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by scottious 153 days ago
Parents need reliable childcare. A teenager or aging parents can't fill this gap reliably. I need somebody to watch the kids most days from 8 until 4. A high schooler won't be able to do this. My in-laws who live 1.5 hours away and have mobility issues (plus their own lives) can't always do that.

I agree we need strong community in close proximity, but still people need to travel to destinations a few miles from their houses sometimes. Biking is a great (this is my primary form of transportation) but even I know biking and walking cannot fill every transportation need. We need the trifecta of biking/walking/transit to ween ourselves off of cars and develop denser communities with more people to interact with in our day-to-day lives.

1 comments

> can't fill this gap reliably

Except they did... for centuries ?? How can we claim that relying on community and a network of people is unreliable when it was the defacto solution for as long as we've existed?

Historically, people wouldn't even move out of the village, never mind across the continent. So it was a bit easier to get the kids to the grannies.