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First, I had a similar feeling coming back to SimCity 4. Even a just a few years ago, I tried to optimize for maximum density and size - kinda like NYC where I

First, I had a similar feeling coming back to SimCity 4. Even a just a few years ago, I tried to optimize for maximum density and size - kinda like NYC where I lived. Now I don't find that interesting and much more interested to sustain a leafy suburb like one I've chosen for my kids. Second, it's not just games. In my NYC days I was a "transit and bike lanes" guy all the way. Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. There's less "objective good" or "objective bad" in these matters than I used to think. It's more about who you optimize for.

bombcar 1y ago
You can get quite a bit of advancements by having “one side” try to optimize for the other - if done honestly, you can get a “best of both worlds” as they learn what the others want (and need).
dataflow 1y ago
"Americans love their cars" isn't so much about the cars as it is about the lack of good alternatives. Other countries have great public transportation and good bike lanes and all that... in addition to car ownership. So people can get the best of both worlds. It's only a zero sum game if you want it to be one.
- cyberax 1y ago
  Nope. It's universal. The denser the city, the more child-hostile it is. Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1.
  - waldohatesyou 1y ago
    Do elevators not solve this?
    - DonHopkins 1y ago
      I don't know, let's simulate it! ;) LGR - SimTower - PC Game Review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4ToEDrhxo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4ToEDrhxo0 Yoot Tower: The Sequel to SimTower https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqNECXCd9iU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqNECXCd9iU
      - jcranmer 1y ago
        I love SimTower to death, but unfortunately being a Win16-based game, it's kind of hard to get working on modern computers. For some reason, trying to run it in Wine works for a couple of minutes before it causes my window manager to spaz out and crash, and I haven't decided what avenue I'd try to get it working well again. On the other hand, with all the poking I've done at it over the years, I think I now have the most complete knowledge of the save file format for anyone who doesn't have access to the source code.
  - afavour 1y ago
    As an NYC parent I strongly disagree. But I guess it depends what you optimize for. I do wish the subway had more elevators. But once you move beyond those early days with a stroller… I have six playground within a twenty minute walk, a giant park a few minutes away. There’s a zoo nearby, the beach (and aquarium) is less than 45 mins on the subway, there are countless museums in the city… all in all its rich in child friendly activities and child-friendly methods of reaching them. (I’m not there with my kids yet but from talking to older parents: an understated benefit of the city is that kids are able to exercise independence much more easily. They’ll be taking the subway to and from high school, if they want to meet a friend they can just… go. Rather than rely on a parent driving them everywhere)
  - chimeracoder 1y ago
    > Nope. It's universal. The denser the city, the more child-hostile it is. > Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1. This is a glaring example of hunting for data that supports a preexisting belief, rather than basing beliefs on empirical data. To point out how absurd this logic is, consider that it fails to consider the fertility rate of Japan as a whole outside urban areas, as well as failing to account for the many other extremely dense cities outside Japan that do have very high fertility rates.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      Nope. I'm anti-urbanist, so I actually analyzed the data :) The correlation is undeniable for any developed country, especially the US. Developing countries are a bit different they are only now starting the second demographic transition. > To point out how absurd this logic is, consider that it fails to consider the fertility rate of Japan as a whole outside urban areas, as well as failing to account for the many other extremely dense cities outside Japan that do have very high fertility rates. LOL. No, they don't: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01975/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01975/
    - rwyinuse 1y ago
      Bigger the city, more expensive housing becomes. That is the real reason for low fertility rates in big cities. People who want children have to be either rich, or move further away.
      - chimeracoder 1y ago
        > Bigger the city, more expensive housing becomes. That's not universally true; it depends on what housing policies exist. > That is the real reason for low fertility rates in big cities. People who want children have to be either rich, or move further away. This is not universally true either.
  - dataflow 1y ago
    I don't need to imagine anything; I've lived these different lifestyles. Both as a child and as an adult. Have you? What has your experience been?
  - realusername 1y ago
    > Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1. That's a nice theory but all over the developped world, the countryside has lower fertility rate than the cities.
    - CrazyStat 1y ago
      Rural areas have higher fertility rates than urban areas in the US [1], EU [2], and Japan [3]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db297.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db297.htm [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/demography_2021/bloc-3d.html?lang=en https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/demography_2021/b... [3] https://www.mof.go.jp/english/pri/publication/pp_review/fy2017/ppr14_01_01.pdf https://www.mof.go.jp/english/pri/publication/pp_review/fy20...
  - throw0101a 1y ago
    > Nope. It's universal. The denser the city, the more child-hostile it is. Maddy Novich, https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/ https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/, for one, may disagree with you. Interview: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs She has three kids IIRC. > Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1. Hong Kong has always been dense, and it used to have a fertility rate of ~5: * https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINHKG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINHKG Further, all US states, regardless of how urban or rural they are, have fertility rates with basically the same slope: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... In every industrialized, Western-ish society rates dropped during the 1970s, regardless of initial or final density.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      > She has three kids IIRC. I haven't seen this in the transcript? > Hong Kong has always been dense, and it used to have a fertility rate of ~5 I'm going to save this quote. It goes next to: "Yes, Tokyo now is too expensive, but just 10 years ago you could dream about getting a house there". > Further, all US states, regardless of how urban or rural they are, have fertility rates with basically the same slope: Yes. Toxic urbanization has not spared the US. But it affected the US less than other countries because the suburbs put up a fight.
      - roytam87 1y ago
        > just 10 years ago you could dream about getting a house there yeah, when comparing with other cities[1] it is way more affordable. [1] https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/news/hong-kong-has-once-again-ranked-as-the-most-unaffordable-city-in-the-world-for-home-ownership-071525 https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/news/hong-kong-has-once-ag...
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - loglog 1y ago
    In a well-designed city, you don't get onto the subway with a stroller during peak hour, because all amenities that your young children need are reachable in 15 minutes on foot (or <5 minutes by bike).
  - rixed 1y ago
    It certainly depends what you call child-hostile and I have no statistics on this. What I do know though, is that one of the denser area in Europe is the famous triangle Rotterdam-Amsterdam-Utrecht, which can hardly be described as child-hostile.
  - mitthrowaway2 1y ago
    In Tokyo your kids ride the subway by themselves.
  - RobRivera 1y ago
    This style of comment really leaves a bad taste in my mouth regarding forum discussion. 1. Pass off an opinion as fact 2. Posit a straw man 3. Tether an unrelated fact as correlation. I bet one could wire an llm instructed to such a formula to obsfucate otherwise fruitful public discourse.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - casta 1y ago
    I traveled with my kid when he was less than 1 year old in Tokyo. What is the issue with the stroller in the subway? There are always signs of how to get where you need to go using elevators. While Tokyo has one of the worst fertility rates, it's not like the rest of Japan is doing particularly well. Also, I was staying in Azabujuban and I was surprised by the amount of kids I saw there.
  - presentation 1y ago
    As a Tokyo parent I don’t have to imagine because our family and friends do it and it works.
- p_ing 1y ago
