[dionidium]

> It's precisely because I have kids that I prioritize a walkable place. Because kids can't drive!

This point is tragically under-appreciated. Kids who live in car-dependent suburbs are in a very real sense alienated from the larger society. A twelve-year-old should be able to visit the library, stop by the park, grab a sandwich at a lunch counter, mail a letter, and wander back home all by themselves in an afternoon.

It's no wonder so many kids feel isolated and alone. They are!

[skrause]

Don't children have bicycles anymore?

[volkl48]

That only works if things are within a reasonable enough distance to bike to and if the roads are setup in a way that someone can safely bike at all.

If you're talking an older grid-style suburb with corner stores and the like, it's probably something kids can do.

On the other hand, in many of the exurbs/modern suburbs, there's large distances between things and very strict segregation of residential/commercial areas. Car-centric layouts don't help either, with routes between

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Even older suburban areas can have their own problems.

For a personal anecdote, I grew up in a part of NJ that has been settled since 1700s and is rather hilly. (Watchung Mountains). Most of the main roads date from that time and resemble English country lanes in terms of width/geometry more than they resemble typical American roads. Speed limits are 35-45mph, traffic does at least 5 over.

It is absurdly dangerous to walk or bike on any of those roads, and there aren't really any practical solutions to that. They studied adding sidewalks and it was going to cost huge sums of money and require destroying hundreds upon hundreds of mature trees (the roads are thickly lined with forest, and there isn't even an inch of shoulder).

Cutting the speed limit is impractical because they're main roads that people drive 5-20 miles on, that's a significant time hit.

[yosito]

I had a bike when I was a kid. Had to ride over an hour just to visit my nearest friend. It was a pretty dangerous route on roads designed for cars too, so my parents wouldn't let me do it alone until I was 14.

[orbitur]

I don't know about your neighborhood, but in ours, there are no sidewalks and a bunch of teens drive as fast as they possibly can.

[djrogers]

I grew up in a suburb, and am raising my kids in a suburb, and all of that is completely doable. You don’t need a car to get around a suburb...

[dionidium]

"Suburb" is a pretty generic term. My hometown has older, inner-ring suburbs that are built more or less on a street grid, with local shops, connections to transit, and walkable corridors.

It also has far-flung, residential-only, cul-de-sac communities where literally nothing is within safe walking distance. [0]

We call both "suburbs," but they're very different places.

[0] What would somebody who lives here walk to, for example: https://goo.gl/maps/nX5ttfsYJBq

[mcny]

Thank you. Moreover, it feels like suburbs (I’m calling the town of Overland Park, Kansas a suburb) can’t or don’t clean sidewalks and crosswalks as quickly (if at all) or worse use the sidewalk as a dumping ground for snow from the road. Even on a normal day, a walk to the post office and back home can easily take half an hour, probably closer to an hour if you’re walking. That being said, it feels cramped to live in a city. There are other reasons to not get a pet (allegedly my fear of commitment) but I hesitate getting a proper desktop computer because it will occupy space. It feels illogical and wasteful (and unhealthy?) of brain cycles to worry about space that much. (What if I have to move... )

[tjr225]

The entire KC metro is offensively anti pedestrian and anti cyclist. It is one of the reasons I decided to leave.

Fun fact- there are more highway miles per capita in KC than any other city in the US: http://www.publicpurpose.com/hwy-tti99ratio.htm

[dionidium]

I don't strongly disagree with your point here, but like all city statistics that aren't normalized for area and density (e.g. by using the MSA/CSA or some equivalent), this one is potentially quite misleading. Kansas City draws its borders around an awful lot of rural land that wouldn't be (indeed, isn't) counted inside the borders of most cities. This is all well within the city limits, for example:

https://goo.gl/maps/Dm76roteRbx

All of which is just to say: political borders are drawn differently in every city, so you can't meaningfully compare cities using political borders.

Does Kansas City (as a region) actually have more highways than most equivalent cities? Maybe. I don't know. That table doesn't tell us that.