This is the inevitable conclusions of stranger danger and car-based suburbanization. When people only access the world via car and avoid walking around, they n

This is the inevitable conclusions of stranger danger and car-based suburbanization. When people only access the world via car and avoid walking around, they never build familiarity with their own neighborhood. All locations worth stepping out of the car for, are miles away and behind security gates. Low density also means that 1 stranger can actually do damage, unlike dense areas where there are at least a few strangers within earshot. Suburbanization inevitably caused stranger danger. Once public trust was eroded, only known parents could be trusted to supervise children. The coldness towards strangers goes both ways. 'Strange children' near you were seen as something between an annoyance and a liability. With multi-income households, the only location where children were safe and tolerated, was friends houses or ones with paid strict supervision. So, the kids retreated into indoor activities or found themselves at mandatory hobbies, a term that sounds dystopian even as I type it out. Social media has virally encroached into every aspect of these children's lives. But, lets not pretend that North American society didn't lay down ground work, fertilizer and all, for this travesty to take place. People are the river and built infrastructure is the path of least resistance. Once built, the river will meander down that path, irrespective of human effort to affect outcomes counter to the built infrastructure. ___ I grew up in a dense Asian city famous for a culture of 'leaving you alone = independence' (in comparison to the rest of the nation). Even then, I knew the faces of every small store owner within 5 minutes of my house and vice-verse, and that's because I walked by them everyday. When everyone leaves home from the same door (the building exit) and walks back in through the same door, you inevitably have small talk and get to know your neighbors. The public ground was nearby, so all parents would swing by to check-in on kids as they passed by during the day. This meant that the older kids were familiar and parents felt confident in leaving their younger children under their supervision, in return for complete freedom in terms of how the kids spent their time. North America has no thirds spaces, thinning mom-n-pops stores and a lack of public shared spaces. North America seems to have completely forgotten that it takes a village to raise a child.