  > "Americans love their cars" isn't so much about the cars as it is about the lack of good alternatives. I love to drive therefor I buy a car I love to drive. America is largely rural. Comparisons to Europe aren't appropriate outside of the proper metros.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    Where I live the temperature swings from -40 to over 100F with very high humidity every year. Bicycling with little kids is just not practical for a lot of it, and the nearest bus stop is a four hour walk (12 miles). Do large cities and suburban neighborhoods deserve public transportation? Sure. Is that a universal answer? No. Not even close. There are farm fields out here larger than many towns. Roads, vehicles, and fast on demand transportation are a necessity for the geographic super majority of the US.
    - throwaway2037 1y ago
      > Where I live the temperature swings from -40 to over 100F with very high humidity every year. Some of these HN comments are wild. Where do you live? I struggle to think of a place with a temperature range like that.
      - bombcar 1y ago
        Minneapolis does it. As does much of the colder Midwest.
  - cjcenizal 1y ago
    America as a physical space is largely rural, but 80% of Americans live in cities according to the census.
    - p_ing 1y ago
      You're misreading those stats. The Census doesn't define "city", it defines "urban" vs. "rural". My "city" of 5K is considered "urban" according to the 2020 census. There are nearly zero services in this "city", only a couple of restaurants, the largest employer is the school district, and it's surrounded by farms and mountain forests. It takes 15 minutes by car to get to the next town over on a two lane highway. If you want to get to any real city, you're looking at a 30-45 minute drive at highway/freeway speeds. So yes, there may be more individuals in "urban" areas, but not all "urban" areas are functionally urban. My "urban city" per the 2020 census is no LA, Austin, or Portland.
JambalayaJimbo 1y ago
Your kid will hate your car constrained area, because they will be unable to get around themselves until they’re old enough / rich enough to drive one
- FredPret 1y ago
  Then the kid moves to NYC, loves it, meets someone, has a kid, and realizes they need two SUV’s and a heated garage near good schools.
  - tehjoker 1y ago
    then you ask yourself why aren’t the schools good enough in nyc… and it leads you down a rabbit hole
  - wpm 1y ago
    Somehow my parents managed to raise me without any SUVs.
    - FredPret 1y ago
      Not saying you need the above, but you’ll feel like you do. It’s certainly the easier way
      - thelamest 1y ago
        Addressing the hypothetical person you’re describing: car infrastructure may solve some needs, but it is in direct conflict with other needs. Give every adult a guaranteed parking space just at home and at work, and the physical space required for that alone is an unbelievable double-digit percentage of the city area. Cities are so valuable because they pack a lot of amenities and markets (including your family’s schools and workplaces) in a compact area. Place everything significantly further apart, add more concrete and noise, and you’ve lost on all fronts: safety, charm and efficiency.
        1y ago
crooked-v 1y ago
Of course, SimCity as a series leaves out the biggest visual impact of cars - all the parking lots. Even Cities Skylines doesn't try very hard.
- p_ing 1y ago
  SC2K has Parking Lots. https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_SimCity_2000_buildings_and_icons https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_SimCity_2000_buildin... Obviously that doesn't get to your point, which is accurate. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-philosophy-of-simcity-an-interview-with-the-games-lead-designer/275724/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-p... > I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.
positron26 1y ago
There's another phase we forget about. If I could choose, I'd like to grow up in a giant forest arcology and go hang out with my friends like it's a giant vertical mall with lots of places to go get lost. When I finally got access to grocery delivery to my door, I could see how it all will work. Carrying things for one person is fine. It's carrying groceries for a household for a week where things break down. Even putting all that on an elevator would be really unwieldy compared to unloading from the garage. Self-driving and the evolution of early-life education will play a big role in simplifying life without the parents needing to ferry the kids around five days a week.
- JoshTriplett 1y ago
  Delivery makes sense for another reason: delivery services could have mechanisms that don't make sense for individual people to own, such as dollies or carts to get things from a vehicle to your door. (Due to the current over-reliance on gig-style delivery people using their own vehicles, rather than dedicated employees with specialized tools, this often doesn't happen today, but it should.) In general, it makes a huge amount of sense for a specialized employee with specialized tooling to pick up groceries for many people and deliver them; the net result is less total person-hours spent shopping, less vehicle miles driven, and less overall labor.
- joules77 1y ago
  Go deeper. Why does society needs parents at the current rate of change? The ants discovered hundreds of millions of years before even the chimps got social, that parents are not required for functioning society. We will get there soon with artificial wombs on the near horizon.
  - positron26 1y ago
    We don't need a next generation either, but I have a feeling there will be some strong selection pressure that takes over.
  - losvedir 1y ago
    I, too, always found Brave New World more prescient than 1984.
cblum 1y ago
FWIW, I’m not in NYC, but I’m in general a “ban the cars” type and have a wife and kid. We’re intentionally raising the kid in the city because we believe it’s a richer cultural environment than suburbs, and also because we both grew up in cities in our respective countries.
- cyberax 1y ago
  Now try getting 2 more kids. Large cities are OK if you have one kid. They completely break down once you have 2-3 kids.
  - bmicraft 1y ago
    You really need to explain why you think that's the case.
  - ido 1y ago
    Do we really need to do this with each comment adding another rule and another reply from someone breaking it? I live in Berlin with my wife and 2 kids (who were born lived their whole lives in Berlin). We all bike and take transit. Neither me nor my wife even have a driver's license. We're doing fine. We know plenty of other families with multiple kids in the same situation.
  - jaas 1y ago
    I know lots of parents in NYC (where I live with multiple kids) and their lives have not “broken down.” What an absurd statement/generalization.
  - throw0101a 1y ago
    > Large cities are OK if you have one kid. They completely break down once you have 2-3 kids. Maddy Novich, https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/ https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/, for one, may disagree with you. She has three kids IIRC. Interview: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs
  - lurking_swe 1y ago
sien 1y ago
The economic aspect is also worth considering. The subsidy per passenger mile in the US is : 0.019 for road transport, 0.021 for air transport, 0.710 for Amtrak and 2.300 for transit. From : https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=22592 https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=22592 Just also as a note, you can create suburbs pretty easily where bikes use paths or whatever. I live in a suburb where I can ride 15 kms to work without riding on roads. The subsidy for bikes would actually be really low.
- pastage 1y ago
  You should look at Cost benefit analysis, there was one made on Copenhagen. [1] Bicycle infrastructure usually gets you 6x-12x on the invested amount, getting a 1.2 CBA is ok, 2 is amazing. Bicycle infrastructure is often destroyed by those other investments and that is usually not counted as a con. But it is just too cheap to build bicycle infrastructure to be interesting. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800915000907 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218...
chimeracoder 1y ago
> There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. To the extent that "ban cars" even exists as a real political archetype rather than a meme, this is just patently not true. At least one of the two co-hosts of The War on Cars (again, a title which is intentionally tongue-in-cheek) has a preteen son. But more importantly: car-dependent suburbs are an absolutely miserable place to grow up as a child if you're not wealthy enough to have one non-working parent and/or a nanny (or both). Being dependent on someone else to enable your entire social life until you turn 16 is a torturous enough experience that I'm not surprised that the first generation to have universal access to social media as teenagers has become the first generation to use social media to organize a teenage-driven movement for public transit.
- cyberax 1y ago
  Find me anti-car advocates with 3 or more children. With both working parents.
  - chimeracoder 1y ago
    > Find me anti-car advocates with 3 or more children. I easily could, but I have no interest in chasing ever-moving goalposts.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      Well, duh. That's because I don't know any. And probably neither do you. And sure, humans are extremely diverse and adaptable, so you'll be able to find examples of any physically and logistically possible behavior. Eventually. But statistically? We both know that I'm right. The Netherlands (the bike heaven) has the total fertility rate of around 1.5 And even within the country itself, Amsterdam (North Holland province) is at the second-to-last place from the bottom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Netherlands#Total_fertility_rates_by_province https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Netherland... And the highest fertility rates are in Flevoland and Zeeland that are about 3-4 times less dense.
