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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

I'm guessing you're not American? ;)

The American idea of a perfect life is to have a nice house with a huge yard that the kids can frolic/play in. A big house with a big garage. And of course in a nice school district.

Basically its supposed to be an ideal environment for raising kids. Which is weird because me and all my friends grew up in heavily urbanized areas living in apartments (outside the US) and all turned out OK (well almost all).

It probably also has to do with the independence of not having others live across the wall.

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"Kids don't need huge yards to play, kids need other kids to play with". I don't recall who said that, but it really rings true to me. In the place we rent now, there's a huge yard, but the kids mostly ignore it. They're always happy to see friends though, and with friends, a yard 1/4 the size would more than suffice.

In Italy, we essentially had no yard at all, and they were mostly ok - often we'd take them to the park where all the other local kids went, and they loved it, because almost always they saw someone they knew.

Agreed, I grew up in Toronto with a small yard but my brother and I rarely used it. We would simply go to the park or the school yard. We did use the pool at my grandmothers but that was pretty extravagant for the 2 months a year you can use it in Toronto.

I am American and own a condo in the dense downtown core of Chicago among a sea of high-rises. I do, though, understand the desire for many other people to want a single family home. That is not my desire, but I get it.

My question was why the above poster doesn’t consider condo ownership “true” ownership? The condos on my block run between $500,000 and $3m, and the single family homes on the same block start at $3m and go to $7m. If I don’t buy one of those single-family homes, why does the poster not consider me a true homeowner? That was my specific concern with their remark.

The idea that single family homes are the ideal environment to raise kids is seriously overrated. Yeah, kids can frolic, but in isolation - as opposed to community playgrounds that are often much better equipped and where they can develop early social skills, and just have more fun. We live in an "apartment village" with lots of community playgrounds and children thrive there.

In a typical American setting (suburban, no useful public transportation) it's a great way to keep kids from going anywhere until they get a driver's license / car.

It’s a natural consequence of living in an absolutely huge country where we can spread out as much as we please. Cities grow but eventually people look around and say “wait a minute, for the same money and a slightly longer drive I could get a bigger house, a yard, less noise, more privacy...”

Americans are really noisy and unruly. I grew up in a city and I hate the suburbs, but I kind of understand not wanting to live next to others in America.

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