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The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk an

• alfalfasprout 2y ago
  You're also putting Europe on a pedestal. In many urban areas (where the majority of the population lives) it's no longer safe for kids to walk + bike to school freely. Not necessarily because of cars but significant crime.
  • jasonfarnon 2y ago
    Is it no longer safe there? Because in the states parents have been restricting kids a lot more severely just as crime in cities plummeted (mid 90s--present). So I imagine it's either perceptions about safety, or parents just being more careful.
    • immibis 2y ago
      It isn't no longer safe for kids to walk to school. What happened is that American internet arrived here, and it has political reasons to want everyone to think it is.
      • wincy 2y ago
        I walked to the gas station with my dog and two kids, and had a guy yell at me that my kids were going to get kidnapped while I went inside for 5 minutes to buy us some waters and snacks. The biggest hurdle for us letting our children be free range and able to do things on their own has definitely been paranoid parents and busybodies who watched Sound of Freedom and think that every girl is going to immediately get sex trafficked to Guatemalan drug lords (or whatever, I didn't watch the movie) if she leaves her parent's sight for a second.
      • eru 2y ago
        Wait, are you saying American internet it telling people that it's safe, or that it's unsafe?
        • immibis 2y ago
          American internet wants you to think you can only be safe in a car, with a gun, around other white cis people.
          • eru 2y ago
            Interesting perspective. As far as I can tell, American Internet mostly wants you to think that their own culture war is important and relevant universally, including for you. And that their own particular division of issues between their political poles is also somehow universal and important; and that you should get riled up about it.
    • CalRobert 2y ago
      Europe is a big place, it varies widely.
  • bedobi 2y ago
    guess what kills the most children, criminals or cars?
    • ksplicer 2y ago
      Exactly, what the hell is "not necessarily because of cars" supposed to mean? Or maybe it's a comment on how, despite cars being way more dangerous, parents over-focus on crime?
    • carlosjobim 2y ago
      At a certain maturity, kids have developed mentally enough for cars to not be a threat to them. Criminals are a whole different problem.
      • bedobi 2y ago
        Right, no teenagers or adults die by cars, for they have developed mentally enough for cars not to be a threat to them …Except the 40 000 who do die by car, every single year, in the US alone. Countless more injured and permanently disabled. Meanwhile criminals are indeed a whole different problem. (an imaginary one)
        • carlosjobim 2y ago
          [flagged]
          • Moldoteck 2y ago
            Your point was car's are no longer a problem once kids grow up which is a total bs. If you wanted to say something else, it's your fault you didn't comvey your thoughts in a proper way
            • carlosjobim 2y ago
              I'm not going to do your thinking for you. If you don't understand that after a certain age, cars are no more a threat to children than they are to adults – then I don't expect you to understand why and how criminals are a threat to people around them.
  • throwaway2037 2y ago
    > Not necessarily because of cars but significant crime. I love these HN comments -- so incredibly vague. Can you be more specific about which cities? I find it hard to believe. Crime has fallen like a stone in the last 30 years in highly developed countries and their biggest cities.
    • vidarh 2y ago
      There is however an impression in fairly substantial parts of society that it's gotten worse, and that impression might well have a greater effect than the actual rate on some people's behaviours.
      • newswasboring 2y ago
        Can you find a source for this claim for European countries? I personally can't but maybe my scholar foo is bad.
        • vidarh 2y ago
          For which claim? That people have an impression that things have gotten worse? You look at our recent European elections and how much of the campaigning was on law and order and the perception of the collapse of society.
          • newswasboring 2y ago
            Now you are moving the goal post. And if you ask me, those are just masks for inner racism about immigrants stealing their jerbs. I live in Europe and I don't see this being a big consideration. So if I'm not hearing it from my fellows then I would need at least a survey to believe this. I've seen those surveys for US.