noosphr 1y ago
> Second, it's not just games. In my NYC days I was a "transit and bike lanes" guy all the way. Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. Buy a bakfiet cargo bike, there's models that can fit five kids under 7. Mine fits three. Kids like them better and you get exercise. For the first time in my life I have a BMI of around 20 without having to waste time at the gym, the drop off, pick up, shopping, and work commute add up to an hour and a half of medium intensity cardio. Every other parent my age in the neighborhood looks five years away from a heart attack. I'm fitter than I was in my 20s. >There's less "objective good" or "objective bad" in these matters than I used to think. It's more about who you optimize for. There are over 1,000 children killed in the US annually by cars. This is after we restrain them like Hannibal Lecter while in cars and don't let them out of our houses so they don't get run over. That's before we talk about the child obesity epidemic, social media abuse, and on and on. If given the choice between keeping cars or letting polio loose on the land you'd be hard pressed to figure out which will kill and disable more kids.
- theturtlemoves 1y ago
  > Buy a bakfiet cargo bik Off topic, but my brain did a double take there. Didn't know that the Dutch word "bakfiets" (bike with a box) was anglicized to "bakfiet". Cool. Usually it's us who borrow foreign words from all over
  - kilpikaarna 1y ago
    Isn't the brand still called Bakfiets though? Even further off topic, I had an aha moment with "bakfiets" connecting to how "back" is a word for storage box in Swedish...
    - CalRobert 1y ago
      There is a brand called bakfiets.nl but there are many different brands. I have an Urban Arrow.
  - 1y ago
glimshe 1y ago
I'd love if more people on HN could read your post. As someone who's spent more than half of his life overseas in an ultra high density city, I wouldn't trade my quiet American suburb by a glamorous city with perfect public transportation anywhere in the world. It was great when I was single and cared about meeting girls and partying, but no more. To each their own, right?
- mft_ 1y ago
  With respect, despite writing “anywhere in the world”, I doubt you have experienced the places in the world that might change your opinion. I can think of multiple European towns which offer a great quality of life together with (thanks to safe cycling and great public transport) the ability to live largely or entirely car-free, if that’s your choice.
  - glimshe 1y ago
    Thank you for being respectful. Europe is nice. But I would never want to live in European cities unless I was a gazillionaire and could afford a large, modern property with a garage for a good car (which wouldn't be used as often but still used sometimes). With that much money, anyone could be fine anywhere. The European lifestyle wouldn't be bad during retirement, but still not ideal because I would want the peace of a smaller town anyway.
    - mft_ 1y ago
      I’m not referring to large cities; I’m thinking of places in the (say) 100-200k size range. Small enough to cycle around for all of your regular needs, and just large enough to have plenty of life, culture, and community. And in such places you can certainly live very well, far below a gazillionaire’s income :)
      - p_ing 1y ago
        I'll stick to my 5K town at the encased in the feet of a mountain range, nestled in between two rivers, and within driving distance of the largest employers in the world. It's quiet. No matter how you spin a 100-200K sized city, it will never be this quiet.
em500 1y ago
> Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. This seems very different from the large anti-car movement in the Netherlands in the 1970s (which eventually led to massive investments in bike infrastructure and car restrictions in the cities). There was significant parent involvement, touting the memorable slogan "Stop de Kindermoord" ("Stop the Child Murder"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_transport_in_the_Netherlands#Road_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_transport_in_the_Netherla...
- qwertox 1y ago
  There's a youtube channel named @NotJustBikes which mostly talks about how bike-friendly the Netherlands are and compares it to the USA. It's worth watching a couple of those videos.
  - stephen_g 1y ago
    And, unlike the grandparent-comment’s assertions, that channel references his family and kids in most videos (in that he and his partner moved to Amsterdam so his children could have the freedom to navigate safely without having to be driven around).
    - rglullis 1y ago
      My mother lives in suburban Massachusetts. She always said that she never imagined how it was possible for me to live with two small kids without a car in Berlin. She came to visit for one month. After the first week she was already comfortably going around with the Ubahn to pick up the kids at school. I have 4 supermarkets less than 150m away from me, so we would walk to do groceries every other day. I spend ~80€/month with taxi rides (for the occasional trip to meet someone in a less convenient place), which is less than what she pays in car insurance alone, not even counting the cost of gas. At the end of the trip, she got it. Having a car is not a necessity. It should be seen (and taxed) as a luxury.
throw0101a 1y ago
> Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. Maddy Novich, https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/ https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/, for one, may disagree with you. Interviews: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDhJt26dQTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDhJt26dQTs And I'm not sure how many folks are about banning cars (completely), as opposed to designing things so that (two) cars go from being mandatory to optional.
- stouset 1y ago
  Yeah, it’s crazy the number of people who scream about taking their cars from their cold, dead hands when people talk about adding some bike lanes, rolling out more public transit, or removing small amounts of parking for more human-centered uses. People somehow perceive all of these things as trying to ban cars instead of promoting other forms of transportation.
  - khamidou 1y ago
    There's some sunk cost fallacy at play here. If you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a house in a remote suburb where your social activities are mostly playdates scheduled 3 months in advance, you don't want to be reminded that there was another path you could have taken.
loglog 1y ago
You don't recognize the objective bad because you've never lived in a place that does it better (NL, DK).
- agentcoops 1y ago
  I just had a kid and moved to DK from the US. I was so skeptical of the infant (and often mother!) in cart on front of bike that you see everywhere, but it's such a life-changer versus the ordeal of carseats etc. TLDR totally agreed.
xandrius 1y ago
Spend 1 month with your kids in a place where cars are actually not needed, only then you can actually understand what you are denying your kids. And if you want to know right away, think about who can drive your car, as supposed being able to walk or ride somewhere. You're limiting their own personal freedom by forcing them to have you always needed to go somewhere.
- tombert 1y ago
  Cars really aren't needed in NYC, where the poster said they lived. Many, many people here do not have cars, and haven't for years. It's still annoying to not have a car. I don't have kids but f I did then the first thing I would do would almost certainly be to buy a vehicle.
  - xandrius 1y ago
    My recommendation is to get an ebike with a way to carry a person and some small cargo (e.g. Shopping bags and such). I see them a lot and also makes going around with kids more fun for them too!
  - mitthrowaway2 1y ago
    My interpretation of OP's comment is that they don't live in NYC anymore, but rather a car-dependent suburb which they've "chosen for [their] kids".
  - presentation 1y ago
    NYC is subpar too. The elevators never work, most stations don’t have escalators either, it’s filthy, taking your kids on the train will give them permanent hearing damage and large swaths of the city are completely unserviced. Your feeling is the result of NYC and the entire USA being generally dysfunctional, not an inherent truth.
- lotsoweiners 1y ago
  I don’t really want my kids have that much personal freedom because they’re kids. I live very suburban and my kids could walk to one of the neighborhood parks (2-3 minutes) or to a friends house but I don’t see them needing more than that.
darkamaul 1y ago
Actually, even for families with kids, the safer option is still bikes and low-car environments. Fewer cars means less air pollution, less noise, and less sedentary behavior for both kids and adults. The data we have shows that the presence of cars is the main source of risk on the street, not the act of biking itself. Neighborhoods that design around walking and biking tend to have fewer serious accidents, not more. If we're talking about optimizing for kids, then banning individual car use in residential neighborhoods would be the ideal. I know it’s not politically feasible in most of the US right now, but it’s worth keeping in mind that cars are the danger.
rglullis 1y ago
No city simulation game properly models the real cost of parking and car-centric infrastructure: https://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html https://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-pa... >Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" In other words: I was okay with demanding change when it didn't inconvenience me, but now that I get to benefit from economic policy that heavily subsidize my lifestyle I rather keep the status quo.
