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Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

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Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#231

Post by KoolKat23 »

thefz wrote: post #229
bedobi wrote: post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

> car centric design means there's nowhere for them to go on foot or by bike anyway There is no need to move them if you create the spaces, like courtyards, gardens and backyards.

Their friends don't live in their backyards though.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#232

Post by eru »

bedobi wrote: post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

> Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US.

And even Europe, eg Germany, has seen a relative rise in helicopter parenting compared to recent decades.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#233

Post by eru »

krisoft wrote: post #226
pantalaimon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a case recently where a little girl was crushed by a SUV making a right turn at a pedestrian crossing. She was walking right behind her parents, but the driver could not see her because the vehicle was too high, so thought the road was free when the parents had passed through. The court decided that the driver was at no fault as it was impossible to see the girl from his position.

> The court decided that the driver was at no fault as it was impossible to see the girl from his position. I hope that means that the vehicle manufacturer is on a murder trial then. But I do not have illusions that this will lead to actual change.

Well, the driver should also be on the hook for driving such a dangerous machine in the first place.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#234

Post by emptyfile »

dyauspitr wrote: post #109
wincy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter has been playing outside since she was 4 years old, unsupervised. She's 9 now. A lot of the other neighborhood kids have followed suit (I really suspect our "benign neglect" made the other parents thing "well if nothing bad happened to her our kids will be fine" and we have about 8-10 kids around the same age on the block that are constantly going to each other's houses and hanging out doing whatever it i…

9pm and you don’t know where your 9 year old is? That going too far in the other direction in my opinion. How is she doing academically? I feel like that much freedom, that early, makes it easy to pick up bad habits with the “bad” kids.

[dead]

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#235

Post by eru »

causality0 wrote: post #114
crooked-v wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My particular bugbear here is the absolutely insanity of truck and SUV heights, to the point that even full-grown adults are no longer clearly visible from inside new vehicles ( https://i.imgur.com/1dHWVxn.png ).

We need reforms to the method the EPA uses to calculate and enforce fuel efficiency requirements. It's the direct driver of the gigantifucation of vehicles.

Yes, if by 'reform', you mean abolish.

As you can see, those requirements just get gamed.

Instead of complicated rules, just tax fuel (or emissions etc), and consumers will institute their own personal fuel efficiency requirements.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#236

Post by eru »

KoolKat23 wrote: post #231
thefz wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> car centric design means there's nowhere for them to go on foot or by bike anyway There is no need to move them if you create the spaces, like courtyards, gardens and backyards.

Their friends don't live in their backyards though.

And it's fun to explore spaces, and the community.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#237

Post by eru »

jwells89 wrote: post #170
brightball wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder if part of it is how much we move around for life these days. We travel away from our home towns for college, the somewhere else in many cases for work where we have kids without our parents around to help. Let this happen to enough people constantly coming and going and moving…the community is gone. It’s just a cumulative effect.

I believe that this is a much larger contributor than many realize. Moving is a total reset for the individual and a hole left behind for the town moved out of.

You could compare the US today with the US a few decades ago. I think people where on the move a lot, too?

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#238

Post by eru »

skissane wrote: post #222
jjav wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in the US and my kids walk and bike to school. You're making wide generalizations across a large country. I've learned from HN discussions that there is a vast difference in what people think of as a "suburb". Some will say it takes over 30 minutes by car from a suburb to the nearest store. To me that's very rural, I'd never consider that a suburb. But some do. So we get these disconnected discussion on how…

> I've learned from HN discussions that there is a vast difference in what people think of as a "suburb". In Australian English, “suburb” roughly means “neighbourhood”. So to us, downtown (or the CBD as we call it), is a “suburb”. In the Australian sense of the term, the Financial District and the Upper East Side are suburbs of New York City.

Yes, when I used to live in Australia them calling everything a 'burb, including the middle of the town, was a bit confusing.

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#239

Post by emptyfile »

overstay8930 wrote: post #36
bedobi wrote: post #29

The design of the physical environment is in no small part responsible for this. Don't believe me go to Europe and Japan where kids are still allowed to walk and bike to school, to friends places and just in general play and exist outside unattended to a much higher degree than in the US. Because in the US they would be roadkill, and even if they somehow survived outside of a car, car centric design means there's now…

Most parents in Europe would not let their kids walk alone to school lol, maybe outside of large cities but it is not the norm anymore.

[dead]

Re: Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

#240

Post by eru »

dyauspitr wrote: post #109
wincy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter has been playing outside since she was 4 years old, unsupervised. She's 9 now. A lot of the other neighborhood kids have followed suit (I really suspect our "benign neglect" made the other parents thing "well if nothing bad happened to her our kids will be fine" and we have about 8-10 kids around the same age on the block that are constantly going to each other's houses and hanging out doing whatever it i…

9pm and you don’t know where your 9 year old is? That going too far in the other direction in my opinion. How is she doing academically? I feel like that much freedom, that early, makes it easy to pick up bad habits with the “bad” kids.

Reading wincy's comment above, it seems like their kid is the one that's a "bad" influence on the rest of the neighbourhood.

(Not actually 'bad', but trendsetters that helped some of the other kinds come out to play more.)

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