In suburban environments (I don't have a direct source right now, but it's sorta of widely accepted) kids often are among peers exactly like themselves. This really does nothing for development, especially if 90% of the school is of a certain race/culture...which typically happens in divided suburban environments.
In addition to this, they are also exposed to the realities of life. Seeing homeless panhandling, the speed of the city, the ever changing environment, it's a good representation of what someone might face in life. Being exposed to these elements builds a stronger person.
Sure they might have an overall different outcome of life, for example kids certainly aren't dirtbiking/atving in the city, but that all comes down to exposure, parenting, and self interest.
Even setting aside the racial component for a second, it stands to reason that if cities are "tough" because everyone with the means toward a more stable and comfortable life moved to the suburbs, then many of those same issues with poverty and resulting crime and drug abuse would be lessened by un-segregating things.
If cities are rough because it's accepted that anyone with the means will leave, then they become less so when the urban/suburban split doesn't mirror the poor/rich (or white/minority) split.
Suburbia offered nothing in this regard. It was a contentless, vapid expanse of nothingness, where I couldn't go anywhere or do anything without being deliberately driven there by my parents.
Large cities are no place to rise children they are cramped, expensive and highly polluted the kids may get exposed to a higher diversity of people but that is not necessary at a young age. As long as you raise your children with your own values and teach them to have and open and accepting mind it doesn't matter where they are.
I have no problem interacting with different kinds of people even though i only got exposed to such diversity after i graduated university and I could never imagine growing up in a large city it would have been awful.
Hell personally I'm trying to move to a smaller city close by to London and take up more remote work so i can actually have more breathing room.
I absolutely have the expensive, small and badly maintained spaces that tend to be the norm in large cities.
US cities are a bit different you could probably live comfortably if you are ok with needing to drive everywhere but that's ridiculous to. I don't have a driver's license I never needed one since everything I ever wanted was a walk away and if it was further I could just take public transportation even in the small city I grew up in.
Spending so much money maintaining and fuelling a car is a waste of resources.
And I'm not sure even those would be "highly polluted" these days (big Asian cities definitely are though - and I wouldn't want to raise my kids in New Delhi or Beijing).
My wife grew up in Vienna and my son will grow up in Berlin, I think both provide for a much more interesting childhood than the suburb I grew up in, and are not really polluted or dangerous (maybe some parts are, but we don't have to live downtown to get the benefits of the city).
Berlin in particular has a lot of late 1800s "railway suburbs" which have been politically integrated into the city-proper in the 20th century & are now just outer districts of the city.
These are plenty green and still well served by the city's rail and subway network, so you sort of get the best of both worlds (commute times are still longer compared to living in a more central district, but that highly depends on where in the city you work).
I will never complain about pollution again (I'm not saying any amount is good, but there are children all over the world living in much worse conditions than London at 17:30).
Yes! And the deleterious effect of this is underappreciated and understated. It's not just a convenience and logistical issue; it materially alters the nature and quality of the connection one has with surrounding society, and leads to _different kind_ of social relations over time.
Kids cannot "be kids" when their life lacks social spontaneity (and in fact, there is some question about adults being adults as well), when their life is a directed graph and a collection of automobile vectors, subordinated to the rhythms and whims of their parents to drive them.
As a child, I did not immediately understand this paradigm shift as I underwent it, which led me for years to struggle with this great, nonarticulated malaise for which I had no name. It's only with the benefit of hindsight that I understand that I was unable to cope with living "nowhere in particular", which suitably describes 90% of inhabited areas in the US, including places that are notionally urban. Much of DFW should be reclassified as a rural area.
Maybe you just don't like affluent, segregated suburbs?
The suburbs in the Rust Belt, in places like South Bend, IN (where I spent my elementary school years), or Buffalo, NY, are a lot more dense and palatable in this regard. I'd still dislike living there, but it's a far cry from living truly, honest-to-god in the middle of nowhere in places like ATL, DFW, PHX...
On a separate note, ATL, DFW, and PHX are all awful to me as well, but that's because of the life-draining sprawl, not because they're sparse. I fear for the future of housing every time I have a window seat in or out of ATL looking at those developments.
Yet despite this, I'd say that the decline in the number of kids and young people driving is a fair bit less than it seemingly is in the states.
Basic things like seeing a film with friends, playing a sport, or going on a date become way bigger deals than they otherwise need to be. Being the kid that always needed exact locations and times for things to be able to participate was always a huge PITA for me.
I'd say at the very least that parents choosing the suburban life should do so understanding that they're signing themselves up for extreme taxi duty and that their child doesn't really have much power in deciding when things start/end. Actually, nowadays maybe Uber on your kids phone would do the job.