tengbretson 1y ago
> There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. Here comes the flood of "but not meee" comments
CalRobert 1y ago
This is condescending and wildly inaccurate. My children are exactly the reason we live car-free and chose a town where you can bike safely - anything less is effectively condemning them to live in an outdoor prison until you can drive. But, this is why we live in the Netherlands. If all you've seen is the US I can see how you might not understand that not being car-dependent is actually better for kids.
jjmarr 1y ago
I rode transit everywhere as a kid living in the city. Got to explore a ton of cool stuff. Meanwhile my friends in the suburbs had to walk 30 minutes to get Starbucks. And it was a gruelling march without sidewalks or tree cover.
CalRobert 1y ago
The sad thing is that you _CAN_ have a leafy suburb without the roar of internal combustion and 8 lane stroads everywhere. Planners in the US just refuse to build them. We live in a lovely leafy suburb completely car free. But it's this one - https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w This morning the four of us biked to the grocery store (we loaded the groceries in the bakfiets). The kids bike to their daycare. We bike to the train when we feel like a day out. I can't fathom trying to raise kids somewhere we need to use a car to do anything.
thfuran 1y ago
But kids can use bikes and public transport well before they can drive. How are cars so especially helpful for children?
- criddell 1y ago
  Robo taxis might change lots of things. I think I would be a lot more comfortable letting my ten year old use a Waymo to get to grandma’s house than a city bus. It’s door-to-door and you don’t have to worry about some weirdo across the aisle being inappropriate.
tombert 1y ago
I've lived in NYC without a car for the last decade, and I don't have kids, and even granting that, I still have grown to understand why Americans love cars. Getting groceries is a particular pain in the ass; I either need to go to the (very limited) grocery selections in my neighborhood with a cart, or lug the cart up and down the stairs of the subway, or be ok with only taking as much as I'm able carry with my hands in a few bags. I could get delivery, and I do that fairly often, but there are things that I prefer to get in person, like fruits or vegetables. There's also just large things you cannot realistically take on a train, like large sheets of plywood at Home Depot. Again, you can of course get this stuff delivered, but then you run the risk of them sending you the worst, most warped piece of wood available, which has happened to me multiple times. I've grown to sympathize with most Americans as a result.
AfterHIA 1y ago
This isn't an attack pal but I love that we have a generation of young men that are willing to sell all of their principles and buy into the suburbanite cult just right after, "getting it" after starting a family. I can appreciate that this is, "how it goes" but it creates a political class of people that are more concerned about their family's well-being than the well-being of society as a whole. Rinse and repeat over a few generations and this is a big part of why the United States has stagnated culturally. Stated with love out of concern for our, "whole societal family" which includes you and yours. Relevant: https://sites.pitt.edu/~syd/ASIND.html https://sites.pitt.edu/~syd/ASIND.html https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book05/ch01c-2.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/...
mitthrowaway2 1y ago
My biggest fear about cars is that one might kill my kid. This leads to impossing all sorts of play and travel restrictions on her that I wouldn't have to if there were fewer cars and more bikes. (Bikes which kids can ride independently to their friends' houses from a single-digit age, by the way, which I would allow her to do if she weren't sharing the streets with cars.) Maybe the problem is that the leafy suburb you moved to is car-dependent? It doesn't have to be built that way, that's a design choice. It's possible to build a low density suburb that kids can bike through safely, for example: https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w
barbazoo 1y ago
> There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. Seems very rare that people describe their families in here so I wouldn’t go to that conclusion. I didn’t even know this page had a “bio” section. Anyway, seems like a strawman to me.
mrgoldenbrown 1y ago
Kids and marriage are not unique to America. There are millions of Dutch kids happy to ride a bike or ride the bus along with their married parents.
- crikeykangaroo 1y ago
  Sure, but The Netherlands is also quite a lot smaller than the US.
  - jplrssn 1y ago
    Comparing the total size of countries like this never made much sense to me. It's not like Americans need to drive coast-to-coast to buy groceries or drop their kids off at school.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - aegypti 1y ago
    The Netherlands has 2x as much land as the Tri State area with 1-2 million fewer residents.
goosedragons 1y ago
Nope. Just more selfish choices. Resources are finite. The further we can move away from cars, THE better for kids. Less risk of them being run over by a 7 foot tall Dodge Ram, more chances for independence because actually going places doesn't require a car.
mapotofu 1y ago
I live in a very walkable small town with lots of young families also biking and walking with their young children, as I am, and couldn’t disagree with you more about cars. It’s so nice to walk to the market instead of loading and unloading a car seat, to have the option of walking or taking a short bus ride to school, to walk to parks and playgrounds. I had the opposite reaction you did when I actually lived in a place that was kinda similar to what Europeans describe.
aucisson_masque 1y ago
Netherlands
mschuster91 1y ago
> Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. That's because the infrastructure doesn't exist in lots of the US, either it never existed or it got ripped out during the car boom phase. Here in a suburb of Munich (Germany), almost everything one needs in life - all four large supermarket chains, a veterinarian, a hardware store, daycare and school for children - is walkable in less than half an hour, or 5-10 minutes with a bike.
casta 1y ago
Interesting. To provide a different experience, I live in NYC with kids and I find it great here. Daycare/Kindergarten is at most 4 blocks away, grocery stores are less than a block away, it takes me 10 minutes to get to the office on the train (1/2/3). I still bike to the office often. If we need a car there is a rental less than a block away, but in practice we rent maybe once a year. Today there was an open street on Columbus Ave and it was lovely to meet co-workers with their kids and let them play there. To be fair, I wasn't born here even if I'm a citizen, so I guess I wouldn't be considered "American".
- xyzelement 1y ago
  I wasn't born here either (but I am the person you are replying to) I'll give you some examples of the kinds of things I easily did with my two bigger kids (5 and 3 years old) - woke up on a nice Sunday morning and decided to go for a woodsy hike 20 min drive away. - threw our kayak on the roof and drove out to paddle it on the south shore, on a whim. - threw bikes into the bike rack for a long ride along a Greenway. - dropped by Grandma's house easily. - went to the Adirondacks for a week and brought our bikes and paddle board along with a bunch of other stuff. And not directly care related but car enabled - I just opened the backyard door and they were playing there by themselves while I kept an eye from the kitchen.
  - casta 1y ago
    Nice. Those activities remind me when I used to visit my dad countryside (he lived in Tuscany). He's legally blind though, and we managed anyway. Not sure why the last bit would be car enabled. I was in East Hamptons a few weeks ago and the kids would play outside while we stayed in the living room/kitchen. We just had to be careful about the pool.
    - xyzelement 1y ago
      I think you and I can both recognize that the east Hamptons are a car oriented place even if you got there from the city on the jitney. The point I was making w that one is - lower density is what allows us a back yard while higher density is what supports walk-ability and transit. So maybe I can make the point in a cheekier way - your Hamptons weekend is closer to my every-day life than to your city life :)
thatfrenchguy 1y ago
It’s funny because as a parent there’s nothing I want less than living somewhere I have to drive everywhere. I can walk 5 minutes to the nearest park, take a bus or a tram to be in a different one in 10 minutes, and I can’t fathom having to take our car for that kind of daily activity.
libraryatnight 1y ago
what a selfish and narrow way to process the world.
monkeyelite 1y ago
You’ve awakened the horde by suggesting the anti-car project is not an absolute good.
tstenner 1y ago
Our city replaced some train tracks with high quality separated bike streets (no cars allowed, obviously). Biking five kilometers each way with only three street crossings is perfectly doable, even with small children on their own bikes.
presentation 1y ago
I live in Tokyo and have kids. Both cycling and transit are essential to most parents lives here. It is not that these are incompatible with family life, it’s that as it is implemented and maintained in the USA (read: badly), it is incompatible. An example that’s minor for young singles but major for parents: train stations here pretty much all have elevators and they almost always are working. This alone changes the game.