            • vidarh 2y ago
              No, I have not moved any goalposts. I explicitly made the point that the impression is common, despite the actual numbers not supporting it. That was the entire point of my comment. I don't know what you thought you read. And I agree it's usually about racism. If you live in Europe, just look at the EU Parliament elections and see how the far right did. Or follow the political discourse in pretty much any European country. If you're not hearing it, your not paying attention to pretty much any political reporting.
  • koyote 2y ago
    Please don't throw wild vague claims around without substantiating with data/sources. Crime has decreased pretty much everywhere over the last three decades. I am sure there are pockets in the world where it hasn't, but those would be the exception. [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rates-across-western-europe?time=1990..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rates-across-wes...]
  • piva00 2y ago
    Please, share your sources and what cities you are talking about. I live in Europe and I see groups of kids hanging out by themselves all the time in many, many major cities across the continent.
  • pantalaimon 2y ago
    I’m now curious where those urban areas are where crime is so significant, kids no longer can walk to school. (And what kind of crime? We don’t really have lots of drive-by-shootings here, kids aren’t exactly a prime target for robberies either)
  • ponector 2y ago
    Sounds like a false claim. Robbery of children? Human trafficking? What exactly are you talking? I would say one off the biggest threat for pedestrians in European city are electric scooters.
    • david-gpu 2y ago
      > I would say one off the biggest threat for pedestrians in European city are electric scooters. How many deaths have they caused? How do those stats compare to the deaths caused by motor vehicles? Which one is more dangerous based on that data? I have looked at local pedestrian casualty statistics and motor vehicles are by far the largest cause of injury and death in the large city where I live. I haven't even been able to find what was the last time that a cyclist or e-scooter rider killed a pedestrian. Meanwhile, cars and trucks have killed four cyclists this year alone.
    • bedobi 2y ago
      > electric scooters this is bullshit, cars kill and injure orders of magnitude more people in Europe than scooters do. That's not to say there's 0 issues with scooters, because there are, but focus should remain on cars, not scooters.
  • GJim 2y ago
    > but significant crime The crime that has been *falling* throughout the entire western world after peaking in the mid 1990's ?
    • constantcrying 2y ago
      >The crime that has been falling throughout the entire western world after peaking in the mid 1990's ? crime=/=crime The park were we hung out as kids is now inhabited by drug dealers. Obviously no place for kids, or families or basically anyone else, I will try to avoid if I reasonably can. And of course there was no increase in statistical crime, as it just is not getting prosecuted, although it is clear as day that it is happening. Crime stats are hugely misleading if you want to figure out what a social environment looks like.
• overstay8930 2y ago
  Most parents in Europe would not let their kids walk alone to school lol, maybe outside of large cities but it is not the norm anymore.
  • swayvil 2y ago
    Is "lol" really appropriate in this context? Theses days it seems more like a nervous tic.
    • overstay8930 2y ago
      because its a laughable suggestion to pretend Europe doesn’t have the same problems as the US
      • trgn 2y ago
        but they don't though. kids are so much more independently mobile than here, is that really not the case? I mean, you can literally just see it, you'll be on the bus to your tourist thing or whatever, and some 10 year old is riding with you to school, his laughably overstuffed backpack on his knees.
    • DonHopkins 2y ago
      "Lucifer Our Lord"
      • swayvil 2y ago
        A weird coincidence. In my search for sane discord servers I just happened upon one for satanists last night.
  • piva00 2y ago
    I have friends with school-age kids ranging from 9-12 years old living in Stockholm, Berlin, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Münich, and Milan. Almost all of them go alone to school: walking, biking, or using public transport, the only exception is the couple who lives in Milan.
• rootusrootus 2y ago
  I live in the US and my kids walk and bike to school. You're making wide generalizations across a large country.
  • grugagag 2y ago
    Do they still play outside like previous generations used to?
