The norm outside of the U.S. is that you don't have a massive discontinuity between "dense inner city" and "car dependent wasteland of highway, strip malls, and

The norm outside of the U.S. is that you don't have a massive discontinuity between "dense inner city" and "car dependent wasteland of highway, strip malls, and detached single-family homes surrounded by giant lawns" - if you start at the city center and travel outward you have dense high-rise apartments, which slowly morph into low-rise apartment complexes, which slowly morph into duplexes and triplexes, which slowly morph into somewhat tightly packed SFHs. So, until you get all the way out into farmland, you're always in a place that can be efficiently served by cycling infrastructure and public transportation, which makes them great places to live for children, the elderly and anyone really, and where it's always legal to just open a corner shop to serve the locals. In East Asia for example, going back millennia, you had Confucian filial piety whereby adults were expected to take care of their aging parents. In pretty much everywhere except white-collar communities in North America and Europe, multi-generational households are pretty standard fare. In a city that has not been bulldozed and hacked up for cars, both kids and the elderly can enjoy a high degree of independence and safety; by contrast in American suburbia, you are essentially trapped in a home, forced to drive a car to travel anywhere. It's no wonder I spent my childhood and teenage years on an Xbox.