[HN Gopher] Children, left behind by suburbia, need better commu...
___________________________________________________________________
Children, left behind by suburbia, need better community design
Author : jseliger
Score : 102 points
Date : 2023-11-21 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnu.org)
| damnesian wrote:
| We idealistically designed our suburbs at first. Then commercial
| and industrial interests took charge.
|
| Suburban dwellers were an early large dataset for corporations
| looking to maximize "engagement."
| c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
| "In England, housing is often characterized by closely situated
| semi-detached or terraced structures built under flexible zoning
| regulations. This environment allows small businesses to coexist
| harmoniously with residential areas, in contrast to the rigid
| industrial zoning common in the United States."
|
| I'm American and live in Oz. Australia does this well imo. Small
| cafes and shops are sprinkled throughout neighborhoods. For any
| large grocery runs, I need to take my car but day to day basics
| (and more importantly...coffee) are within only a few minutes
| walking distance.
| irrational wrote:
| Are the prices comparable?
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| At least in Melbourne, this is only really the case for more
| established (and typically expensive) suburbs. Go out to Clyde
| North or Officer and you've got basically nothing in a walkable
| distance.
|
| Even in (relatively affluent, semi-inner) Burwood East many of
| the old strip shops have been converted to non-regular or non-
| retail businesses (e.g kitchen showroom, accountant, baked
| goods wholesaler). You'd need to go up to Kmart Plaza to get
| groceries or coffee.
| woolly wrote:
| In Sydney, it's generally the case for established
| neighbourhoods close to the CBD. Walkability in inner city
| suburbs like Balmain, Leichhardt, Rozelle, any of the eastern
| suburbs really is super high.
|
| Contrast this to urban-sprawl created suburbs like Marsden
| Park and a few of the Hills district burbs and it's the
| opposite - barely any public transport and next to no
| community infrastructure.
|
| There's a good channel on YT that documents this sort of
| stuff here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDhbm-t3dXU
| Gigachad wrote:
| Yeah I'm in Melbourne and thanks to working in tech, I can
| afford to live in one of those inner areas with cafes and
| community events at my doorstep. But the average person is
| forced out to some hellscape like Craigieburn or Melton where
| kids will be surrounded by mega highways in every direction.
|
| We really need to do more to bring pedestrianisation and
| walkability out to the cheaper areas rather than having them
| be a luxury for the rich.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Why on earth is the picture of a busy truck stop type place? Most
| suburban neighborhoods have low traffic and plenty of places to
| ride your bike. Often have pools and basketball courts or fields
| to play in.
| BetaDeltaAlpha wrote:
| It's not just a truck stop. Breezwood, PA is a meme at this
| point used to malign suburbs.
| gosub100 wrote:
| How funny, because when you look at it from the map, there's
| proably < 100 housing units within a ~3 mile radius. Of
| course there's not a bike path and roundabouts! It's the
| ideal place for a stroad: a pit-stop off the interstate with
| almost no housing nearby, with a cold the climate half the
| year.
| Symbiote wrote:
| That place is awful.
|
| If a truck driver stops for the night, but fancies a meal
| from the other side of the road there's no sidewalk, and no
| crossing. Just lots of "no pedestrians" signs.
|
| How do you get from the Tesla Supercharger to McDonald's?
| neogodless wrote:
| Yup - instantly recognized. (I've also been there.)
|
| Can get some idea of it if you go to Street View and "zoom
| in" with the mouse wheel.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9993331,-78.2406551,3a,15y,9.
| ..
| tropdrop wrote:
| I read the image as a visualization of why it feels hostile, to
| a suburban child, to walk to a point of gathering or "third
| place." For many suburban children, this kind of intersection
| is fairly representative of the closest points of interest to
| their home, accessible only by car via highways.
| loandbehold wrote:
| You are wrong. It's absolutely not representative. Closet
| point of interest would be a suburban park/playground.
| tropdrop wrote:
| Maybe to a very young child that is an interesting spot,
| but this kind of intersection certainly was representative
| of the closest points of interest in the suburb where I
| spent my middle-school years.