    • wincy 2y ago
      My daughter has been playing outside since she was 4 years old, unsupervised. She's 9 now. A lot of the other neighborhood kids have followed suit (I really suspect our "benign neglect" made the other parents thing "well if nothing bad happened to her our kids will be fine" and we have about 8-10 kids around the same age on the block that are constantly going to each other's houses and hanging out doing whatever it is they're doing (I don't really know, that's part of what makes it so great). It's almost 9pm right now, I have no idea where she is. She comes home when the street lights come on. The other day I gave her a $20 bill and she rode her bike to the Walmart nearby (no major streets on the way there). She bought her friends ice cream and was a hero. Sure there were hiccups, one time she stole the neighbors solar powered lanterns from his front yard, but we made her return them and apologize. I guess our strategy is we just don't let her have any screens. They make her absolutely insane. So instead she leaves the house as soon as she can and goes out and plays. Even her 5 year old sister who is wheelchair bound goes with her a lot of the time, in the $1200 Thule buggy super stroller we bought (used). I guess we just lucked out, but we also insisted on it and kept letting her go out even after some woman called CPS on us for letting our kid be unsupervised. We live in a middle class neighborhood with people from dozens of countries and every major religions living together, and all our kids play together. I'm sure it's someone's mental image of the ideal childhood.
      • akdor1154 2y ago
        Out of interest, how did the interaction with CPS go?
      • 2y ago
• kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  In my prewar non-car-centric city, kids still walk to school. They don't play outside like previous generations. You'll see the Christmas bikes for a few weeks when it's warm enough in late spring then nothing all summer long.
  • bilbo0s 2y ago
    As a parent, I can tell you video games and smart phones have a lot to do with this.
    • Moldoteck 2y ago
      Some speculate it's a consequence, not a reason. When most of the environment is poorly designed, lack of third places, lots of dangerous cars, big distances, no sidewalks, parent supervision etc... it's natural they started using phones more when these arrived: it gave options to socialize without encountering all the impediments
    • bigger_cheese 2y ago
      I think there is some generalizing here I grew up in an Australian City in the 90's. Even back then kids weren't clamoring to play outside in the street. Or ride bikes etc (there was a clique at school who were skateboarders but not a widespread thing). I think it very much depends on the kids temperament, my experience as a kid didn't involve a lot of outdoors activities. However my parents were pretty big on making sure I had exercise I played sport on the weekend (cricket in the summer and soccer in the winter) and it was non-negotiable my parents insisted on it. If not for sport I don't think I'd have spent any time outdoors at all. I think Weekend Sport might be an Australian cultural thing does the US have weekend kids sports?
      • lazyasciiart 2y ago
        Yes, it does, it’s pretty common.
      • rawgabbit 2y ago
        In Texas, sports is bigger than religion. I personally know families that would drive out of state every weekend so their children can participate in weekend soccer/basketball tournaments. This meant 5+ hours in the car each way. Personally, I believe the loss of trust in institutions (major sex scandals in every church, Boy Scouts of America etc.) made parents uneasy about sending their kids somewhere without one of them as a chaperone. Here in Texas, I also did not trust many of the volunteer coaches. Many of them simply did not know how dangerous heat stroke was. There was also this bizarre old school theory that you shouldn't drink water when exercising in the heat. Instead, they repeat old stories like this... https://www.espn.com/classic/s/dent_junction_08/02/01.html https://www.espn.com/classic/s/dent_junction_08/02/01.html <excerpt>Out along the edge of the Texas Hill Country, with temperatures soaring beyond 110 degrees, the Texas A&M Aggies gathered that summer in 1954.... ten days of misery forty-seven years ago when players quit the team in droves to avoid the four-hour practices that did not include water breaks or even a kind word from Bryant. It was a miracle that no one died.</excerpt>
• crooked-v 2y ago
  My particular bugbear here is the absolutely insanity of truck and SUV heights, to the point that even full-grown adults are no longer clearly visible from inside new vehicles (https://i.imgur.com/1dHWVxn.png https://i.imgur.com/1dHWVxn.png).
  • slifin 2y ago
    It's crazy in this country SUV protestors deflate the tires I always wonder if cars that are particularly top heavy could be flipped over while parked by particularly strong pedestrians
  • silisili 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • bedobi 2y ago
    100% agree, and instead of showing any signs of stopping, the size increase is accelerating. Yesterday we used to joke about the trucks of today. Tomorrow, they will be twice as big.
