[Tade0]

I see it as a scapegoat. The real reason is this:

https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/q60/uploads/assets...

According to this poll from 2014, 43% Americans think that the government should require 12-year-olds to play at public parks under supervision.

You could create the most walkable neighbourhood in the world and not achieve much in this regard.

[BytesAndGears]

I feel like the problem though is that people don’t trust their community, and they don’t trust that the kids will be safe.

If the child’s playground is right next to a block of houses and shops with people walking around all day, it is much less likely that the child is taken away. Whether it’s actually safer, I’m not entirely sure, but it definitely feels safer to have your kid playing near a busy pedestrian area, compared to an abandoned playground down a quiet road at 4pm. And the feeling is what matters regardless.

And that is a big part, but also just the feeling of trusting your neighbors increases when you live in a walkable place and see your neighbors all the time. [0] That source isn’t maybe the most thorough, but it echoes my experience of moving to a quiet but walkable neighborhood in the Netherlands from the US. People really do trust their neighbors much more here, and I’ve changed in that regard too. Everyone is always offering to help each other out.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448008/

[qball]

>You could create the most walkable neighbourhood in the world and not achieve much in this regard.

As always, giving into hysteria only leads to more hysteria.

The massive expansion of the rights of angry Karens to summon State guns on command that occurred somewhere in the 1980s is why the current homebuying generation doesn't care about "walkability" in the first place: the generations that grew up under those conditions have simply adapted with mansion-sized homes because if you don't have a private version of what used to be a third space free from Karen's prying eyes, you don't get a space at all.

It shouldn't be lost on anyone that the people who most want walkable neighborhoods "for the children" are also the people who are going to destroy those benefits once they see the results of the other things they vote for on the street outside "for the children's safety". So no, I see no reason to build things the way they want and agree that tendency towards isolation is mainly because by and large we remain rich enough to avoid addressing the elephant in the room.

[Mawr]

That's not what those poll results mean.

The way parents interpreted the poll is not "Given a hypothetical park somewhere in the world, should..."

But rather "Given the current state of parks in America, should..."

The parents are most likely right, it currently probably is unsafe for kids to be alone in public parks.

But that is not because american parents hold dogmatic beliefs about kid independence, they're just making a judgement call based on how unsafe parks currently are.