Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

stevemagness.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 632 posts

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

#281

Post by galangalalgol »

doctoboggan wrote: post #140
contubernio wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are major US cities where this is not the cae. Atlanta is an example. I've lived there without a car, but as a single man in my early 30s. It was not easy even for someone committed to the task. Even in the most "urban" parts of the city there are very few stores within walking distance, very few people on the street, and the distances are huge. Public transport (how kids in cities get around) is terrible. A ki…

Yeah I get that, the point I trying to (snarkily) make was that we have control over where we live and raise our families. People often opine about the wonders of urbanism but then move to the suburbs! But yeah I've heard that about Atlanta and a few other cities (mostly in Texas).

I live in what passes for a walkable residential area in the south us. A 15 min walk to a street with shops and restaurants. You meet people on the way. But the weather is definitely a factor. It bounces around freezing for a month or three and bounces around 100F for another five. That leaves the final ~5 which are torrential rains interspersed with lovely weather.

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

#282

Post by Xirdus »

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.

There is huge value in being acquainted with computers at a young age, especially if they end up in STEM or some white collar job.

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

#283

Post by grvdrm »

csomar wrote: post #266
grvdrm wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I don't see mentioned often in this discussion: what's a "long distance" Is there a formal measure or comprehensive view on that question? I lived in Manhattan (NYC). Walked a mile at a time (or more) without thinking about it. To/from work, in cold, in rain, etc. Now I'm in NYC 'burbs. The train is 1.1 miles from my house. I walk that distance on occasion but not often. My wife drives to/from train most da…

It’s more rewarding to walk 2-3km when there is a lot of things to see/do compared to walking 1km just to get to the station in a lonely walk. Just having/seeing people walk along/across you makes a world of difference.

I think you're right about people in proximity along the walk. Always liked that about Manhattan.

But even in Manhattan, I didn't regularly stop to chat with strangers. Maybe I stopped to grab coffee along the way. To your point, plenty to see and do along the way but I was often moving from point A to B - just like the 'burbs.

When I walk to/from train or town now I usually listen to something on my AirPods. Happy to do it without them but not a terrible way to spend the 20-25 mins.

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

#284

Post by avazhi »

When are we gonna get a rule about AI slop submissions?

"Don't post generated comments or AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans."

Why limit this to comments only? In this case the conversation was literally started by an AI.

At least require people to label submissions as AI-generated and then give users a way to filter that shit out. I don't come to HN to read AI slop.

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

#285

Post by grvdrm »

ghaff wrote: post #265
grvdrm wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I don't see mentioned often in this discussion: what's a "long distance" Is there a formal measure or comprehensive view on that question? I lived in Manhattan (NYC). Walked a mile at a time (or more) without thinking about it. To/from work, in cold, in rain, etc. Now I'm in NYC 'burbs. The train is 1.1 miles from my house. I walk that distance on occasion but not often. My wife drives to/from train most da…

It depends on the infrastructure as well. I'm about a 7 minute drive from my local commuter rail but it's essentially unwalkable as that 7 minutes is basically along an interstate. I do take the commuter rail if I'm going into the city 9-5 on weekdays but that's very rare.

Right.

I find this whole topic reductive in general. Specifics matter quite a bit. I don't disagree with some of the article but it feels very gloomy compared to suburban life I see around me.

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

#286

Post by carlosjobim »

oersted wrote: post #261
macNchz wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most of the US, only single family detached houses are built (by law), which makes things spread out enough that people will want to drive. To address that, businesses are required to have a bunch of parking space. The end result of that is that, outside of a few places built before these rules took hold, living near amenities means living by parking lots and car traffic. The kind of street that "feels alive" is b…

Surely there could be small shops and restaurants dispersed at walking distances that don’t require parking space. I get that it is low density, but not that low, and there is some money to spend in such areas. They would do good business.

Suburbia = New developments, not inherited through generations of family

New developments = You buy your land plot, you don't inherit it

Restaurant or small shop = Very small profits

Restaurant or small shop outside city centre = Even smaller profits

Very small profits = Not a good investment of time or money to build restaurant or small shop in suburbia

Compared to:

Inherit restaurant in European town = No rent or interest to pay

Inherit restaurant in European town = No cost to build restaurant

Inherit restaurant in European town = Mortgage the building to borrow money for reforms and investments.

