7 ms·
In the US, it's part of the curse of the suburbs: When there are fewer people living near you, going to see anyone involves far more minutes. I think of where
by hibikir 3y ago
In the US, it's part of the curse of the suburbs: When there are fewer people living near you, going to see anyone involves far more minutes.
I think of where I grew up: A very dense city, where streets are narrow, easy to cross, and pre-teens can move around with not just lack of fear, but major convenience. My mother had 4 siblings: All with their families, living in their own apartments. But every apartment was within a 5 minute walk: I could see the other buildings from our building's front door! So if someone needed babysitting, or just had to run random errand, children could be dropped off easily: Cousins almost become brothers when you see them every couple of days anyway.
This was also great for organizing activities with classmates. Not only we got to see each other on the street at random, as we did different errands, but organizing to meet in some bench was trivial. RPGs in the weekend? No problem, as a 15 minute walk catches most of the high school's families.
Now, in the US suburbs, socialization is more about online gaming, because the number of classmates a 14 year old can reach conveniently is pretty low: You could fit an apartment building with 16-20 families in the space that my suburb dedicates to 2. Access to 10 times the people sure makes living next to a friend much more likely! And since drivers aren't needed to get anything done, a lot of things that are commitments in the suburbs just disappear or are easy to move, as another neighbor can take Timmy to the soccer game, as they also have another kid going to the game anyway, and Timmy can walk himself to the neighbor's door with no hassle.
Transit time, and the total dependence of children, are a curse that can be avoided, but we have to do a lot of urban rebuilding for that.
- HeckFeck 3y agoIt's so compelling selling the picket house with all the land around it - who doesn't see that as idyllic? But then the hidden costs to community can't really be quantified, and the housing developers are hardly going to think of that. I don't live in the US, but I do wonder what that has done to your social fabric. As well as making much of downtown flattened and made into parking lots for businesses. It is the first thing I notice jumping into any random US town in Street View; such wide spaces between every business on Main St. Who would ever walk there and chance upon a friend when you just dump the car outside and go into the shop or restaurant.
- twic 3y agoI suspect that something similar is happening with the shift to remote work. You can live in a big house in the beautiful countryside! But now doing anything other than being in the house or the countryside is considerably more effort.
- mrweiner 3y agoMy partner and I struggle with this. They’d like to live a bit further out of the city, have some land and some goats, and I’d love having a creek nearby, but the reality is that we like going out to music and vegan restaurants, and living out of the city would make this much more difficult.
- sznio 3y ago>I suspect that something similar is happening with the shift to remote work. You can live in a big house in the beautiful countryside! I dream of owning a plot of land in the countryside and starting a neighbourhood there with my friends.
- jimmydddd 3y agoThis reminds me of a documentary I saw about Italian immigrant familes in the 1930's? coming to the US and living in tenements in Newark NJ and NYC. The younger generations grew up, went to college, and moved all over the country. When interviewed, they all said the same things: "We didn't know we were poor at the time," "we miss having the whole family together," "there was always someone around to watch the kids," etc.
- SoftTalker 3y agoLittle to do with suburbs. I grew up in a suburban-like environment. Large neighborhood of single family homes, mostly ranches or two-stories, lots of cul-de-sac streets. I had friends all around, if within a few houses we'd walk, othewise ride bikes. There was a park sort of in the center of the neighborhood, we'd ride our bikes there and hang out, sometimes ride to the closest gas station to buy candy bars, etc. Moms would make arrangements to carpool kids to practices, take kids to the pool, or do other things that were farther away. At some point we've decided instead to live behind locked doors in fear of our neighbors. I see little reason to blame suburbia or city living arrangements for that.
- vel0city 3y agoI just wanted to echo your experiences growing up in a suburb with lots of single-family houses. Even though we were in different classes (slightly different ages) there were loads of kids in the blocks around my house. We'd play games in the green belt (utility corridor) or at the park in the middle or meet up for swimming in the community pool in the summer time. I'd walk or ride my bike to friend's houses all the time to play their Nintendo and they'd come over to my place to play my Sega. You don't need to live in a dense city with massive apartment complexes to have neighborhood friends. And yeah, I definitely had friends that I mostly only saw during activities (sports, band, scouts, etc.) they were still good and close friends. Spending over a decade of at least one night a week together tends to make people pretty close.