[komali2]

As someone who grew up in suburban sprawl, maybe it makes parenting easier, maybe. But they also had to drive me to and from school every day, and band practice, and every single game, and whenever I wanted to hang out with my friends. I would argue my parents basically were moonlighting as my Uber driver for about 16 years until I got my own car.

Big yards are great, but empty. Mom, can you drive me to my friend's bigger backyard? That times the 5 other friends that want to go to the friend's house that has the biggest backyard. Comically the 5 cars all waiting at the same stop light before the final turn, taking up the entire residential street as we all get dropped off and later picked up.

Eh, going to my friend's house is tedious. I'll just fully immerse myself in world of Warcraft, get fat, get socially maladjusted by spending all my time on the internet and 4chan, and enter college as a practically sociopathic asshole with no social skills.

Could just be me. But if I have kids, I'm raising them somewhere where they can just get on a train to get to band practice.

[maigret]

Funny, I was basically mobile with bike from age 10 or so. Had some friends I needed the parents for until I got a small motorcycle aged 14.

So living outside a city is not an issue, although I often wished we’d be nearer to a city.

But society has changed a lot since and everyone is scared of the beautiful outside world.

[komali2]

This was the life of my farmland friends in Wisconsin. In Houston if I had ridden my bicycle the mere 2 miles to my friend's house (half mile to leave my neighborhood, half mile to enter his, one mile or so on actual roads), I would almost certainly have one day been killed by a car or truck that failed to expect a kid on a bike.

We didn't have sidewalks. That area is still missing sidewalks actually.

In some ways our beautiful outside world is safer than it was 60 years ago, in others perhaps it's more dangerous.