For just one small example of many: life in a subdivision cul-de-sac stops children exploring and becoming conversant with the wider world around them because it tethers their social lives and activities to their busy parents’ willingness to drive them somewhere. There’s literally nowhere for them to go.
What is this post talking about? I grew up on a cul-de-sac, and I was always outside playing with my friends. When I was a little older, my parents would let me roam the neighborhood with my friends. We played all sorts of games and got into mischief. There are many downsides to suburbs, but that isn't one of them.
I certainly prefer to live in an urban environment as an adult, but growing up my anecdotal experience was very different than that described in the article. As a kid in the burbs in the 90s, we'd roam all over the place. Hop on the bikes and ride downtown, tool around greenway close to the hood, take the bus to the mall, etc.
It's almost as if though there's a pattern in your activities that naturally gravitates towards more urban areas like 'downtown', 'hood', and 'the mall' ...
Yes, children being restricted in where they can go is a completely unrelated phenomenon, due to trumped-up fears of crime. When I was a kid, my family let me bike for miles. You can go a long way in a suburb on a bike without encountering faster motor traffic than you might trust a kid to deal with.
I had the same reaction. I grew up in suburban Chicago and it seemed nothing like this. We walked to elementary school, to friends' houses, to the center of town for ice cream. When I was a little older we rode bikes all over creation -- to the hobby store, the mall, and plenty of adventures like sneaking into the abandoned Borg-Warner research facility in Des Plaines, or dumpster diving for discarded electronics at Motorola in Schaumburg.
However, the culture of helicoptering kids everywhere (and hovering nearby, trying to control and risk-manage everything) is spreading to Europe more and more.
Entertainment is one thing, but I think far from the only factor in spreading this.
I tend to think that US is just somewhat ahead in most developments, and trends then come to Europe. In addition to near-hysteric control of what children do, we'll have gated communities in fear of crime, we'll have politically correct "safe spaces" in universities, and whatnot current US phenomena.
Not where I live. My brother has a house in a neighborhood that's full of young families, but if you walked through it you'd think it was a retirement community - not a kid in sight. All the children are carefully shuttled from one supervised activity to another.
I'm not really sure why that is. Crime is almost nonexistent, and the weather is nice.
This graf occurs very early in the post and I winced at it too and had to mentally grit myself into reading the rest of the post. I agree, it's a silly argument and the post would be better without it. But apart from the imprecision of the term "suburb" (the list of suburbs that defy his characterizations is huge), the actual enumerated arguments of the post are much better supported.
What is this post talking about? I grew up on a cul-de-sac, and I was always outside playing with my friends. When I was a little older, my parents would let me roam the neighborhood with my friends. We played all sorts of games and got into mischief. There are many downsides to suburbs, but that isn't one of them.