|
| In my experience, older children tended to want to
| congregate at cafes, Einstein Bagels, etc., especially if
| coming home after school when the parents aren't home and
| all one wants is a spot for a hanging out with friends over
| a snack. Also, a park being a gathering place assumes ample
| tree cover and good weather, missing during most of the the
| academic year. Meanwhile, at least in the American
| southwest, a park is unbearably (near 100F) hot in the
| summer.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| In mice !
| loandbehold wrote:
| This.Most suburban communities build in the last 50 years are
| pretty nice. Almost no traffic, sidewalks everywhere, safe to
| ride a bike or walk your dog. If you have businesses in the
| community it brings traffic and noise. Much nicer to separate
| residential and commercial.
| matsemann wrote:
| So it's safe to walk and ride your bike, but you have nothing
| close by worth biking or walking to? Sounds counter
| productive. What do you do, bike in circles?
|
| Or my guess: you have to drive everywhere. Hence no autonomy
| for the kids.
| loandbehold wrote:
| That's exactly what I like to do. Cycle around the
| neighborhood, look at people'e beautiful front yards. But
| kids can also bike or walk to school or visit their friends
| in walking/cycling distance.
| matsemann wrote:
| "" You can bike around any time you like But you
| can never leave "" - The Eagles, almost
| weberer wrote:
| What suburbs are you talking about? Whenever I see the
| topic discussed here, people always seem to be referring to
| some strawman neighborhood surrounded by desert and
| highway. And maybe that's true out west where land is
| sparse, but all the suburbs I've known have been places
| like Abington, PA. Look at it from street view. There's
| plenty of sidewalks, detached houses, shops and
| restaurants, big chain stores, small mom and pop stores,
| and train stations that take you downtown. You can start
| from anywhere on that map and make it to a supermarket
| within 20 minutes of walking.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Abington,+PA
| duderific wrote:
| You complain about people cherry-picking an unfriendly
| suburb, and then cherry-pick a friendly one. There are
| both types, and it's basically pure luck (as a kid) if
| you happen to live in a friendly one.
| leoedin wrote:
| > If you have businesses in the community it brings traffic
| and noise
|
| Surely if there's a coffee shop within walking distance, it
| would reduce traffic as people don't have to drive to get
| coffee?
| loandbehold wrote:
| Who goes to a coffee shop from home just to get a cup of
| coffee? Most people can make coffee at home. Coffee shops
| are more for meetings people or to get coffee on the way
| to/from work.
| acdha wrote:
| Sidewalks vary wildly, often with some nasty history. I grew
| up in Southern California and and was used to sidewalks
| pretty much everywhere, rode my bike to school a couple miles
| away in bike lanes, etc. I thought pretty much the same as
| you.
|
| Then I moved to the east coast and, wow, there are visible
| fault lines from white racists losing Brown v. Board & other
| civil rights cases in the form of these suburbs built between
| 1950 and maybe 2000 which have no sidewalks, windy layouts
| designed to discourage visitors and prevent transit, no
| public pools but private ones, etc. One of my coworkers lives
| off of a very busy road which has a sidewalk from their
| neighborhood which ends abruptly a 1/4 mile away in front of
| the house with the Confederate flag whose owner has gone to
| every meeting for like 40 years arguing that completing the
| connection to the park & bus stop will lead to a crime spree.
| Most of these places had racial covenants in the deeds which
| are no longer enforceable but definitely set a trend for the
| formative decades.
|
| (This is not to say that California doesn't have exclusionary
| suburbs - I used to ride my bike through some of the ones
| around San Diego where a Caribbean friend only rode when
| there was a group to vouch for him after he got tired of
| explaining to the local police why a black dude was on a nice
| bike - but they tend to be smaller and less inclined to forgo
| basic civic infrastructure. Even with that experience I was
| surprised by how widespread it was in a lot of cities we've
| visited from Florida up to Massachusetts)
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> Most suburban neighborhoods have low traffic and plenty of
| places to ride your bike_
|
| Until you actually try to go anywhere and find that you cant't
| without riding through an arterial road with heavy dangerous
| traffic. The quiet suburban roads don't form a network that
| allows you to go to actual destinations.