  • causality0 2y ago
    We need reforms to the method the EPA uses to calculate and enforce fuel efficiency requirements. It's the direct driver of the gigantifucation of vehicles.
    • bedobi 2y ago
      Simplest thing to do would be to just tax weight (at time of purchase and yearly) and require commercial license (only obtainable with demonstrable justification like running a business that requires hauling loads every day)
      • toomuchtodo 2y ago
        Still need to force trucks to design the front to be as pedestrian friendly as possible.
• Dalewyn 2y ago
  >Because in the US they would be roadkill, Have you actually experienced Japanese drivers? They make American drivers look absolutely noble (and truthfully, we are) by comparison. For starters, and this applies to both individual and professional drivers: * They don't give way to emergency vehicles blaring the sirens. * They don't wait for people to finish crossing intersections. * They don't let other drivers into their lane. * They drive absurdly fast. * Most roads are very narrow. Some particularly busy intersections require dedicated police officer supervision to shepherd the drivers because they're so unruly and disrespectful of pedestrians and other drivers. There are many reasons Japan is more accepting of letting children be children, but most of that is social factors and motivators that are decidedly different from American ones. Cars are ultimately just a really small part, if any.
  • lmm 2y ago
    None of that laundry list ultimately matters when Japanese speed limits are so much lower; speed is what kills. (Also, Japanese drivers are used to keeping their cars in lane, are used to sharing the road, and are driving much smaller and lighter vehicles). I suspect that what you perceive as "absurdly fast" is probably very different between those countries: because of the absurdly wide roads in the US, absurdly dangerous speeds get normalised. Someone doing 25% over the speed limit in Japan is still driving much slower than a driver in a comparable neighbourhood in the US. > Some particularly busy intersections require dedicated police officer supervision to shepherd the drivers because they're so unruly and disrespectful of pedestrians and other drivers. So like any intersection in New York. > There are many reasons Japan is more accepting of letting children be children, but most of that is social factors and motivators that are decidedly different from American ones. Cars are ultimately just a really small part, if any. Nah. It's cars, more specifically street parking.
    • prawn 2y ago
      Absolutely agree on street parking. If you're driving down a clear street, you can see a kid chasing a ball out from their driveway, or someone about to scoot across the road. When the area is full of parked cars, your visibility is going to be down to nothing in some of these situations.
• ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  Neighborhoods haven't changed since I was a kid and I played outside plenty. It's those damn smartphones.
• ars 2y ago
  > kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school That's how it's like in the suburbs. There are very few cars, and kids can play and bike on the roads, and go anywhere on their bikes. It's only urban areas that are very car centric and kids can't do that, although they can go on the subway or a bus. The suburbs are much nicer and safer for kids.
  • Daishiman 2y ago
    This most definitely does not describe the suburban hellscape that most American suburbs are.
  • grvdrm 2y ago
    Tons of cars in my suburb. You might mean rural areas?
  • dullcrisp 2y ago
    How do people get around in the suburbs?
  • Moldoteck 2y ago
    You sure you describe american suburbs? Maybe it's aomewhat true for european ones, but american suburbs are mostly designed to isolate ppl
  • trgn 2y ago
    Agreed. in suburbs, cul-de-sac neighborhoods and such, you'll still see kids, but only within that fishbowl. It's the core areas where kids are gone. Traffic is also much nastier there. lots of intersections, vagrants skulking around, more through traffic .. much more of an antisocial vibe in general, hard to put your finger on. I think that's why the difference with europe is so stark. You go visit, and you'll be in the center of some beautiful car free wonderland, and there's kids just hanging around and playing, and sharing that space with everybody else. In the usa, kids only roam free in secluded pockets, far away from the "real" city. And, conversely, they're the only ones out too, maybe some seniors doing their post linner dog walk. Sad stuff, the collapse of the public realm. Compound living is the only thing we can manage still.