bombcar 1y ago

You can get quite a bit of advancements by having “one side” try to optimize for the other - if done honestly, you can get a “best of both worlds” as they learn what the others want (and need).

dataflow 1y ago

"Americans love their cars" isn't so much about the cars as it is about the lack of good alternatives. Other countries have great public transportation and good bike lanes and all that... in addition to car ownership. So people can get the best of both worlds. It's only a zero sum game if you want it to be one.

cyberax 1y ago
Nope. It's universal. The denser the city, the more child-hostile it is. Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1.
- waldohatesyou 1y ago
  Do elevators not solve this?
  - DonHopkins 1y ago
    I don't know, let's simulate it! ;) LGR - SimTower - PC Game Review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4ToEDrhxo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4ToEDrhxo0 Yoot Tower: The Sequel to SimTower https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqNECXCd9iU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqNECXCd9iU
    - jcranmer 1y ago
      I love SimTower to death, but unfortunately being a Win16-based game, it's kind of hard to get working on modern computers. For some reason, trying to run it in Wine works for a couple of minutes before it causes my window manager to spaz out and crash, and I haven't decided what avenue I'd try to get it working well again. On the other hand, with all the poking I've done at it over the years, I think I now have the most complete knowledge of the save file format for anyone who doesn't have access to the source code.
- afavour 1y ago
  As an NYC parent I strongly disagree. But I guess it depends what you optimize for. I do wish the subway had more elevators. But once you move beyond those early days with a stroller… I have six playground within a twenty minute walk, a giant park a few minutes away. There’s a zoo nearby, the beach (and aquarium) is less than 45 mins on the subway, there are countless museums in the city… all in all its rich in child friendly activities and child-friendly methods of reaching them. (I’m not there with my kids yet but from talking to older parents: an understated benefit of the city is that kids are able to exercise independence much more easily. They’ll be taking the subway to and from high school, if they want to meet a friend they can just… go. Rather than rely on a parent driving them everywhere)
- chimeracoder 1y ago
  > Nope. It's universal. The denser the city, the more child-hostile it is. > Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1. This is a glaring example of hunting for data that supports a preexisting belief, rather than basing beliefs on empirical data. To point out how absurd this logic is, consider that it fails to consider the fertility rate of Japan as a whole outside urban areas, as well as failing to account for the many other extremely dense cities outside Japan that do have very high fertility rates.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    Nope. I'm anti-urbanist, so I actually analyzed the data :) The correlation is undeniable for any developed country, especially the US. Developing countries are a bit different they are only now starting the second demographic transition. > To point out how absurd this logic is, consider that it fails to consider the fertility rate of Japan as a whole outside urban areas, as well as failing to account for the many other extremely dense cities outside Japan that do have very high fertility rates. LOL. No, they don't: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01975/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01975/
  - rwyinuse 1y ago
    Bigger the city, more expensive housing becomes. That is the real reason for low fertility rates in big cities. People who want children have to be either rich, or move further away.
    - chimeracoder 1y ago
      > Bigger the city, more expensive housing becomes. That's not universally true; it depends on what housing policies exist. > That is the real reason for low fertility rates in big cities. People who want children have to be either rich, or move further away. This is not universally true either.
- dataflow 1y ago
  I don't need to imagine anything; I've lived these different lifestyles. Both as a child and as an adult. Have you? What has your experience been?
- realusername 1y ago
  > Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1. That's a nice theory but all over the developped world, the countryside has lower fertility rate than the cities.
  - CrazyStat 1y ago
    Rural areas have higher fertility rates than urban areas in the US [1], EU [2], and Japan [3]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db297.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db297.htm [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/demography_2021/bloc-3d.html?lang=en https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/demography_2021/b... [3] https://www.mof.go.jp/english/pri/publication/pp_review/fy2017/ppr14_01_01.pdf https://www.mof.go.jp/english/pri/publication/pp_review/fy20...
- throw0101a 1y ago
  > Nope. It's universal. The denser the city, the more child-hostile it is. Maddy Novich, https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/ https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/, for one, may disagree with you. Interview: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs She has three kids IIRC. > Just imagine getting into Tokyo subway with a stroller for 2 kids. There's a reason why Tokyo fertility rate is below 1. Hong Kong has always been dense, and it used to have a fertility rate of ~5: * https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINHKG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINHKG Further, all US states, regardless of how urban or rural they are, have fertility rates with basically the same slope: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... In every industrialized, Western-ish society rates dropped during the 1970s, regardless of initial or final density.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    > She has three kids IIRC. I haven't seen this in the transcript? > Hong Kong has always been dense, and it used to have a fertility rate of ~5 I'm going to save this quote. It goes next to: "Yes, Tokyo now is too expensive, but just 10 years ago you could dream about getting a house there". > Further, all US states, regardless of how urban or rural they are, have fertility rates with basically the same slope: Yes. Toxic urbanization has not spared the US. But it affected the US less than other countries because the suburbs put up a fight.
    - roytam87 1y ago
      > just 10 years ago you could dream about getting a house there yeah, when comparing with other cities[1] it is way more affordable. [1] https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/news/hong-kong-has-once-again-ranked-as-the-most-unaffordable-city-in-the-world-for-home-ownership-071525 https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/news/hong-kong-has-once-ag...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- loglog 1y ago
  In a well-designed city, you don't get onto the subway with a stroller during peak hour, because all amenities that your young children need are reachable in 15 minutes on foot (or <5 minutes by bike).
- rixed 1y ago
  It certainly depends what you call child-hostile and I have no statistics on this. What I do know though, is that one of the denser area in Europe is the famous triangle Rotterdam-Amsterdam-Utrecht, which can hardly be described as child-hostile.
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago
  In Tokyo your kids ride the subway by themselves.
- RobRivera 1y ago
  This style of comment really leaves a bad taste in my mouth regarding forum discussion. 1. Pass off an opinion as fact 2. Posit a straw man 3. Tether an unrelated fact as correlation. I bet one could wire an llm instructed to such a formula to obsfucate otherwise fruitful public discourse.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- casta 1y ago
  I traveled with my kid when he was less than 1 year old in Tokyo. What is the issue with the stroller in the subway? There are always signs of how to get where you need to go using elevators. While Tokyo has one of the worst fertility rates, it's not like the rest of Japan is doing particularly well. Also, I was staying in Azabujuban and I was surprised by the amount of kids I saw there.
- presentation 1y ago
  As a Tokyo parent I don’t have to imagine because our family and friends do it and it works.
p_ing 1y ago
> "Americans love their cars" isn't so much about the cars as it is about the lack of good alternatives. I love to drive therefor I buy a car I love to drive. America is largely rural. Comparisons to Europe aren't appropriate outside of the proper metros.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  Where I live the temperature swings from -40 to over 100F with very high humidity every year. Bicycling with little kids is just not practical for a lot of it, and the nearest bus stop is a four hour walk (12 miles). Do large cities and suburban neighborhoods deserve public transportation? Sure. Is that a universal answer? No. Not even close. There are farm fields out here larger than many towns. Roads, vehicles, and fast on demand transportation are a necessity for the geographic super majority of the US.
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    > Where I live the temperature swings from -40 to over 100F with very high humidity every year. Some of these HN comments are wild. Where do you live? I struggle to think of a place with a temperature range like that.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      Minneapolis does it. As does much of the colder Midwest.
- cjcenizal 1y ago
  America as a physical space is largely rural, but 80% of Americans live in cities according to the census.
  - p_ing 1y ago
    You're misreading those stats. The Census doesn't define "city", it defines "urban" vs. "rural". My "city" of 5K is considered "urban" according to the 2020 census. There are nearly zero services in this "city", only a couple of restaurants, the largest employer is the school district, and it's surrounded by farms and mountain forests. It takes 15 minutes by car to get to the next town over on a two lane highway. If you want to get to any real city, you're looking at a 30-45 minute drive at highway/freeway speeds. So yes, there may be more individuals in "urban" areas, but not all "urban" areas are functionally urban. My "urban city" per the 2020 census is no LA, Austin, or Portland.