|
| Here in Toronto they are trying to address that by building (a
| few) cycle tracks running parallel to these horrible arterial
| roads, but it's still an awful experience. There are a few
| quiet greenways without any motor traffic, but they don't help
| you reach any destination.
|
| Neighborhoods that were built before the advent of the car are
| more amenable to cycling.
| bluGill wrote:
| While you can't get very far, you can still get to a park on
| those streets, which is what OP was talking about. There are
| generally enough kids in the neighborhood that you can find
| someone to play with of about your age.
|
| Of course the kids need to go outside to meet those other
| kids (and the other kids need to go out as well), and parents
| need to let kids out of their sight to go to the park.
| david-gpu wrote:
| My kids can't even go to their (suburban) school by bike
| because they can't get there without riding on a road for
| part of the way. That's a direct consequence of car-centric
| urban planning.
|
| These low-density car-dependent suburbs provide a very poor
| experience for everybody outside a car, from children/teens
| who can't drive yet to people who are trying to get to a
| destination (work, shop, library, restaurant, etc.) without
| a car.
| Abekkus wrote:
| Breezewood, PA is basically a flag for american new urbanists
| to wave at each other, a rallying cry of what not to repeat.
|
| Funny, too, because I'd only driven through the place twice but
| it was still enough of a core memory for me to recognize it
| right away the first time I'd seen it used in this kind of
| article.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania
| tropdrop wrote:
| Nice to see a high quality article by a high school student -
| kudos to this young new urbanist.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I grew up in the suburbs and did all kinds of things on my own.
| From 1991-1997 I rode my bike all around, went to the park,
| played sports, socialized, went to stores and fast-food on my
| own. My parents set some reasonable limitations on it: had to
| come back periodically and check in, let them know where I was,
| couldn't cross busy streets. I even had an SNES and my friends
| had Sega, and we played video games and watched TV, but we got
| bored of that and went outside at least as much as we stayed in.
|
| I don't know what happened between then and now. I don't have
| kids so I don't know how people make decisions about them. I know
| a big part of it is fear of child abductions and getting hit by
| cars. I think it's just an irrational fear of those things (or
| bullying or using drugs) that slowly led to tightening the leash
| on kids. Today I rarely see kids doing anything in public without
| a helicopter parent within 50-ft. One of the middle schools I
| drove by allows one child to leave the door, go straight to their
| parents car, before the next car pulls up. They aren't even
| _allowed to walk home_ unsupervised.
| ignite2 wrote:
| Yeah, suburbia is not the problem. I'd much rather live in
| suburbia than a city. But if you can't go outside on your own,
| that loses a lot of the benefit.
| bell-cot wrote:
| THIS. Back when, I walked to/from kindergarten & elementary
| school daily. In pretty much whatever weather there was.
| Usually alone. Mostly along a main-ish residential street.
| Those walks added up to ~12 miles/week. Pretty much all the
| other kids at my school did the same; I'd guess the maximum
| walk was ~15 miles/week.
|
| (Also - this was back when all the kids went home to eat lunch
| each day, then came back to school. "School lunch" for the few
| oddballs, who had no housewife mom available, amounted to a few
| folding picnic tables in a dead-end hallway, and BYO sack
| lunch.)
| brandonmenc wrote:
| Same.
|
| My parents are horrified when I suggest that their
| grandchildren should have the same freedom to roam around that
| they gave us.
|
| They believe the world is more dangerous than ever even though
| murders, violent crime, child abductions, and car accidents
| peaked when we were kids. And we didn't have cellphones to
| check in or call 911 with.
|
| It's baffling.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| I once stayed with a couple whose worldview was formed by the
| sensationalist news channels on tv [0]. They genuinely
| believed the outside world was a scary place with constant
| abductions, hate crimes, murder and all that. It was
| absolutely baffling to experience.