• dgfitz 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • bedobi 2y ago
    what kills and harms the most kids, criminals or cars? where do you think kids are safest, in public where people look out for them or by themselves in a deserted area?
  • dyauspitr 2y ago
    Nonsense. Crime has been continuously dropping since the 60s. What has changed is kids would rather spend time on their phones, online and playing video games.
  • duskwuff 2y ago
    > Kids [...] face legitimate higher odds of crime or kidnapping. Because in the US they’re victims of gunshot, kidnapping, physical/sexual assault This does not ring true at all. Random kidnappings of children (i.e. by a stranger, not a parent, relative, or other acquaintance) are vanishingly rare in the US, to the extent that they typically make national news when they do occur. Random violence against children (again, by a stranger), even more so.
  • userbinator 2y ago
    [flagged]
• brightball 2y ago
  I always wonder if part of it is how much we move around for life these days. We travel away from our home towns for college, the somewhere else in many cases for work where we have kids without our parents around to help. Let this happen to enough people constantly coming and going and moving…the community is gone. It’s just a cumulative effect.
  • jwells89 2y ago
    I believe that this is a much larger contributor than many realize. Moving is a total reset for the individual and a hole left behind for the town moved out of.
    • eru 2y ago
      You could compare the US today with the US a few decades ago. I think people where on the move a lot, too?
      • jwells89 2y ago
        I don’t have data to back it up but I think both the number of people moving and the frequency of moves has increased substantially in the past couple of decades. Some of this is undoubtedly going where opportunities exist; my graduating high school class (late 00s) for example all moved away from the area I grew up in simply because there’s nothing out there except for a handful of dead end minimum wage jobs, with prospects declining further as time goes on. The prior two generations by comparison largely stayed put, with moves being very local in nature and mostly driven by finding suitable housing (e.g. apartment became too small for family or keeping rent down). I also believe that people who’ve had to move around a lot for career are more likely to continue to move regularly because they’ve grown accustomed to not having deep roots anywhere which the resulting reset less of a big deal, which multiplies the impact of needing to move for work opportunities.
        • eru 2y ago
          See eg https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9857/w9857.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9857/w9857... https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2016/10/what-caused-the-decline-in-interstate-migration-in-the-united-states/ https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2016/10/what-c... has more recent data. The headline of 'What Caused the Decline in Interstate Migration in the United States?' might be telling. See also https://www.brookings.edu/articles/u-s-migration-still-at-historically-low-levels-census-shows/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/u-s-migration-still-at-hi... > Annual movement within the U.S. is stuck at a postwar low rate of 11 percent. This 2016-2017 rate is not statistically different than the 11.2 percent rate of 2015-2016, the lowest mobility rate in any year since this annual series began in 1947-48 (see Figure 1). The decline in annual mobility rates, from over 20 percent during some years in the 1950s and 1960s down to almost half that today, is the result of long term trends, such as the aging of the population (older people move less than younger people) and rises in homeownership (owners move less than renters). Yet the downward mobility trend of the last decade can certainly be tied to the lasting effects of the Great Recession and housing bust which occurred over the 2007-2009 period.
• thepasswordis 2y ago
  The physical environment from my childhood was substantially “worse” than what exists now. I don’t remember really ever going to a park, and the playgrounds that existed were full of [fun] death traps. When I got older and rode my bike everywhere there was not a SINGLE bike lane anywhere in my entire town, and the sidewalks were disused and crappy. And yet: we were outside playing CONSTANTLY.
  • TheBlight 2y ago
    I agree with this. Growing up we had nothing but some small patches of "woods" and some industrial areas but we still had plenty of fun. We also had various school grounds and the little league park. Definitely zero bike friendly infrastructure. But now there is so much more everywhere I look. Skateparks everywhere, kid friendly pools and parks. More bike friendly roads. My daughter is still too young now but it seems like the outdoor resources are better than ever.