JambalayaJimbo 1y ago

Your kid will hate your car constrained area, because they will be unable to get around themselves until they’re old enough / rich enough to drive one

FredPret 1y ago
Then the kid moves to NYC, loves it, meets someone, has a kid, and realizes they need two SUV’s and a heated garage near good schools.
- tehjoker 1y ago
  then you ask yourself why aren’t the schools good enough in nyc… and it leads you down a rabbit hole
- wpm 1y ago
  Somehow my parents managed to raise me without any SUVs.
  - FredPret 1y ago
    Not saying you need the above, but you’ll feel like you do. It’s certainly the easier way
    - thelamest 1y ago
      Addressing the hypothetical person you’re describing: car infrastructure may solve some needs, but it is in direct conflict with other needs. Give every adult a guaranteed parking space just at home and at work, and the physical space required for that alone is an unbelievable double-digit percentage of the city area. Cities are so valuable because they pack a lot of amenities and markets (including your family’s schools and workplaces) in a compact area. Place everything significantly further apart, add more concrete and noise, and you’ve lost on all fronts: safety, charm and efficiency.
      - 1y ago

crooked-v 1y ago

Of course, SimCity as a series leaves out the biggest visual impact of cars - all the parking lots. Even Cities Skylines doesn't try very hard.

p_ing 1y ago
SC2K has Parking Lots. https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_SimCity_2000_buildings_and_icons https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_SimCity_2000_buildin... Obviously that doesn't get to your point, which is accurate. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-philosophy-of-simcity-an-interview-with-the-games-lead-designer/275724/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-p... > I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.

positron26 1y ago

There's another phase we forget about. If I could choose, I'd like to grow up in a giant forest arcology and go hang out with my friends like it's a giant vertical mall with lots of places to go get lost. When I finally got access to grocery delivery to my door, I could see how it all will work. Carrying things for one person is fine. It's carrying groceries for a household for a week where things break down. Even putting all that on an elevator would be really unwieldy compared to unloading from the garage. Self-driving and the evolution of early-life education will play a big role in simplifying life without the parents needing to ferry the kids around five days a week.

JoshTriplett 1y ago
Delivery makes sense for another reason: delivery services could have mechanisms that don't make sense for individual people to own, such as dollies or carts to get things from a vehicle to your door. (Due to the current over-reliance on gig-style delivery people using their own vehicles, rather than dedicated employees with specialized tools, this often doesn't happen today, but it should.) In general, it makes a huge amount of sense for a specialized employee with specialized tooling to pick up groceries for many people and deliver them; the net result is less total person-hours spent shopping, less vehicle miles driven, and less overall labor.
joules77 1y ago
Go deeper. Why does society needs parents at the current rate of change? The ants discovered hundreds of millions of years before even the chimps got social, that parents are not required for functioning society. We will get there soon with artificial wombs on the near horizon.
- positron26 1y ago
  We don't need a next generation either, but I have a feeling there will be some strong selection pressure that takes over.
- losvedir 1y ago
  I, too, always found Brave New World more prescient than 1984.

cblum 1y ago

FWIW, I’m not in NYC, but I’m in general a “ban the cars” type and have a wife and kid. We’re intentionally raising the kid in the city because we believe it’s a richer cultural environment than suburbs, and also because we both grew up in cities in our respective countries.

cyberax 1y ago
Now try getting 2 more kids. Large cities are OK if you have one kid. They completely break down once you have 2-3 kids.
- bmicraft 1y ago
  You really need to explain why you think that's the case.
- ido 1y ago
  Do we really need to do this with each comment adding another rule and another reply from someone breaking it? I live in Berlin with my wife and 2 kids (who were born lived their whole lives in Berlin). We all bike and take transit. Neither me nor my wife even have a driver's license. We're doing fine. We know plenty of other families with multiple kids in the same situation.
- jaas 1y ago
  I know lots of parents in NYC (where I live with multiple kids) and their lives have not “broken down.” What an absurd statement/generalization.
- throw0101a 1y ago
  > Large cities are OK if you have one kid. They completely break down once you have 2-3 kids. Maddy Novich, https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/ https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/, for one, may disagree with you. She has three kids IIRC. Interview: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs
- lurking_swe 1y ago

sien 1y ago

The economic aspect is also worth considering. The subsidy per passenger mile in the US is : 0.019 for road transport, 0.021 for air transport, 0.710 for Amtrak and 2.300 for transit. From : https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=22592 https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=22592 Just also as a note, you can create suburbs pretty easily where bikes use paths or whatever. I live in a suburb where I can ride 15 kms to work without riding on roads. The subsidy for bikes would actually be really low.

pastage 1y ago
You should look at Cost benefit analysis, there was one made on Copenhagen. [1] Bicycle infrastructure usually gets you 6x-12x on the invested amount, getting a 1.2 CBA is ok, 2 is amazing. Bicycle infrastructure is often destroyed by those other investments and that is usually not counted as a con. But it is just too cheap to build bicycle infrastructure to be interesting. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800915000907 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218...

chimeracoder 1y ago

> There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. To the extent that "ban cars" even exists as a real political archetype rather than a meme, this is just patently not true. At least one of the two co-hosts of The War on Cars (again, a title which is intentionally tongue-in-cheek) has a preteen son. But more importantly: car-dependent suburbs are an absolutely miserable place to grow up as a child if you're not wealthy enough to have one non-working parent and/or a nanny (or both). Being dependent on someone else to enable your entire social life until you turn 16 is a torturous enough experience that I'm not surprised that the first generation to have universal access to social media as teenagers has become the first generation to use social media to organize a teenage-driven movement for public transit.

cyberax 1y ago
Find me anti-car advocates with 3 or more children. With both working parents.
- chimeracoder 1y ago
  > Find me anti-car advocates with 3 or more children. I easily could, but I have no interest in chasing ever-moving goalposts.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    Well, duh. That's because I don't know any. And probably neither do you. And sure, humans are extremely diverse and adaptable, so you'll be able to find examples of any physically and logistically possible behavior. Eventually. But statistically? We both know that I'm right. The Netherlands (the bike heaven) has the total fertility rate of around 1.5 And even within the country itself, Amsterdam (North Holland province) is at the second-to-last place from the bottom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Netherlands#Total_fertility_rates_by_province https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Netherland... And the highest fertility rates are in Flevoland and Zeeland that are about 3-4 times less dense.