|
| Not sure what to take from it. But it's very sobering to see
| how much damage is being done that way.
|
| [0] At least I presume that's where it came from. The news
| was on every single day in that household and it certainly
| felt like some kind of twisted suffering and misfortune porn.
| kredd wrote:
| I don't have kids either, but I'm in touch with my nephews
| (ages 7-14), and get to see how they're growing up. It's a very
| weird mix of culture change, everyone's being on their phones
| 24/7, and not walkable streets for kids. Luckily they live in
| NYC, and eldest one is now allowed to subway around, go to
| places as long as he follows the general guidelines set by my
| sister. That being said, he tells me how nobody else in his
| class is allowed to do the same, and their parents basically
| take them everywhere. At the end of the day, he still goes and
| plays Fortnite with his online friends anyways though.
|
| It is definitely different from my childhood where even as an 8
| year old I remember going to school by myself, hanging out in
| the neighbourhood with friends and etc. Definitely wouldn't
| blame it on just one thing, as every complex problem, it has
| multiple contributors.
| swatcoder wrote:
| I think part of it is also that many parents in our cohort were
| already raised as indoor and car-shuttled kids themselves. Some
| of us were still roaming around the bush in the '90's but it
| was already fewer of us than it was 10 and 20 and 30 years
| before then.
|
| What should we expect of those folk as they become parents
| themselves? They have no nostalgia to lean on, and if they
| developed self-confidence and contentment as adults, then
| they're probably more inclined to _refine_ the way were raised
| rather than _challenge_ it.
|
| So while media dramatization and fear culture surely played a
| role in the cycle too, and perhaps the initiating role,
| generational re-emphasis are probably what let it feel so
| pervasive and permanent.
| irrational wrote:
| > Why don't children leave the house?
|
| Because of screens.
|
| We have a forest in our backyard with a 2 story fully enclosed
| treehouse (including electricity), sports fields within a 5
| minute walk, tons of hiking trails, etc. But it is a real
| struggle to get them to leave the house because they want to be
| on the Internet 24/7. Of course we take away the devices, but
| that just leads to them bemoaning their screen less state. One of
| the problems is, this is taught in the schools. Pretty much every
| class is using screens constantly. Our local school district
| recently experienced a hack that made it so they couldn't use
| chromebooks for a few days. All the teachers lesson plans were
| completely centered around devices, so the kids just watched
| movies all day instead.
| locococo wrote:
| I don't disagree but I think what we tend to forget is thst
| children mimic their parents.
|
| I've noticed that my kids will go outside more when I walk the
| dog more. They either join me or go outside on their own.
|
| The same applied when I work in the yard.
| jahewson wrote:
| That's a good point. In turn I'd ask why the parents don't
| leave the house? Because of screens...?
| autoexec wrote:
| My parents didn't spend much time out of the house, but
| they'd kick us out occasionally. We'd bike around, go to
| parks, or visit friends. Are parents even allowed to say "Go
| play outside until the street lights turn on" anymore?
| travoc wrote:
| I have to agree. My children have a 2 acre backyard with woods
| and a treehouse. They play outside with the neighborhood kids
| almost every day. When bad weather keeps them inside, they make
| up new games to play throughout the house.
|
| Why? Because we limit the time they spend on screens.
| omginternets wrote:
| This is how I was raised. I'll forever be thankful.
| duderific wrote:
| > My children have a 2 acre backyard with woods and a
| treehouse.
|
| Very, very few people have this. Sounds like you have your
| own "third place" that the neighborhood kids can leverage,
| and which provides a compelling alternative to screens.
| Kye wrote:
| I remember getting annoyed listening to my parents opine about
| why I stayed inside a lot without ever asking me, knowing I
| would be chastised if I dared to speak for myself.
|
| I enjoy a nice stroll in nature as an adult, but I would have
| been bored out of my mind as a kid. Sports never appealed, and
| treehouses are even more boring than sitting in a room with no
| internet.
|
| What I liked doing was mall walking, or walking through busy
| cities. But my parents would rarely take me to do that. So I
| was "lazy."
