5y ago
    It’s in Westchester, NY - built mostly around 1920-1940 or about that time as train commuter suburb. I think it not unique - Palo Alto and Menlo Park in Bay Area are very comparable and very walkable/bikeable too. For us closest grocery is 0.8 mile away which is borderline walkable but we bike quite a bit (highly recommend Radwagon - great for shuttling 2 kids around and light groceries). Town is still car centric so still lots of driving but we carve out enough for us by biking/walking to not need car every day.
    - CalRobert 5y ago
      Sounds lovely. My favourite suburbs are streetcar suburbs - South Park in San Diego for instance. Narrow streets, shorter setbacks, rowhouses, and just nicer places to exist.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Depending on your need, I think the Airtag is a good usecase for this, since it doesn’t require a monthly subscription. I had the same question with my dog ;)
rmah 5y ago
It's not about the nation, it's about the group psychology of parents in a local region. In NYC, nearly a million kids of all ages walk, skate, bike, whatever to school every day. Many take the bus or subways. While younger children can use a school bus, the city encourages independent use of public transport by children with free passes for them (and I think are allowed to ride alone by age 11 or 12). I'd be very surprised if other American cities didn't have similar systems in place.
- benrbray 5y ago
  That's great to hear! Unfortunately I think it's quite rare in the rest of the country for children to be able to walk to school. I've only ever been to places where school buses / cars are the norm. I was interested to see if studies have been done. I found an article [1] claiming that as of 2009, only 13 percent of American children walked/biked to school. [1] http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_walking_and_bicycling.cfm http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_...

dfadsadsf 5y ago

I live in fairly typical wealthy US suburb, my kid is 7 (1st grade) and goes to school on her own - school is around 0.5 miles away. I have to pick her up from school (parents are required until 3rd grade to check out kid) but often just leave her on playground to play with other kids (unless she has activities that day - which frankly she has more and more of - chess, math, soccer, gymnastics and ballet right now). She walks back home whenever she is done playing. I see kids 10-12 years old biking everywhere and hanging out in Starbucks/restaurants on their own. There are busy roads but you can go around them on secondary roads with low/non existent traffic. While not majority, there are quite a few people who give the same freedom to kids as us. So far we had zero problems but i am thinking about getting smart watch with GPS for piece of mind.

CalRobert 5y ago
Might I ask roughly what region this is, or when it was developed? This sounds kind of like old-style suburbs, which were indeed quite nice. In most of California you can't buy a quart of milk without going over half a mile.
- dfadsadsf 5y ago
  It’s in Westchester, NY - built mostly around 1920-1940 or about that time as train commuter suburb. I think it not unique - Palo Alto and Menlo Park in Bay Area are very comparable and very walkable/bikeable too. For us closest grocery is 0.8 mile away which is borderline walkable but we bike quite a bit (highly recommend Radwagon - great for shuttling 2 kids around and light groceries). Town is still car centric so still lots of driving but we carve out enough for us by biking/walking to not need car every day.
  - CalRobert 5y ago
    Sounds lovely. My favourite suburbs are streetcar suburbs - South Park in San Diego for instance. Narrow streets, shorter setbacks, rowhouses, and just nicer places to exist.
laurent92 5y ago
Depending on your need, I think the Airtag is a good usecase for this, since it doesn’t require a monthly subscription. I had the same question with my dog ;)

rmah 5y ago

It's not about the nation, it's about the group psychology of parents in a local region. In NYC, nearly a million kids of all ages walk, skate, bike, whatever to school every day. Many take the bus or subways. While younger children can use a school bus, the city encourages independent use of public transport by children with free passes for them (and I think are allowed to ride alone by age 11 or 12). I'd be very surprised if other American cities didn't have similar systems in place.

benrbray 5y ago
That's great to hear! Unfortunately I think it's quite rare in the rest of the country for children to be able to walk to school. I've only ever been to places where school buses / cars are the norm. I was interested to see if studies have been done. I found an article [1] claiming that as of 2009, only 13 percent of American children walked/biked to school. [1] http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_walking_and_bicycling.cfm http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_...