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What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

stevemagness.substack.com

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Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#231

Post by embedding-shape »

Amezarak wrote: post #210
rob74 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's exactly these (not necessarily wrong, but exaggerated) preconceptions about big cities that drive people to not let their kids outside. Thanks for providing a sample that supports the article's point!

It's hard to understate how shocking it is for someone who grew up in a more rural area it is to be yelled at by a crazy homeless person. I think urban people are just so desensitized to it its hard to understand how big a deal it is to people who have never experienced that. There's lots of other major culture shock moments too, like finding out public bathrooms in parks are NOT for kids or the general lack of unloc…

> It's hard to understate how shocking it is for someone who grew up in a more rural area it is to be yelled at by a crazy homeless person

Is it? I never struggled with this, been yelled at countless of times by crazy people on the street, both growing up in a very rural area and now living most of my adult life in a metropolitan area. I don't think it's much of a shock to most, we know there are mentally unwell people out there already.

> There's lots of other major culture shock moments too, like finding out public bathrooms in parks are NOT for kids

What? What kind of city would limit the age of who can use the bathroom? Sounds bananas.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#232

Post by basilikum »

alex_young wrote: post #17

I want to let my kids walk wherever they want to. It’s great for them. My 5 year old bikes to school, accompanied by an adult. It’s a bit more than half a mile away from the house. I’d like to tell him he can do this on his own next year, but there’s a single intersection he has to cross that makes this difficult. I’m not worried about him getting lost, abducted by a stranger or any host of movie plot scenarios. I’m…

Americans and their cars are simply insane. Most cars here in Europe are, well, cars. Still dangerous tons of fast moving metal bullets, but in the US cars are essentially designed to efficiently kill children. The hood of many cars is so high that you ensure to hit the kid's head in an accident. And people drive these huge tanks in the city where there is zero need for them and they are just impractical in every way because you compete for limited space.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#233

Post by AnthonyMouse »

oersted wrote: post #225
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's amazing how much modern-ish suburbia just has no place for you to even exist without a car. It's trendy to blame cars for this but the problem is fundamentally zoning. It's not that there is nowhere for you to exist without a car, it's that there is nowhere for you to exist there at all , and you thereby need a car to leave the vicinity in order to get anywhere you can. If you want to build a cafe or an ar…

As a European, I don’t understand why there’s such resistance to this. I get it NIMBY, but why? Surely good amenities would improve property values and life quality. If it’s right next to your home all the better. Peaceful quietness is so overrated by US and northern Europe. It feels creepy and dead to me, a liminal space. Besides, modern insulation does wonders for blocking noise if that bothers you, not to mention…

It's some kind of perverse regulatory capture by landlords with the self-destructive assistance of homeowners. Actual urban real estate is preposterously expensive, but the only reason it stays that way is that you can't create more of it, i.e. put urban developments in high demand areas that are currently suburbs.

The landlords who own the urban real estate correctly deduce that allowing more to be built would lower rents. They then convince suburban homeowners to go in with them on preventing that from happening, even though it's not really in the homeowners' interest, because rezoning would reduce the value of housing (i.e. price per square foot) but increase the value of land because you could build more housing on it. The urban landlords are the only losers there, because they have a high ratio of housing to land, so they want the housing to be expensive rather than the land. The ordinary suburban homeowners, by contrast, have a high ratio of land to housing, so they benefit from making the land worth more, i.e. allowing more to be built on it, but are bamboozled into wanting the price of housing to be high and therefore oppose urbanization.

You also get a lot of rubbish arguments about "induced demand" which try to imply that building housing would raise prices, when what it actually does is raise prices in the area immediately surrounding the new development (because people like new developments) while making it more affordable in all of the places they're moving from. Which is then used as an excuse not to do it, even though it improves affordability on net while creating more of the areas people actually want.

Something similar happens with commercial space. The landlords want it to be scarce. The argument used in that case will be something like "businesses will buy up houses to build Starbucks" or "it will make traffic worse" as if they wouldn't happily give you a Starbucks and a dozen new housing units on that piece of land if you'd let them, and as if traffic gets worse instead of better when people are closer to things and therefore drive fewer miles. But again it's really the landlords with the limited land that is zoned for those things trying to keep anyone else from getting any, and the other arguments are just the kayfabe because "we want rents to be high" is unsympathetic.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#234

Post by [deleted] »

skandinaff wrote: post #209
close04 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think back of my childhood and playing the usual games like hide and seek with at least 10-12 other kids around my building and occasionally I'll slip into the "kids these days" thoughts. And then I realize I had something no kid these days has: massive amounts of boredom. There was nothing in the house to make me want to stay in. Nothing like a console or PC, best thing were books on days when going out would be d…

So how do we get out of this mess? Because now, as an adult, I see no value in those electronic gadgets, videogames, especially at ages <16yo. Do we create laws and ban all of this? The democrats among us will scream and shout. Leave it to "each family's consideration" and we'll get the lowest common denominator scenario.

[deleted]

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#235

Post by zabzonk »

brightball wrote: post #211
flakeoil wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is go shopping in malls what kids should do?