| yieldcrv wrote:
| my parents thought I was a combination of introverted and not
| social
|
| I just could not be motivated to travel 40 minutes to an
| event, and Xbox Live was an equivalent surrogate
|
| Move on campus in the middle of things and I'm out almost
| every day. Keep everything in walking distance and I'm very
| social in person. We'll see if suburbs ever appeal to me,
| more likely would have to be a reimagined version of the
| concept.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Yes, just going on a walk can be boring for a child, but you
| don't need to just walk through the woods. You can go
| exploring, dig for treasure, climb trees, play hide and seek,
| build a fort, etc.
| Kye wrote:
| What hiking trail allows this? Going off-trail, digging,
| climbing, and building will all get you booted. These are
| natural environments where the trail is already a
| significant compromise to justify the preservation.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I had some experiences like this thanks to boy scouts,
| but it was on private land owned by another family for
| timber, or at a summer camp hardly an everyday thing
| though. Depending on what you're doing/season/location
| national forests allow gathering wood and stuff for
| building fires.
| ratmice wrote:
| There is a park in my neighborhood, half of which is
| designated as a nature play space. Where all those things
| are allowed, lots of forts. It appears it was associated
| with the national wildlife federation natural learning
| initiative. https://www.nwf.org/Kids-and-
| Family/Connecting-Kids-and-Natu...
|
| Not sure if there is a list of such places though
| dudul wrote:
| Do you use screens in front of them? Have you researched a
| school that doesn't use screens? They exist, my kids go to one.
|
| What's the problem exactly with taking their devices? They cry
| and complain, so? People resist change, but they eventually get
| used to it.
| duderific wrote:
| It's not quite that simple. Literally all their schoolmates
| are watching shows, playing video games etc. So they become
| ostracized as a result of not having the same context as the
| other kids.
|
| We're trying like hell to slow the onslaught with my son, but
| the kids make fun of him because "you don't even play Roblox"
| or whatever.
|
| The public schools are all in on screens, at least where we
| are. They literally issued my kindergartener a Chromebook and
| expect us to do 30 minutes a night on the apps they
| recommend. It's really disheartening.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Kids 30 years ago wanted to endlessly watch TV, play video
| games, listen to tapes, and read books. 30 years before that,
| it was radio, TV, vinyl, and books. 30 years before that:
| radio, vinyl, and books.
|
| Kids are curious and stimulation-receptive and motivated, and
| so they're going to chase easy sources of those things.
|
| Parents, meanwhile, can either work to balance the easy sources
| with other sources that might enrich them in novel ways (like
| going outside or being bored), accepting that their kids may
| not buy into the idea, or they can defer to their child's sense
| and avoid tantrums and defiance.
|
| It seems like kids turn into adults either way, but the choice
| is ultimately one being made by the parent, not by the
| availability of screens _per se_. The easy stimulation is
| omnipresent. That ship sailed about 100 years ago. As a parent
| caring for kids (and a person caring for yourself!) you
| ultimately have to figure out what you want to do about it.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| It's only in recent decades that media has begun to adapt
| itself to increase captivity of individual consumers. That
| feels like a qualitative difference between your time
| horizons.
| wvenable wrote:
| My two children 12 years apart in age and they have had a
| dramatically different childhoods. Unless you are a parent
| right now, you probably have no idea how quickly childhood
| has changed in the last decade.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > Kids 30 years ago wanted to endlessly watch TV, play video
| games, listen to tapes, and read books.
|
| Not "endlessly." 30 years ago, in the suburbia being decried,
| I had a bike and friends my age in the neighborhood. You
| called to see if they wanted to go do something, or went down
| the street and knocked on the door. And this was in a time
| (1990s) when the country's violent crime rate was about
| double what it is today, but there was no social media and
| 24-hour news doomscrolling making parents paranoid.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| also 30 years ago, you did not have busybodies calling
| child services on anyone who left their kid alone.