• CalRobert 2y ago
  Europe is getting worse too. Big SUV's and trucks, fast traffic, and cars illegally parked all over the footpaths (and I'm talking about the Netherlands here, it's worse elsewhere). I mean it's better here than where I grew up (California) but I still wouldn't call it "good".
  • euroderf 2y ago
    > cars illegally parked all over the footpaths This is where opportunistic roving tow trucks start to sound like a good idea.
    • bdw5204 2y ago
      Tow trucks would also be very useful to handle the people who think the trolley tracks, the bus stop or the sidewalk are a good place to park their car. With trolleys, it'd be even better if the tracks themselves had some kind of AI technology to detect parked cars and call the tow truck to remove the car before it causes a delay.
• Fezzik 2y ago
  This is one reason I am grateful for having grown up in an apartment complex - I had ready access to loads of kids around my age, a field for baseball and football games, a cement area for wall-ball and four-square, and secret places to just be alone and enjoy the outdoors. From my first conscious memories to when I moved out after high-school I could walk out my front-door at any reasonable hour and I would bump into someone I knew to goof-off with. In a sincerely-not-at-all-condescending way I feel bad for kids that don’t have that. Without that experience I don’t know how I would be (at least in my opinion) the generally well-rounded person that I am.
  • Shocka1 2y ago
    So I had the exact opposite experience growing up in a very rural area and take no offense to your statement. I had access to hundreds of acres of woods/farms growing up, which for a young kid was total freedom. Around 10 or 11 I was taking care of varmints for local farmers with a rifle that was given to me, which might seem crazy to the average parent now (including me). Of course friends weren't knocking on my door every 5 minutes, but we all saw each other at sports/school/weekends and the occasional birthday party. And once my friends and I started getting older it was a lot of outdoor powersport type stuff, or going to the local swimming hole or hangout together. It was a completely different world than the city/suburb life. I've never felt it hindered me at all, except for a longing at times to live rurally. I've worked in different countries around a wide array of people in tech, both in project management and software engineering roles. My kids now have the same experience as you - they can walk outside at any given moment and have someone to play with in our subdivision, and they seem to really like it. But of course we are constantly going back to where I grew up to land my family owns, hunting, riding 4 wheelers, etc... I think it's probably dependent on the person, but balance always seems like a good starting point.
• pezezin 2y ago
  > Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan Depends where in Japan; I live in a small city, and it is the worst urban sprawl that you could ever imagine. You absolutely need a car for everything, but at the same time the streets are really narrow and dark, and without sidewalks. It is not fun, to put it mildly.
  • david-gpu 2y ago
    Cars slow down in narrow winding steets. Wide straight streets are very prone to speeding.
    • pezezin 2y ago
      That is true. Still, driving through a dark and narrow street or road, especially at night (coming back from work), with pedestrians wearing dark clothes (some people are smart enough to wear reflecting bands, but they are few and far between), is quite stressful. Many times I have been surprised by a pedestrian appearing out of the shadows only a few meters in front of me. Likewise, being the pedestrian is also stressful. People don't believe me when I say I feel unsafe walking out at night here. Sure, I don't have to fear criminals, but I fear the cars.
      • david-gpu 2y ago
        > Still, driving through a dark and narrow street or road, especially at night (coming back from work), with pedestrians wearing dark clothes (some people are smart enough to wear reflecting bands, but they are few and far between), is quite stressful. Many times I have been surprised by a pedestrian appearing out of the shadows only a few meters in front of me. If you think driving in those dark streets being surprised by pedestrians is stressful, imagine how it feels for the people walking outside your vehicle when you barely miss them and their children. If you can't see your neighbors, slow your vehicle down to a safe speed. You are driving too fast for the conditions. It is entirely under your control and you continue to choose to put your neighbors in danger. You are the one operating heavy machinery and introducing danger into a situation where there would be none if it wasn't for your disregard for their safety.