I spent so much time hanging out at the mall in middle school. My friends and I would play in the arcade, wander around exploring book stores, game stores, walk around and bump into other people. Then we would make a collect call to one of our parents and give the name “come pick us up” before hanging up real quick to avoid charges. It was a good time. The arcade especially because if you were good at a game you coul…

Far better to be out on your bike, exploring a wood, climbing trees, and possibly disturbing a very grumpy badger.

The mall - breathing plastic fumes, looking at overpriced plastic toys, summoning your parents for your every whim.

I know which I'd want for my kids, should I have any (too old & ill now).

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#236

Post by whoodle »

doctoboggan wrote: post #133
hibikir wrote: post #101

What I see in my deep suburbia is just far less interest in wandering past the front yard, because there's nothing to do: House after house where no front yard has anything for anyone, and quite long distances before you get somewhere you might be welcome, or have a chair. When my son, a pre-teen at the time went to Spain with me, things were quite different: A small town that even had stores targeting kids, places t…

> Build environments where children can be independent, and they might even want to be. We _have_ built these environments, you just choose not to live in them. Move to a city or other urban center. Your house might be smaller, and you might have to take public transit sometimes, but you will be happier and there will be no shortage of places for your kid to walk.

I’m sorry, but so few of these urban environments are affordable with good schools. I lived in Philadelphia and we chose to leave when our son was young because the schools generally aren’t good (most don’t even have libraries, but this is a whole different topic), the green space barely exists and isn’t maintained, and I’d never feel safe with my kid taking the transit.

NYC and Boston seem like the only east coast options and those are very expensive. What other options are there on the East Coast?

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#237

Post by marcyb5st »

porphyra wrote: post #155
hibikir wrote: post #101

What I see in my deep suburbia is just far less interest in wandering past the front yard, because there's nothing to do: House after house where no front yard has anything for anyone, and quite long distances before you get somewhere you might be welcome, or have a chair. When my son, a pre-teen at the time went to Spain with me, things were quite different: A small town that even had stores targeting kids, places t…

Spain sounds like a child's paradise. Too bad their birth rates are one of the lowest in Europe (and in the world) at around 1.1 births per woman.

I think that most of western Europe is fucked in that sense. Previous generations piled up a ton of debt and so now there is no breathing room for subsidize affordable housing, parenting benefits, ... . Add to that that you need 2 salaries to live, that you must study until when you are 25+ to have a degree, that you don't want to have a baby just when you career is starting, that housing is extremely expensive, that you need to save for your pension because clearly the pension system will be drastically neutered in the future due to the above mentioned debt, ... . Basically, there are a bunch of factors that stop many many couples from having children.

I'm Italian so the situations is similar if not worse back at home.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#238

Post by pibaker »

doctoboggan wrote: post #133
hibikir wrote: post #101

What I see in my deep suburbia is just far less interest in wandering past the front yard, because there's nothing to do: House after house where no front yard has anything for anyone, and quite long distances before you get somewhere you might be welcome, or have a chair. When my son, a pre-teen at the time went to Spain with me, things were quite different: A small town that even had stores targeting kids, places t…

> Build environments where children can be independent, and they might even want to be. We _have_ built these environments, you just choose not to live in them. Move to a city or other urban center. Your house might be smaller, and you might have to take public transit sometimes, but you will be happier and there will be no shortage of places for your kid to walk.

There is a shortage of places for your kid to sleep at night though, as reflected in housing prices. It is especially bad for families because new apartments are often studios or one bedrooms.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#239

Post by smallerfish »

oersted wrote: post #225
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's amazing how much modern-ish suburbia just has no place for you to even exist without a car. It's trendy to blame cars for this but the problem is fundamentally zoning. It's not that there is nowhere for you to exist without a car, it's that there is nowhere for you to exist there at all , and you thereby need a car to leave the vicinity in order to get anywhere you can. If you want to build a cafe or an ar…

As a European, I don’t understand why there’s such resistance to this. I get it NIMBY, but why? Surely good amenities would improve property values and life quality. If it’s right next to your home all the better. Peaceful quietness is so overrated by US and northern Europe. It feels creepy and dead to me, a liminal space. Besides, modern insulation does wonders for blocking noise if that bothers you, not to mention…

There isn't resistance. It comes from development patterns.

A developer buys 10 hectares of land and wants to max out the returns, so they pack it full of houses. Another developer buys the adjacent 20 hectares and follows the same strategy. Rinse and repeat. Purely market driven housing development orients towards developer profit, not long term quality of life of the neighborhoods being constructed.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#240

Post by Tade0 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #76
ninalanyon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norway my children sometimes came home from primary school (ages five to twelve) with notes saying things like: "We've planned a trip to the woods for next week, it's expected to be minus twenty Celsius so please make sure they have appropriate clothing, hats, gloves, boots. Also we will have a fire so make sure they bring some sausages and a hunting knife so they can cut sticks for the fire and to hold the sausag…

In the 90s I was taught knife safety before being given blades. Had to pass a test before we were given them. Seems pretty reasonable to require that to handle something that could kill another person so quickly, easily, and even by accident. Also much cheaper than casts, physical therapy, and possibly permanent damage. An ounce of prevention and all that.

My 5yo got plastic kitchen knives for her birthday which, while pretty dull, are still good enough to go through zucchinis.

A test wouldn't work here as she can't read yet (not full sentences at least).

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