noosphr 1y ago

> Second, it's not just games. In my NYC days I was a "transit and bike lanes" guy all the way. Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. Buy a bakfiet cargo bike, there's models that can fit five kids under 7. Mine fits three. Kids like them better and you get exercise. For the first time in my life I have a BMI of around 20 without having to waste time at the gym, the drop off, pick up, shopping, and work commute add up to an hour and a half of medium intensity cardio. Every other parent my age in the neighborhood looks five years away from a heart attack. I'm fitter than I was in my 20s. >There's less "objective good" or "objective bad" in these matters than I used to think. It's more about who you optimize for. There are over 1,000 children killed in the US annually by cars. This is after we restrain them like Hannibal Lecter while in cars and don't let them out of our houses so they don't get run over. That's before we talk about the child obesity epidemic, social media abuse, and on and on. If given the choice between keeping cars or letting polio loose on the land you'd be hard pressed to figure out which will kill and disable more kids.

theturtlemoves 1y ago
> Buy a bakfiet cargo bik Off topic, but my brain did a double take there. Didn't know that the Dutch word "bakfiets" (bike with a box) was anglicized to "bakfiet". Cool. Usually it's us who borrow foreign words from all over
- kilpikaarna 1y ago
  Isn't the brand still called Bakfiets though? Even further off topic, I had an aha moment with "bakfiets" connecting to how "back" is a word for storage box in Swedish...
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    There is a brand called bakfiets.nl but there are many different brands. I have an Urban Arrow.
- 1y ago

glimshe 1y ago

I'd love if more people on HN could read your post. As someone who's spent more than half of his life overseas in an ultra high density city, I wouldn't trade my quiet American suburb by a glamorous city with perfect public transportation anywhere in the world. It was great when I was single and cared about meeting girls and partying, but no more. To each their own, right?

mft_ 1y ago
With respect, despite writing “anywhere in the world”, I doubt you have experienced the places in the world that might change your opinion. I can think of multiple European towns which offer a great quality of life together with (thanks to safe cycling and great public transport) the ability to live largely or entirely car-free, if that’s your choice.
- glimshe 1y ago
  Thank you for being respectful. Europe is nice. But I would never want to live in European cities unless I was a gazillionaire and could afford a large, modern property with a garage for a good car (which wouldn't be used as often but still used sometimes). With that much money, anyone could be fine anywhere. The European lifestyle wouldn't be bad during retirement, but still not ideal because I would want the peace of a smaller town anyway.
  - mft_ 1y ago
    I’m not referring to large cities; I’m thinking of places in the (say) 100-200k size range. Small enough to cycle around for all of your regular needs, and just large enough to have plenty of life, culture, and community. And in such places you can certainly live very well, far below a gazillionaire’s income :)
    - p_ing 1y ago
      I'll stick to my 5K town at the encased in the feet of a mountain range, nestled in between two rivers, and within driving distance of the largest employers in the world. It's quiet. No matter how you spin a 100-200K sized city, it will never be this quiet.

em500 1y ago

> Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. This seems very different from the large anti-car movement in the Netherlands in the 1970s (which eventually led to massive investments in bike infrastructure and car restrictions in the cities). There was significant parent involvement, touting the memorable slogan "Stop de Kindermoord" ("Stop the Child Murder"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_transport_in_the_Netherlands#Road_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_transport_in_the_Netherla...

qwertox 1y ago
There's a youtube channel named @NotJustBikes which mostly talks about how bike-friendly the Netherlands are and compares it to the USA. It's worth watching a couple of those videos.
- stephen_g 1y ago
  And, unlike the grandparent-comment’s assertions, that channel references his family and kids in most videos (in that he and his partner moved to Amsterdam so his children could have the freedom to navigate safely without having to be driven around).
  - rglullis 1y ago
    My mother lives in suburban Massachusetts. She always said that she never imagined how it was possible for me to live with two small kids without a car in Berlin. She came to visit for one month. After the first week she was already comfortably going around with the Ubahn to pick up the kids at school. I have 4 supermarkets less than 150m away from me, so we would walk to do groceries every other day. I spend ~80€/month with taxi rides (for the occasional trip to meet someone in a less convenient place), which is less than what she pays in car insurance alone, not even counting the cost of gas. At the end of the trip, she got it. Having a car is not a necessity. It should be seen (and taxed) as a luxury.

throw0101a 1y ago

> Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. Maddy Novich, https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/ https://www.instagram.com/cargobikemomma/, for one, may disagree with you. Interviews: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PoKcQRlDGs * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDhJt26dQTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDhJt26dQTs And I'm not sure how many folks are about banning cars (completely), as opposed to designing things so that (two) cars go from being mandatory to optional.

stouset 1y ago
Yeah, it’s crazy the number of people who scream about taking their cars from their cold, dead hands when people talk about adding some bike lanes, rolling out more public transit, or removing small amounts of parking for more human-centered uses. People somehow perceive all of these things as trying to ban cars instead of promoting other forms of transportation.
- khamidou 1y ago
  There's some sunk cost fallacy at play here. If you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a house in a remote suburb where your social activities are mostly playdates scheduled 3 months in advance, you don't want to be reminded that there was another path you could have taken.

loglog 1y ago

You don't recognize the objective bad because you've never lived in a place that does it better (NL, DK).

agentcoops 1y ago
I just had a kid and moved to DK from the US. I was so skeptical of the infant (and often mother!) in cart on front of bike that you see everywhere, but it's such a life-changer versus the ordeal of carseats etc. TLDR totally agreed.

xandrius 1y ago

Spend 1 month with your kids in a place where cars are actually not needed, only then you can actually understand what you are denying your kids. And if you want to know right away, think about who can drive your car, as supposed being able to walk or ride somewhere. You're limiting their own personal freedom by forcing them to have you always needed to go somewhere.

tombert 1y ago
Cars really aren't needed in NYC, where the poster said they lived. Many, many people here do not have cars, and haven't for years. It's still annoying to not have a car. I don't have kids but f I did then the first thing I would do would almost certainly be to buy a vehicle.
- xandrius 1y ago
  My recommendation is to get an ebike with a way to carry a person and some small cargo (e.g. Shopping bags and such). I see them a lot and also makes going around with kids more fun for them too!
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago
  My interpretation of OP's comment is that they don't live in NYC anymore, but rather a car-dependent suburb which they've "chosen for [their] kids".
- presentation 1y ago
  NYC is subpar too. The elevators never work, most stations don’t have escalators either, it’s filthy, taking your kids on the train will give them permanent hearing damage and large swaths of the city are completely unserviced. Your feeling is the result of NYC and the entire USA being generally dysfunctional, not an inherent truth.
lotsoweiners 1y ago
I don’t really want my kids have that much personal freedom because they’re kids. I live very suburban and my kids could walk to one of the neighborhood parks (2-3 minutes) or to a friends house but I don’t see them needing more than that.

darkamaul 1y ago

Actually, even for families with kids, the safer option is still bikes and low-car environments. Fewer cars means less air pollution, less noise, and less sedentary behavior for both kids and adults. The data we have shows that the presence of cars is the main source of risk on the street, not the act of biking itself. Neighborhoods that design around walking and biking tend to have fewer serious accidents, not more. If we're talking about optimizing for kids, then banning individual car use in residential neighborhoods would be the ideal. I know it’s not politically feasible in most of the US right now, but it’s worth keeping in mind that cars are the danger.

rglullis 1y ago

No city simulation game properly models the real cost of parking and car-centric infrastructure: https://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html https://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-pa... >Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" In other words: I was okay with demanding change when it didn't inconvenience me, but now that I get to benefit from economic policy that heavily subsidize my lifestyle I rather keep the status quo.

tengbretson 1y ago

> There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. Here comes the flood of "but not meee" comments

CalRobert 1y ago

This is condescending and wildly inaccurate. My children are exactly the reason we live car-free and chose a town where you can bike safely - anything less is effectively condemning them to live in an outdoor prison until you can drive. But, this is why we live in the Netherlands. If all you've seen is the US I can see how you might not understand that not being car-dependent is actually better for kids.

jjmarr 1y ago

I rode transit everywhere as a kid living in the city. Got to explore a ton of cool stuff. Meanwhile my friends in the suburbs had to walk 30 minutes to get Starbucks. And it was a gruelling march without sidewalks or tree cover.

