[bobthepanda]

As someone who grew up in New York, kids are actually much easier with walking, public transport, and biking. I was able to go out to school, head to team sports, go to restaurants and shopping, hang out with friends, etc. all independently.

When I went to college, all of my suburban friends hadn't done too much of any of that, because being in the suburbs before driving age requires a parent available to be your chauffeur. Anecdotally, they were also more prone to underage drinking before college, because they just couldn't go out and do much.

[JackFr]

As someone who raised three children in Manhattan, walking and public transit are fine with small children. Biking, while a great source of recreation, is simply not an option for transportation with small children. And the ability to fall back on a cabs or Uber on rare occasions is also sometimes necessary.

That being said, at an older age, I never had to take my children anywhere. Like you said, they walked, rode or took public transport.

Finally in my experience, city kids are just as prone to underage drinking as their suburban counterparts, possibly moreso because of the increased opportunity. What they don't do however, is drink and drive.

[ndnxhs]

You can get bike trailers for very cheap that carry small kids.

[ndnxhs]

Living in the suburbs meant I met up with friends outside of school so few times I could count it on my fingers. Everyone was ~20km away and the bus system only comes during school start and end times.

I'd say this is one of the main reasons for the popularity of video games and child obesity. Kids have no way of getting around so they are stuck at home.

[ilaksh]

I think the issue is that most cities are nothing like New York. The density is just completely different.

[bobthepanda]

I didn't live in a very dense part of New York; I lived on the border between Queens and Long Island, and pretty much my entire neighborhood, and all the neighborhoods for miles, basically consisted of single-family detached homes with small yards and backyards.

The main ingredient that you need for carfree kids to work is usable transit. And by usable, I mean it was frequent; if I missed my bus I would only ever be waiting 10-15 minutes for the next one. Everything I could want to go to would be reachable by bus in 40 minutes or less.

If you were to take a map of most American cities' bus networks and only showed routes that ran every 10-15 or better throughout the middle of the day on weekdays, an awful lot of them would be mostly blank. Even more if you were to require that for Saturdays as well, and pretty much all of them for the entire week. Provide the transit and people will ride; it's how Seattle managed to buck a national trend of declining bus ridership.

[ilaksh]

Queens has a population density of 20000 per square mile. The average US urban area is 283 per square mile.