| dave78 wrote:
| I was a kid 30 years ago. I may have wanted to watch TV all
| the time, but it was self-limiting back then. Much of the
| time the stuff on TV wasn't anything a kid would want to
| watch. There were only certain times of the day that you
| could find someone you wanted.
|
| Screens today provide a bottomless pit of content for kids.
| At a parent, yes I have to limit my kids time or they'd just
| do it 24/7. People talk about letting their kids figure out
| how to moderate themselves, but either I'm doing that wrong
| or (perhaps more likely) that just doesn't work the same for
| every kid.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I feel like it's also hard money wise as a kid, I remember
| wanting a milling machine and tools/materials to build a
| boat that was just too absurdly expensive at the time. Also
| just being limited by cars and stuff, would've loved to be
| able to go surfing but it's a hard sell to convince your
| parents to drive 6+ hours round trip for something like
| that.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| How often do you go to the tree-house and forest?
| uoaei wrote:
| Kids learn habits from their parents. Never forget that you are
| their first role model. How often do you leave the house and
| how often are you using screens when you are home?
| wvenable wrote:
| There's a feedback loop happening as well. Kids don't play
| outside so there are no kids playing outside.
|
| Screens are much more compelling than playing outside. Kids are
| still using their imaginations but they're playing in a much
| more powerful sandbox. And, at the same time, outside is
| actually getting less compelling.
|
| It's not healthy -- probably both in a physical and mental
| sense -- but the solution is far from just taking away screens.
| Society is structured around this now.
| duderific wrote:
| > There's a feedback loop happening as well. Kids don't play
| outside so there are no kids playing outside.
|
| So much this. When I was a kid (late 70's), I could count on
| going outside and finding other kids to play with. Or if I
| didn't find anyone, I'd ride my bike around until someone
| came outside. Or, I could even simply knock on my friend's
| door and say "Can Robert come out and play?" and this was
| completely acceptable.
|
| I'd love to send my kid outside to play, but he'd just be
| wandering around by himself. Knocking on a friend's door
| (though he knows a same-age kid two doors away) would be
| considered out of bounds nowadays. Any kid get-togethers must
| be carefully arranged ahead of time with at least one adult
| monitoring the "playdate."
| the-alchemist wrote:
| > Knocking on a friend's door (though he knows a same-age
| kid two doors away) would be considered out of bounds
| nowadays.
|
| Yeah, the social dynamics of this kind of thing baffles me.
| I'm sure it's very neighborhood-dependent, but neighbors
| don't "check" up on each other either.
|
| I think this is more U.S.-wide: it's not socially
| acceptable to knock on someone's door or ring their
| doorbell even if they're waiting for me. You're supposed to
| text that you're waiting outside. Doorbells are only for
| deliveries and unknown strangers (like selling something,
| politics, religious missionaries).
|
| If it's not socially acceptable to knock on a friend's door
| when they're waiting for you to get there, then it's
| definitely not gonna be socially acceptable to just knock,
| see if they're home, say hi, and that's it.
| thebradbain wrote:
| But would you let them? Alone, I mean.
|
| No pre-set plan, no parental supervision, just a "I'm going to
| go meet my friends on this summer day, I'll be back before
| dinner." For purposes of illustration, assume these kids are
| aged 9-14, or thereabouts. Too young to drive, too old to be
| doted over every minute of the day.
|
| If you would (and I hope you would!), would their friends'
| parents? Would they be able to go casually knock on their
| friends' doors (or even neighbors' doors), be it biking or
| walking, and socialize, like kids do?
|
| My guess is probably not. And that's not the kids' doing--
| that's OUR doing. If parents really wanted their kids to go
| outside and explore, that would be the norm. But for far too
| many kids it's not, because parents don't want it to be:
| they're worried about their kid getting hit by a car,
| kidnapped, getting in trouble, learning a lesson, the list goes
| on and on. The built environment reflects that kids are not
| expected to be outside, as if we've kid-proofed it. And so even
| if you want your kid to play outside, no one else is, and of
| course no kid wants to play alone!