CalRobert 1y ago

The sad thing is that you _CAN_ have a leafy suburb without the roar of internal combustion and 8 lane stroads everywhere. Planners in the US just refuse to build them. We live in a lovely leafy suburb completely car free. But it's this one - https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w This morning the four of us biked to the grocery store (we loaded the groceries in the bakfiets). The kids bike to their daycare. We bike to the train when we feel like a day out. I can't fathom trying to raise kids somewhere we need to use a car to do anything.

thfuran 1y ago

But kids can use bikes and public transport well before they can drive. How are cars so especially helpful for children?

criddell 1y ago
Robo taxis might change lots of things. I think I would be a lot more comfortable letting my ten year old use a Waymo to get to grandma’s house than a city bus. It’s door-to-door and you don’t have to worry about some weirdo across the aisle being inappropriate.

tombert 1y ago

I've lived in NYC without a car for the last decade, and I don't have kids, and even granting that, I still have grown to understand why Americans love cars. Getting groceries is a particular pain in the ass; I either need to go to the (very limited) grocery selections in my neighborhood with a cart, or lug the cart up and down the stairs of the subway, or be ok with only taking as much as I'm able carry with my hands in a few bags. I could get delivery, and I do that fairly often, but there are things that I prefer to get in person, like fruits or vegetables. There's also just large things you cannot realistically take on a train, like large sheets of plywood at Home Depot. Again, you can of course get this stuff delivered, but then you run the risk of them sending you the worst, most warped piece of wood available, which has happened to me multiple times. I've grown to sympathize with most Americans as a result.

AfterHIA 1y ago

This isn't an attack pal but I love that we have a generation of young men that are willing to sell all of their principles and buy into the suburbanite cult just right after, "getting it" after starting a family. I can appreciate that this is, "how it goes" but it creates a political class of people that are more concerned about their family's well-being than the well-being of society as a whole. Rinse and repeat over a few generations and this is a big part of why the United States has stagnated culturally. Stated with love out of concern for our, "whole societal family" which includes you and yours. Relevant: https://sites.pitt.edu/~syd/ASIND.html https://sites.pitt.edu/~syd/ASIND.html https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book05/ch01c-2.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/...

mitthrowaway2 1y ago

My biggest fear about cars is that one might kill my kid. This leads to impossing all sorts of play and travel restrictions on her that I wouldn't have to if there were fewer cars and more bikes. (Bikes which kids can ride independently to their friends' houses from a single-digit age, by the way, which I would allow her to do if she weren't sharing the streets with cars.) Maybe the problem is that the leafy suburb you moved to is car-dependent? It doesn't have to be built that way, that's a design choice. It's possible to build a low density suburb that kids can bike through safely, for example: https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w

barbazoo 1y ago

> There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. Seems very rare that people describe their families in here so I wouldn’t go to that conclusion. I didn’t even know this page had a “bio” section. Anyway, seems like a strawman to me.

mrgoldenbrown 1y ago

Kids and marriage are not unique to America. There are millions of Dutch kids happy to ride a bike or ride the bus along with their married parents.

crikeykangaroo 1y ago
Sure, but The Netherlands is also quite a lot smaller than the US.
- jplrssn 1y ago
  Comparing the total size of countries like this never made much sense to me. It's not like Americans need to drive coast-to-coast to buy groceries or drop their kids off at school.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- aegypti 1y ago
  The Netherlands has 2x as much land as the Tri State area with 1-2 million fewer residents.

goosedragons 1y ago

Nope. Just more selfish choices. Resources are finite. The further we can move away from cars, THE better for kids. Less risk of them being run over by a 7 foot tall Dodge Ram, more chances for independence because actually going places doesn't require a car.

mapotofu 1y ago

I live in a very walkable small town with lots of young families also biking and walking with their young children, as I am, and couldn’t disagree with you more about cars. It’s so nice to walk to the market instead of loading and unloading a car seat, to have the option of walking or taking a short bus ride to school, to walk to parks and playgrounds. I had the opposite reaction you did when I actually lived in a place that was kinda similar to what Europeans describe.

aucisson_masque 1y ago

Netherlands

mschuster91 1y ago

> Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios. That's because the infrastructure doesn't exist in lots of the US, either it never existed or it got ripped out during the car boom phase. Here in a suburb of Munich (Germany), almost everything one needs in life - all four large supermarket chains, a veterinarian, a hardware store, daycare and school for children - is walkable in less than half an hour, or 5-10 minutes with a bike.

casta 1y ago

Interesting. To provide a different experience, I live in NYC with kids and I find it great here. Daycare/Kindergarten is at most 4 blocks away, grocery stores are less than a block away, it takes me 10 minutes to get to the office on the train (1/2/3). I still bike to the office often. If we need a car there is a rental less than a block away, but in practice we rent maybe once a year. Today there was an open street on Columbus Ave and it was lovely to meet co-workers with their kids and let them play there. To be fair, I wasn't born here even if I'm a citizen, so I guess I wouldn't be considered "American".

xyzelement 1y ago
I wasn't born here either (but I am the person you are replying to) I'll give you some examples of the kinds of things I easily did with my two bigger kids (5 and 3 years old) - woke up on a nice Sunday morning and decided to go for a woodsy hike 20 min drive away. - threw our kayak on the roof and drove out to paddle it on the south shore, on a whim. - threw bikes into the bike rack for a long ride along a Greenway. - dropped by Grandma's house easily. - went to the Adirondacks for a week and brought our bikes and paddle board along with a bunch of other stuff. And not directly care related but car enabled - I just opened the backyard door and they were playing there by themselves while I kept an eye from the kitchen.
- casta 1y ago
  Nice. Those activities remind me when I used to visit my dad countryside (he lived in Tuscany). He's legally blind though, and we managed anyway. Not sure why the last bit would be car enabled. I was in East Hamptons a few weeks ago and the kids would play outside while we stayed in the living room/kitchen. We just had to be careful about the pool.
  - xyzelement 1y ago
    I think you and I can both recognize that the east Hamptons are a car oriented place even if you got there from the city on the jitney. The point I was making w that one is - lower density is what allows us a back yard while higher density is what supports walk-ability and transit. So maybe I can make the point in a cheekier way - your Hamptons weekend is closer to my every-day life than to your city life :)

thatfrenchguy 1y ago

It’s funny because as a parent there’s nothing I want less than living somewhere I have to drive everywhere. I can walk 5 minutes to the nearest park, take a bus or a tram to be in a different one in 10 minutes, and I can’t fathom having to take our car for that kind of daily activity.

libraryatnight 1y ago

what a selfish and narrow way to process the world.

monkeyelite 1y ago

You’ve awakened the horde by suggesting the anti-car project is not an absolute good.

tstenner 1y ago

Our city replaced some train tracks with high quality separated bike streets (no cars allowed, obviously). Biking five kilometers each way with only three street crossings is perfectly doable, even with small children on their own bikes.

presentation 1y ago

I live in Tokyo and have kids. Both cycling and transit are essential to most parents lives here. It is not that these are incompatible with family life, it’s that as it is implemented and maintained in the USA (read: badly), it is incompatible. An example that’s minor for young singles but major for parents: train stations here pretty much all have elevators and they almost always are working. This alone changes the game.