The other way round. I grew up in the countryside and we could literally play on the streets without risk. Visiting friends was actually easier. We simply took the bike, the rollerskates or - later - a motor scooter. No need for any parent to drive anybody anywhere. No need to use public transportation. All my schoolmates lived in bike distance (that is 25 km in my definition).
Of course it counts how safe your country or city is. It is our business to make them safe, not to hide in cars, because otherwise we may be harmed.
I live out in the country. My 15 y-o son has one friend who lives within walking distance and his parents keep him pretty busy with extracurricular activities, so he's never home. When you're an adult, being close to nature sounds cool. When you're 15, it's boring beyond belief.
- The sameness. Every house on the streets where I grew up looked virtually identical, as did the neighborhood where I bought my first house. It took owning a house in the 'burbs to remember how much I didn't like the cookie-cutter aspect. Doubly so for the fact that virtually every suburban neighborhood built in the past 20 years has an HOA, which I detest.
- The distance. Going to anything, even just a Wal-Mart to get groceries, meant a minimum of 10 minutes just to get out of the "residential area" and make it to the "commercial area." The one corner store we had was usually under pressure from the city government and nearby residents to close down because of, allegedly, too much traffic.
- Minimal cultural differences. Yes, my hometown had a Western Days Weekend and an Old Town District but that was it. The town where I bought my first house (this was a bad idea, in retrospect) didn't even bother with that. Everything else in both places was strip shopping centers or Wal-Mart or paved six-lane roadways to get people out of town to the big city for work and then back into town to get to sleep at night. Going to do anything, like a zoo or museum or a baseball game, meant a half-hour minimum drive. There are lots of suburbs in north Texas, let's say, that exist solely for zoning authority.
You mentioned being outside and being kids. The city where I live now, Seattle, has a massive parks system. My tiny house on a tiny lot in the city still has about 1,600sqft of outdoor area to play in and a huge tree. Even the apartments we've rented have a courtyard and are near to parks and sidewalks and places to play. It's great for people whose kids are outdoor types; mine prefers to be inside with books and puzzles and computers.
What I like about raising our kid in the city: Exposure to new and different ideas; most cities aren't self-selected to be the same as each other. A varying cityscape that isn't just the same houses feeding to the same street and to the same businesses. More cultural and entertainment options are close at hand. Being able to live in a more environmentally sensitive way (my kid doesn't want to learn how to drive and prefers to take transit and has made compost and recycle separating into a game).
Of course, this can be fixed when you're old enough to get a car, but that adds a) expense for the parents, and b) a lot of danger. Having 16- and 17-year-olds driving everywhere might not be the best idea.
One of the things that's actually made me optimistic about suburban California is the proliferation of bike lanes. Definitely makes the whole environment more livable, for kids especially, and makes public transit a lot more practical for everyone.
> Kids need an environment where they can go outside and be kids
This is completely specifically isolated to your perception of what it means to be a kid. After doing minor reading on family history, what kids do, what it means to be a kid, and the environment they need are extremely culturally isolated to time and space. It's become obvious to me that practically anywhere can be a wholesome place to raise a child. For instance, what about a child in Mumbai today? Or the middle of Mexico City? Or Cairo? Are they so stunted? It simply doesn't compute that every child has to be raised in a suburban house to be a full adult with a happy childhood.
My parents moved to a suburb of Sacramento when I was 8. I didn't mind at first, but it was a real letdown when I realized, after a few years, that we weren't going to be moving on this time. I couldn't understand why, when we'd been to so many interesting places, they chose THAT one to settle in! I grew to loathe the place and could not get far enough away when I was finally able to leave. To this day, I don't even like to visit suburban areas. I live a mile and a half from the center of Seattle and it still feels too suburban sometimes. I'd be a lot closer in if I could have afforded it when I was shopping for a house. I would not ever want to put a child of my own through a suburban upbringing.
This is a completely subjective opinion being passed around as fact. My parents divorced when I was very young so I grew up going back and forth between houses. My mom lived in suburban areas and my dad lived in a more condensed area(not as condensed as Chicago/Baltimore but still not a suburb). I greatly preferred being with my dad just because of the area. Just because my friends and I didn't play basketball in the front yard doesn't mean we didn't have space to be a kid. We would walk to all the stores or just explore the city. If we wanted to run around and play then parks were abundant.
That given, in hindsight I'm very grateful for my upbringing in a white, Mormon, newly-being-built-out-in-the-90s, right-on-the-foothills suburb in Utah. I made the decision to leave that culture, but after living and visiting around various places in the Seattle area and seeing all the "diversity", I'm unconvinced anything out here is really "better", just a different set of tradeoffs. (Lack of Depth being one of them.)