• wnc3141 2y ago
  I was just noticing, on separate occasions today kids walking on the side (no shoulder) of a two lane road (often driven too fast) because there are no continuous sidewalks or cohesion of the street network between housing developments. (context: suburban CO)
• vjk800 2y ago
  After-WW2 development has been largely the same everywhere - more cars, wider roads, etc. Also in Europe and Japan cities an neighbourhoods that were built after WW2 are often very hostile to pedestrians while those built before are walkable. The biggest cities of Europe (Paris, Amsterdam, etc.) are pretty historical and thus are walkable. However, where I live - Finland that is - much of the country has been built in the past century and is designed for cars. However, in the past decade or two the trend has changed again and the very new neighbourhoods again feel like 100+ year old neighbourhoods in terms of walkability.
  • orwin 2y ago
    Exactly, it's the same in France, although it started in the 90s (late 80s maybe) and ended after 2010, so we screwed up less neighborhoods than say, Netherlands, but we're 10 years behind into the rehabilitation of local communities. But any neighborhood built between 1990 and 2008 is often souless, car dependent and look like US suburbia (I lived in one)
  • badpun 2y ago
    Communist countries built large cities for pedestrians and public transit. I grew up in a place like that, it was an amazing place for a kid. School was a 5 minutes walk away, there were hardly any cars within hunrdeds of meters of my building. There were large green yards, playgrounds etc. for kids. Very quiet, very family friendly. It was largely contingent on most people not being able to afford cars, and not missing them that much due to decent public transit.
• thefz 2y ago
  > car centric design means there's nowhere for them to go on foot or by bike anyway There is no need to move them if you create the spaces, like courtyards, gardens and backyards.
  • KoolKat23 2y ago
    Their friends don't live in their backyards though.
    • eru 2y ago
      And it's fun to explore spaces, and the community.
• eru 2y ago
  > Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. And even Europe, eg Germany, has seen a relative rise in helicopter parenting compared to recent decades.
• gU9x3u8XmQNG 2y ago
  Here, a regional town in Australia; we had the council approve build of a petrol station on one side of a children’s crossing from a school block. No joke; the children’s crossing now terminates on the “island” of the petrol station, with entry and exit for the vehicles of the station either side of the island. It boggles my mind, truly. I fear it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt. So.. not hard to relate with your post. I can’t help but notice how poorly people treat eachother in the bigger cities, too. To the point I get constantly complemented for just being a decent person, or aggressively attacked for the same. Not sure what the answer for any of these problems is..
• somedude895 2y ago
  Why does HN love this narrative so much? The article is about very different causes, cars are mentioned only once in passing. It's getting really stale to have to read this same comment over and over rather than people discussing the topics that TFA is actually about.
  • bakugo 2y ago
    > Why does HN love this narrative so much? Because it distracts from the parts that many people don't like to talk about because it goes against their personal beliefs (such as religious conservatives being more connected with their communities and overall happier than everyone else)
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • prawn 2y ago
      Where I grew up in Australia, I don't remember anyone besides ethnic grandparents going to church (then or now). It just wasn't any sort of factor in the decline of free play for kids. In more religious countries, are the religious conservatives the ones that are freely roaming streets and socialising more than their peers in a "play-based childhood"? The obvious changes to me, as a parent now, and someone who still visits the street they grew up on in the 80s, relate to cars.
    • throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
      You maybe on to something there but you phrase it as antagonistic. HN is heavily biased towards tech centers (SF, NYC, Seattle, etc...). These places skew liberal, agnostic, pro-public transport, pro-dense housing. Conversations will always shift towards these talking points, the few of us that don't fit into one or more of these boxes get drowned out as out-of-touch.
  • CalRobert 2y ago
    Because it's an absolutely huge part of what's wrong with modern life and too many people stubbornly refuse to see that filling our entire world with asphalt ribbons of violent, gruesome death has, in fact, had consequences.
• User23 2y ago
  Now why would children be safer in high trust homogeneous societies that share descent, religion, language, and culture than in low trust divided societies that share little more than a common currency? Must be light trucks! What a fine example of Occam’s butterknife at work.