|
| Ironically, you would probably see more kids out and about,
| safe to be kids, in _gasp_ New York City than in "safe"
| suburbia, from my own anecdotal experience.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| There's currently a strike in Portland, and I've appreciated
| seeing kids out and about being little adults, taking the
| bus, etc, makes me really glad to live in city even with all
| the cars and noise.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I don't see the issue, almost all the high paying jobs nowadays
| are just staring at screens all day anyway.
|
| I'm being facetious, but maybe not really...
| unflxw wrote:
| > We have a forest in our backyard with a 2 story fully
| enclosed treehouse (including electricity), sports fields
| within a 5 minute walk, tons of hiking trails, etc.
|
| Humans are social beings. We are motivated to do things through
| our peers doing things. What you describe is probably really
| nice for people who enjoy exercise and spending time in nature.
| But for social beings, what you are describing is absolute
| isolation from society.
|
| I would posit that a big part of what glues the kids to the
| screen is that the screen is a window to the real world. When
| they look into the screen, they have an endless stream of other
| people, expressing opinions, doing things, existing in society.
| When they look outside, there's no society, there's no people.
| It's just trees.
| gedy wrote:
| Moms aren't around, more are working and not looking out for
| each other's kids, even when they are roaming the neighborhood.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| was in europe over the summer I did see a lot of teens doing
| dumb shit that teens do by the subway and in the streets. maybe
| they'd go out more if there was stuff to do. let's be real
| suburbia kind of sucks.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| " We have a forest in our backyard with a 2 story fully
| enclosed treehouse (including electricity), sports fields
| within a 5 minute walk, tons of hiking trails, etc. But it is a
| real struggle to get them to leave the house because"
|
| But..do you have their friends in that space? I'm not naive I
| realize a lot of kids actually just want to TikTok, but "go
| hiking" isn't a valid alternative. Kids want friends and
| unstructured time with them not beholden to their parents
| ability to drive them somewhere.
| tempsy wrote:
| I don't really understand how this is a new thing. The claim is
| that children today are being "left behind by suburbia" as if
| that wasn't true of older generations of children and we as a
| society once all lived in an urban utopia and now it somehow
| isn't the case.
| mechhacker wrote:
| "Why don't children leave the house?"
|
| I did, until I was at a certain age (roughly early teenager).
|
| Then, there were a bunch of news shows talking about men driving
| around in brown vans abducting kids. Or kids just smoking pot at
| the parks.
|
| So I stopped being let to go there without adults. And that's
| about the time that we got a computer with a modem and I
| discovered online games...
| absoluteunit1 wrote:
| I'd love some walkable neighbourhoods in my suburbia. Automotive
| industry invested heavily to ensure this was so. Dependence on a
| vehicle in most North American cities is not an accident
| marssaxman wrote:
| why not... leave suburbia, then, and go where the walkable
| neighborhoods are?
| thegrim33 wrote:
| So, a for profit company that has the sole purpose of taking
| taking money from people and sponsors in order to create "think
| pieces" about walkable cities, pushes a propaganda piece with a
| major premise being that our suburbs are bad for kids because of
| our reliance on cars.
|
| However .. the entire premise instantly falls apart when you ask
| why we didn't have the same problem in the past when we were even
| MORE based around cars than we are today.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| > CNU is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization headquartered in
| Washington, DC.
| Symbiote wrote:
| At what point in the past was America _more_ dependent on cars,
| especially for children and youths?
| eichin wrote:
| I don't have a problem with the cynicism about the article...
| but as for not having the problem in the past - Rush:
| Subdivisions was effectively a pop culture essay on this
| problem from _1982_.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| "Subdivisions" is a song about a nerdy kid finding it hard to
| fit in, and the similarity of the houses in large
| developments is treated as a metaphor for the limited range
| of identities kids could adopt if they didn't want to be
| socially excluded. The song says nothing about kids finding
| it hard to play together, because in lyricist Neil Peart's
| childhood all the way to the 1990s, children were finding
| things to do together in those suburbs regardless. Moreover,
| the perspective of the song is a high-school one ("...in the
| basement bars, in the backs of cars...", plus see the music
| video), not younger children.
