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> and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around Actually, suburban streets are significantly more dangerous than urban streets, in terms of num

• spockz 4y ago
  But why is that? Maybe because children don’t play on the street at all in the city. So what does the fraction look when we take children playing outside and be healthy instead of just children? The chance remains the same but for the ones that survive there is a better quality of life.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • willnonya 4y ago
    There is also a significant ant difference in the absolute numbers. Not to mention people tend to be much lore cautious in high traffic areas.
  • Swizec 4y ago
    Higher speeds. Suburban streets/roads/stroads optimize for traffic safety, not pedestrian safety. The wide roads and large front yards promote higher driving speeds. For a long time the thinking was even that front yards can work as a place for cars to stop safely if they fly off the road. They talk about this in Strong Towns iirc
    • hcurtiss 4y ago
      I think it's more likely because there are very few kids playing outside in urban areas. There are kids in the Pearl and the South Waterfront in Portland. It is rare to see them play outside, much more rare to see them playing in the street. On the other hand, kids playing catch or riding their bikes on suburban streets is a daily occurrence in my neighborhood. That's definitely going to drive up interactions with cars, but the motor vehicle rates you cite above are still exceedingly low.
      • HDThoreaun 4y ago
        That's just not true though. There are tons of kids playing in the street here in chicago. Maybe you just don't live near many children?
        • mrep 4y ago
          Really? I grew up in the suburbs of chicago and we didn't really play in the streets. We played basketball in one of our parents driveways or at the local park and played football in one of our parents front/back yards or at the local park. Now I live in Lake View during the summer and I haven't really seen any kids playing in the streets either. Where are you at in Chicago and what do they play if I may ask?
          • tptacek 4y ago
            I'm in Oak Park, just across Austin from Chicago, and kids play in the streets all the time. Basketball and baseball, mostly. The comment upthread suggests kids aren't even riding bikes in the streets. I mean, come on.
  • naravara 4y ago
    > Maybe because children don’t play on the street at all in the city. They absolutely do
    • asda_ 4y ago
      Lol what? Where do you see kids playing close to downtown or in the streets of a heavily urban center. Examples?
      • naravara 4y ago
        Cities are not just dense downtown cores with arterial streets. Most families living in cities live on side-streets that don't get much through traffic, and children frequently play in them.
  • Retric 4y ago
    Children do play on city streets, however one of the big differences is sight lines. Suburban streets tend to be dangerous due to visibility issues and often lack well connected sidewalks etc. A core reason for this is developers want to maximize the number of houses they can fit on a given plot of land which will often have odd shapes etc. So kids simply walking to a friends house are often in real danger.
    • lumb63 4y ago
      Some anecdata here having moved from a suburb to Boston metro: I regularly have to slow down for children riding bikes, playing basketball or hockey in the street, etc. to this day when I visit my mom in the suburbs. I have never seen a single child playing in the streets in nearly five years living near Boston.
      • SamBam 4y ago
        To be clear, in the city kids don't play literally in the streets. They're on the sidewalks and playgrounds. It's the fact that suburban kids are often in the actual street that is part of the problem, and the fact that the streets are actually roads and designed for cars to go fast on.
        • lumb63 4y ago
          I thought about this as I posted my story. There’s a park on the street next to mine. When weather allows, kids play basketball and baseball there and play on the jungle gym. We never had that growing up. For us, there were two or three parks in town, but none were within walking distance of our house, so we didn’t play there. If areas were set aside and accessible for kids to play safely, I’d imagine more would do that.
      • ves 4y ago
        Where in Boston did you live? That’s definitely the case in the fancy parts of Boston and definitely not the case in the minority ghettoes like roxbury, JP, and dorchester
  • veec_cas_tant 4y ago
    I'm not sure I agree that a high quality of life requires playing in the streets. Perhaps an issue is that many rural areas lack adequate pedestrian pathing and recreational areas? Maybe an even larger issue is that parents generally feel unsafe leaving their kids alone outside.
    • rightbyte 4y ago
      Probably bikes right? Children surely are doing less biking in cities per capita compared to suburban areas.
      • veec_cas_tant 4y ago
        I'm sorry, I don't know what you are responding to with "Probably bikes right?". Cities that are built for living typically include massive investments in pedestrian infrastructure, including bikes, if that is what you are saying. Biking is not feasible in most suburbs because of the distance. Cities that care about reducing traffic, such as Amsterdam, absolutely have more children biking than a suburban area. Unfortunately a lot of cities in the United States were built for cars and not people.
      • JAlexoid 4y ago
        I'm an avid cyclist. Just from personal observation, outside of high density urban areas I see very little people on bicycles. Now I moved out of NYC to the suburbs - I know every cyclist in the area, and that's me plus 2 other people. I barely ever see bikes...
    • kbenson 4y ago
      Urban sprawl by definition takes up a lot of space, meaning that if parks and other shared areas are planned in support of a specific amount of people, many of those people will have to travel farther to reach it than they would were it a more dense neighborhood.
  • civilized 4y ago
    The disconnect between city folk and rural/suburban folk is wild. We've got comments below saying (paraphrased, my interpretation) "well of course kids play in the streets" followed by "well not literally, I mean on the sidewalks, who on earth would literally play in the street where cars drive". My neighbors have a basketball hoop facing their street. They consider the street, the street that cars drive on, a basketball court. And the neighborhood I grew up in was dotted with cal-de-sacs. Which, again, are streets that cars drive on, and all of which were baseball diamonds by kids' God-given right. Half of you know that I literally mean every word of what I said and half of you are equally certain I don't.
    • trillic 4y ago
      A typical two lane road is a great width for a street hockey rink
    • runnerup 4y ago
      Yep we played lots of street hockey with nets in the street. Part of the game was clearing all people/sticks/balls and the two nets in <5 seconds whenever a car showed up. All drivers in the whole neighborhood understood this as normal. That said, as kids we’d be equally fine with a dedicated lot specifically to play various types of street ball. As long as it allowed random pickup games, always had a free spot for us, and didn’t require us to pay $100/mo each to some sports league organization. Abundant free sports facilities for each neighborhood are fine. We don’t need to play in the literal street.
      • SamBam 4y ago
        > All drivers in the whole neighborhood understood this as normal. But the fact remains that kids get hit in suburbs more often. We feel like drivers in suburbia understand this, but the roads are actually designed to encourage speed, and accidents happen.
        • runnerup 4y ago
          Yeah that neighborhood was impossible to speed like today's suburbs. Blocks were 300 ft from intersection to intersection, and no road was longer than 3 blocks. Going to my house from the main road was literally: "First left, then first right, then second left, then first right, then the third house on the left".
• deleted 4y ago
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