[alamortsubite]

Some American suburbs are set up in the way you describe, but in my experience they're a tiny minority. A simple test is whether or not kids can walk to school. If not, how are they able visit their friends from school who don't live in the same development? Are they safely able to walk or ride bikes, or are they isolated by car infrastructure that makes them dependent on parents driving them around? It sucks not being able to visit your friends.

[nytesky]

We can walk to our local elementary, but about half the kids can’t, but we live in a very walkable neighborhood (my kids can walk to a grocery store, Starbucks, toy store, library, chipotle, tennis courts, basketball courts, baseball field).

But all our schools are fairly large, 600 elem, 1000 middle, 3000 high school, so even with density friends are far flung.

Smaller schools would help, but now it’s hard to build more schools because of that density! (There used to be more elem schools but they closed a bunch when GenX went thru and school population dropped temporarily)