[com2kid]

Whenever these conversations come up, I've always noted that they don't really seem to apply to the PNW. My neighborhood (in Seattle proper) has lots of kids running around as well. Neighborhood kids will stop by to pickup my son and whisk him off to some adventure down the block. Getting your kid back involves listening for the correct sounding screams of joy as you walk around and figure out whose yard they are in.

Seattle also has a pretty decent policy around the radius for kids walking to school, so there are always gaggles of kids walking together to and from school for elementary and even some middle schoolers. The high schools are spaced far enough out that kids use buses at that age.

My coworkers in lower CoL areas seem mystified why I'm paying an arm and a leg to live in Seattle to raise a kid. And yeah there are some serious downsides (20-30k a year daycare, restaurants are too expensive to go out to often, even take out is insane), but there are kids playing soccer in the streets after school and kids setting up lemonade stands in the park.

That's what I'm paying for - A city that is built for people to live in, not just for cars to drive around.

[lotsofpulp]

It is a function of road design. If the neighborhood is just houses with all the places to go located on 40mph+ roads (meaning people are driving their high grill head height SUVs and pickup trucks at 50mph+ while looking at their phones), possibly without sidewalks, I’m not letting my kids go out there alone until they are teenagers.

Also, places are just too far due to the aforementioned 6 lane roads and 100ft+ wide intersections. And crossing those intersections on foot, in daytime, is daunting as an adult.

[com2kid]

Suburbs are places where people refuse to pay taxes to build parks and instead have giant yards and everyone builds their own private park. :/

[lotsofpulp]

I have a family member in a new neighborhood in northern Indianapolis suburbs, and the housing development has 15k sq ft lots with 5k sq ft houses on them, and the backyard of the houses are not (yet) fenced in, and all the houses had various Costco playground sets with their own swings and trampolines and whatnot, at least 5 that I counted, with probably numerous more across the other houses in the neighborhood.

I asked my family member why they didn't just build one playground for all the kids, and they said the HOA voted against it (for whatever reason, ongoing costs, legal liability costs, etc). I look at that waste and can only laugh at the "efforts" to be green or pro environment as a joke to appease those who can be easily swayed.

[brailsafe]

That's why I'm quite happy to live in Vancouver BC as well. No kids (and I'll never own a home), but if I did, I can't think of a better place to raise them compared to other car-dependent hellscapes where nobody trusts each other.

[rangestransform]

I love explaining to Americans how Vancouver suburbia is slightly better than American suburbia in so many ways that matter like trees, real traffic calming, and walkability

[expedition32]

People decry this as socialism but remember that gated communities with security guards also cost money.

Whenever I get angry about 40 percent of my paycheck going to the government I try to make a list of countries that are better and it's not a long list.

[y0eswddl]

where do you think all our money comes from?

> The economic growth and so-called advanced economies (think Germany, The U.S, Japan, etc. What's been referred to as the “Global North”) relies by a large proportion on a significant net appropriation of resources and labor from the “Global South” (think Kenya, Peru, the Philippines, etc). This appropriation reaches astronomical levels. In 2015 alone, the north appropriated 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labor; worth [a total] $10.8 Trillion in northern prices. Enough to end extreme poverty 70x over.

The West steals $10-$12 Trillion/yr in embodied raw material equivalents, embodied land, embodied energy, and embodied labour.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...

[rangestransform]

And I will keep voting to benefit myself, my family, and my country in that order.

It’s their own fault that they do not have visionary leaders like Lee Kuan Yew or a dynasty like the CCP that’s willing to sacrifice entire generations for future generations.

To not allow a country to govern itself into oblivion is the peak of western paternalism.