• bcrosby95 2y ago
  This is a common thought on this but I grew up and have lived in mostly California suburbs and it's pretty easy to be within biking distance to things (1-2 miles). People talk about the dangerous cars but they were there 40 years ago and my friends and I would bike to school, the mall, or into the hills surrounding us. My 9 year old's friend lives just two blocks from us and her parents don't let her walk here alone. When I was that age we were riding our bikes for miles in car infested San Jose.
  • uoaei 2y ago
    This experience is so far from being accessible to a typical resident of the US, what exactly are your motivations for framing it as "shrug there's no issue with urban planning"?
    • bcrosby95 2y ago
      My experience is consistent with what I've seen in two major US metros: LA and the SF bay area. I never called them great urban planning but hyperbole does nothing to convince people something needs to be done - it just makes you out as someone to ignore because there's already more legitimate arguments vying for our attention than we could address in a lifetime.
  • dangus 2y ago
    I don't know if you realize how much the built enviornment has been changed in 40 years. Some of those roads you biked on have probably been widened. Cars have gotten faster, larger, and heavier. Speed limits have increased. I'm not saying it's guaranteed to be dramatically different but I think there probably is some kind of difference. Just look at the pedestrian deaths chart for the past 5-10 years or so.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
• constantcrying 2y ago
  What? How do roads prevent you from going outside. Of course I went to the houses of my friends by foot/bike after school. Unsurprisingly there were roads with cars everywhere, which do exist here in Europe. Blaming "road centric infrastructure" is delusional, road centric infrastructure has been the norm for at least 60 years and if that were the cause you would have noticed a degradation then and no degradation after. Clearly not the case. I find it quite offensive to suggest that "European cities" are somehow this extremely car unfriendly place. We Europeans like cars as well, we like to drive them a lot and like to live in places with good car connections. Places like Germany, where I live, also have very good car infrastructure. Outside of large cities cars are the only way to get around as other modes of transportation are very unreliable and not serviced often. None of this has prevented me from going outside with my friends or biking to school alone. If I had to guess why kids are playing less outside than they used to, maybe it is because the park we hung out is now inhibited by drug dealers. Or because of the girl who got raped there.
  • ceejayoz 2y ago
    > How do roads prevent you from going outside. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/05/19/a-crosswalk-too-far-vote-for-the-least-crossable-street-in-america https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/05/19/a-crosswalk-too-far-v... "In the Boston suburb of Burlington, Massachusetts, the AMC movie theater is right across the street from the Burlington Mall. But if you're planning to travel between these two destinations on foot, you're in for quite a hike. The closest crosswalk is more than half a mile down the Middlesex Turnpike. That means crossing the road -- if you're going to do it 'the safe way' -- requires a 1.2-mile journey, and it's definitely not going to be a pleasant one. Local resident David Chase reports that only one side of the street has a sidewalk."
    • constantcrying 2y ago
      Who cares that the city administration is too stupid to put in traffic lights. Seriously, what a dumb example. The problem has already been solved. My city is full of cars, but there are also enough traffic lights triggered by pedestrian s, hardly a miracle of modern engineering.
• mattpallissard 2y ago
  I agree with this for the most part but it doesn't explain everything. The town I grew up in has a lot of areas that are conducive to children roaming; low traffic speeds and volume, separated sidewalks, parks, green spaces. As kids we ran around freely. The traffic volume and patterns haven't really changed at all and as a whole the community drives pretty slowly, nobody seems to be in a hurry. Yet you never see kids out anymore. Where did they go?
  • aswanson 2y ago
    Roblox and Tik Tok.
• dividefuel 2y ago
  I don't disagree that urban planning is a factor, but I think there's more to this. A very common theme when talking to people in the US is "this neighborhood used to have so many more kids out and about!" Even in the neighborhood I grew up in, where my parents still live, there are far fewer kids around, even though the neighborhood's design and car traffic haven't changed at all. Where are they? Are their parents driving them from place to place? Are they staying inside staring at screens? Or are there simply fewer kids due to falling birthrates?