> They would do good business.

Then why aren't you opening restaurants and small shops?

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

#287

Post by NoLinkToMe »

ghaff wrote: post #264
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But life is full of safety vs. living tradeoffs. That's not even the issue. Suppose that more people wanted to live in a city than currently do. The market implies that -- the price per square foot is higher in cities. And that's the problem, when the city isn't allowed to grow. The existing city already has tall buildings, so if there is more demand than supply, to create more of it you need to add more somewhere…

Historically, probably more people had to work in cities and many of those people had a preference for not having a long commute. Those dynamics have doubtless changed to some degree. But, if I had to commute daily to the nearest large city, I'd seriously consider living there. But I don't have to so I live rurally/exurban or whatever you want to call it.

For me it's as much culture as it is work. In fact I live in the capital city of my country, even though my work has not always been here. I live here because it has world class restaurants, bars, museums, architecture, parks, gyms, a dozen public swimming pools and a million amenities you wouldn't even think of but are fun to do once or twice, like there's dedicated restaurants where you can play jeux de boules.

And most importantly there's a million people here, statistically there's a good chance you run into people who're in the top 5% of whatever their field is in. Whether it's musicians, engineers, athletes, philosophers, there's a good chance you'll run into a lot of interesting ones.

My friend lives in a village and he has 1 pizzeria and 1 italian and 1 chinese restaurant. There's no gym. There's a very basic park with grass and some trees. There's no museums, architecture is all the same. There's no nightlife whatsoever. There's no real amenities, not even a library. There's a few shops with the basics, with very limited opening hours. There's as much nature nearby as there is for me. Tere's also no real way to make friends, and there's a few hundred people to meet at most, statistically most of them aren't very interesting to you (not 'not interesting in general', but 'to you'. It's easier to find 'your tribe' if you can select from a million vs a hundred).

So it's really the 'commute' or I should say proximity to culture, i.e. people, their thoughts and their creations, that sells the city for me, not the proximity to the company I happen to work for, which is sometimes in another city.

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

#288

Post by Andrex »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #226
antiframe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. Every time someone visits me in my city home, they comment on how nice it must be able to walk to school, the ice cream shop, the library, the playground full of other kids who walked or biked there, or just see other people out and about. But, they say, they could never live in the city. It's too dangerous. Cars are dangerous. No sidewalks on 50mph roads are dangerous. Loneliness is dangerous. And yes, th…

> But life is full of safety vs. living tradeoffs. That's not even the issue. Suppose that more people wanted to live in a city than currently do. The market implies that -- the price per square foot is higher in cities. And that's the problem, when the city isn't allowed to grow. The existing city already has tall buildings, so if there is more demand than supply, to create more of it you need to add more somewhere…

In the extremes I fear this would lead to Dredd-like Mega Cities just taking over the entire continent. At some point, a lot of people want a multi-generational space to stick around in for a long time (where the sun isn't blotted by tall buildings). Tearing up suburbs for skyscrapers every generation can't possibly be "the answer..."

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

#289

Post by oliculipolicula »

adrian_b wrote: post #117
oliculipolicula wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> colleagues Northern Spain? (Maybe francophone Swiss? Southern France? Belgium?) (Pardon me for being presumptuous) Imho school admins need to have skin in the bullying game. Bullying seems to be a natural (=inevitable) outcome of kids exploring social status outside the normative system of rules. I have always been fascinated with how bullies justify (sometimes "subconsciously") their own behaviour, and how these j…

Yeah, European. When I was a child, bullying happened, but it was infrequent. Teachers would punish it severely if reported, but snitching was considered rather shameful, so it was more frequent that bullying was handled by the weaker bullied children teaming against the stronger bully.

Mobbing: weaker children teaming to bully a stronger child

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobbing#Development_of_the_con...

European concept with an explicitly English label, from (the eugenicist) Konrad Lorenz "so-called Evil"

Post reply on HN