| defrost wrote:
| Sounds a lot like the themes of Malvina Reynolds - _Little
| Boxes_ (1961).
|
| (Some) People just don't like those cookie cutter
| conformity machines.
| cjensen wrote:
| The author attends the High School I attended nearly 40 years
| ago. I was born, raised, and still live in Fremont.
|
| Fremont has begun doing some of these trendy concepts that are
| mentioned in the article, but when I grew up none of these ideas
| had been implemented. I socialized with other kids and rode bike
| around the neighborhood. As a pre-teen, we socialized in the
| street and at each other's houses. As a teen I was not really
| restricted in where to go and there are plenty of neighborhood
| parks and libraries to hang out at.
|
| None of the article's critiques of suburbia ring true to me with
| respect to Fremont. If you are seeking nightlife as an adult, you
| might feel it is a wasteland. But for children growing up I'm not
| seeing a problem. Part of that is that most of the city can be
| navigated without ever being on an arterial. Part of that is that
| most of the city was developed during an era where neighborhood
| parks could be mandated. Part of that is the city was master
| planned when it was small and they foresaw today's population.
|
| It is true children spend less time outside than they used to.
| Part of that is fear; when my kids were young, I didn't trust
| that strangers wouldn't be a problem if they were outside the
| house. But right or wrong, that fear is worsened by the proposed
| changes to how suburbs are laid out, not improved.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| These articles are always idiotic by nature because they are
| solutions in search of problems.
|
| The suburbs are not and have never been a problem for kids. There
| are plenty of other kids in the suburbs to play with and far more
| room to do things than you will ever find in an urban area. I
| don't want to live in a fucking cave right up next to my neighbor
| and I won't as long as I can afford it.
|
| Why is it that we've got tens of millions of examples of people
| who grew up in the suburbs and fucking loved their childhoods,
| but these dimwits keep on pushing urbanism as a panacea to a
| problem that only ever exists if parents allow it?
|
| I grew up in the suburbs during the 80s and early 90s. My
| childhood was to wake up at 6ish, watch some cartoons, and then
| get locked outside the house except for lunch or a snack. I rode
| my bike, played sports, played in makeshift forts, went fishing,
| and went hunting. I would show up again when the sun started
| going down. That was my day, every day that the weather wasn't
| bad.
|
| My dad usually dominated the TV during the evenings, and so my
| time was spent playing or reading or doing homework. We didn't
| have a lot of money, but I did have a bunch of hand-me-down lego
| sets, and I would create Transformers and other toys with the
| lego pieces. My dad had old military blankets which I would use
| to create forts, or alternatively, mountains to drive my Hot
| Wheels cars through. I would just pile them up and shove my arms
| through them to create tunnels. And I'd play video games, but
| that time was limited and on a 13 inch black and white TV.
|
| Was it perfect? No. My parents were emotionally abusive at times.
| But I had to meet my friends every day in person and I had to
| learn how to get along with them and their parents and families.
| I couldn't just toss a tablet on a bed when I had an issue with
| GoatHumper666. Sometimes that was arguments. Sometimes that was
| fights. But we were all we had and we would make up at the end of
| the day.
|
| Go talk to a teacher. Ask them how the kids are doing today.
| They're all ultra-self-entitled. A bunch of little princes and
| princesses who won't listen to teachers because they have no
| incentive to do so. The school systems will push their little
| unsocialized, imagination-bereft asses along and the teachers
| themselves are powerless to discipline them in any way that
| actually matters. A bunch of children being raised by screens
| because their parents are distracted by screens and the teachers
| who are forced to attempt to deal with all of their pent up
| energy when they can't look at those same screens.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Yes and a semi regular steam of articles that seem like extreme
| cases but nonetheless repay children taken from parents for free
| ranging. Further back the articles were about stranger danger and
| kids being kids.
|
| It's as though we've been captured by the worst cases and the
| illusion of a guarantee of harm avoidance without noticing the
| embodied harm.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-21 23:00 UTC)