Obvs doesn’t apply if u don’t plan on it, but curious if anyone has found a solution in US cities.
So in car-dependent places, they have no autonomy until they're nearly adults. I think it's much more healthy for them to slowly and steadily expand their autonomy, rather than a sudden discontinuous break when they learn to drive.
The same argument applies in reverse to old people too. In places with good transit and walkability they can stay independent and active longer, with no sudden loss of freedom when they can no longer safely drive vehicles at high speed.
Walking and transit are both overwhelmingly safer than cars (most things are).
When kids are small you just push them in a stroller. Once they're too big for a stroller, they're big enough to walk everywhere that you can walk. It's really not that complicated. Suburban kids who never walk anywhere may whine about needing to walk two miles, but my kids have been doing that since before they could walk unassisted, it's perfectly normal to them.
I do also have a Dutch-style cargo bike which we use a lot around our neighborhood. It's wonderful.
This point is tragically under-appreciated. Kids who live in car-dependent suburbs are in a very real sense alienated from the larger society. A twelve-year-old should be able to visit the library, stop by the park, grab a sandwich at a lunch counter, mail a letter, and wander back home all by themselves in an afternoon.
It's no wonder so many kids feel isolated and alone. They are!
It also has far-flung, residential-only, cul-de-sac communities where literally nothing is within safe walking distance. [0]
We call both "suburbs," but they're very different places.
[0] What would somebody who lives here walk to, for example: https://goo.gl/maps/nX5ttfsYJBq
Fun fact- there are more highway miles per capita in KC than any other city in the US: http://www.publicpurpose.com/hwy-tti99ratio.htm
https://goo.gl/maps/Dm76roteRbx
All of which is just to say: political borders are drawn differently in every city, so you can't meaningfully compare cities using political borders.
Does Kansas City (as a region) actually have more highways than most equivalent cities? Maybe. I don't know. That table doesn't tell us that.
If you're talking an older grid-style suburb with corner stores and the like, it's probably something kids can do.
On the other hand, in many of the exurbs/modern suburbs, there's large distances between things and very strict segregation of residential/commercial areas. Car-centric layouts don't help either, with routes between
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Even older suburban areas can have their own problems.
For a personal anecdote, I grew up in a part of NJ that has been settled since 1700s and is rather hilly. (Watchung Mountains). Most of the main roads date from that time and resemble English country lanes in terms of width/geometry more than they resemble typical American roads. Speed limits are 35-45mph, traffic does at least 5 over.
It is absurdly dangerous to walk or bike on any of those roads, and there aren't really any practical solutions to that. They studied adding sidewalks and it was going to cost huge sums of money and require destroying hundreds upon hundreds of mature trees (the roads are thickly lined with forest, and there isn't even an inch of shoulder).
Cutting the speed limit is impractical because they're main roads that people drive 5-20 miles on, that's a significant time hit.
A block and a half away is one of the best playgrounds in the city, and three blocks the other direction is another fine playground. Both of them are packed with kids at all hours of the day. When we go visit family in the midwest, we make a point to take walks and visit the neighborhood playgrounds. We're almost always the only people there. Of course people have their yards so nobody needs the playground... I think something is lost.
Walk a few blocks in any direction from our house and you'll see tons of wonderful daycares, family-friendly restaurants, and other parents' necessities, most of them locally owned and operated by another member of the community.
We travel all around the city, we take the train. My son passes the time on the ride charming the other passengers and subway surfing. It's much more civilized than strapping him into a car seat and not looking at him for an hour every day.
I'll grant you that New York City is something of an outlier as far as American cities go.
Being out and about means I feel a real sense of community and have really gotten to know my neighbors.
When we see our friends from the suburbs its amazing how cooped up they are, how unlikely they are to leave the house, and how unattached they feel from their surroundings. Its too easy for them to play in their basement or yard.
Staying in the city has given me and my family a much higher quality of life.
I never said I didn't have a car when needed, just that my day to day is much more enriched by not needing one (and being forced to get out of the house).
I will always choose to spend my time exploring the mountains with my kids, but if they choose soccer/baseball/etc then its just medium walk or short bus ride away.
We do frequently use a car (when leaving the city, for instance), but we don't have any reason to own a car. And more critically, we aren't chained to it in the way that so many friends and family are, by virtue of every necessity lying well beyond walking distance tucked inside a giant parking lot.
I will say as far as cities go those effected with homelessness were not as aggressive towards me/us as I’ve experienced in other cities, but they were extremely aggressive towards each other and didn’t make it feel like a very welcoming place for families.
Perhaps the few days my family was there gave me an inaccurate impression. I’ve been there numerous times for business and always enjoyed the city, but those times tended to involve a lot more Lyft rides and eating/drinking at higher price point restaurants than walking around exploring the city and time in the parks. With my family we were mostly in the First Hill, Downtown, Pioneer Square, and a bit in Belltown neighborhoods.
I’d guess if we define city living as an affluent neighborhood within city limits that one can live/work/play in without getting in a vehicle there are areas that fit the bill in nearly every city assuming that one has the correct income and profession to slot into it.
With that said, you visited what I would consider some of the worst places in the city to spend time with kids.
However, I cannot find a single public basketball court in either neighborhood you mentioned, and I can see maybe one park per neighborhood that can each support 1 open space sports game which means my friends and I would have likely had no opportunity to find an open space to play a sport game when growing up due to how crowded parks are.
Add on the homeless problem here and it should come as no surprise my GF and I are planning on moving back to my midwest hometown once we start trying to have kids.
There's Gilman Playground in Ballard with baseball park. It also has tennis courts. There's another baseball park at NW 63rd St and 20th Ave NW, and another one at 60th and 26th. There are more baseball parks in Woodland Park, and they also have soccer fields. Ballard High School has a football stadium, though I don't know how easily accessible it is to non-students. There's another baseball park/football/soccer stadium at Local Heights Playfield.
But yeah, if you're into basketball, you're probably out of luck if you're looking for any outside basketball place, it's not really that popular here.
Over time, what I've come to appreciate the most is the middle ground, something that is incredibly rare but does exist within pockets of larger cities and that's the ability to easily choose between walking, taking public transit, biking or driving to really any destination. All of the big cities in the pacific northwest (portland, seattle, vancouver) do this well, in addition to areas outside of the city centers in the north east as well as some of the first ring suburbs.
We, at least, do have the option of driving if we need to: we just walk a few blocks to the car share and off we go.
In our immediate vicinity we had everything we needed, day to day: the kids' schools, a grocery store, cafes, a bakery, pizza shop, and a tram stop. All of this was walkable.
The tram stop was what we'd use to go downtown. There is no parking there, and parking is a hassle, and the tram runs frequently, so it was an easy choice.
Lastly, we also had a car, to go for a hike outside town, or go on a trip or something, but many weeks it would just sit there. Most American couples, even without kids, have two that get used all the time.
We lived in a 6-unit building, without much yard, but would frequently go to the park with the kids. As the quote goes, "kids don't need a big yard to play, they need other kids". Back here in the US, they don't use our yard much, but miss having other kids to play with on a spur of the moment basis.
My older daughter goes to school on here own bike 1 mike away and goes over to friends houses on her own. Decent used bikes here are 50-100eu and bike shops are in every little neighborhood. The city is amazingly quiet despite being notably more dense than San Francisco (where we’re from).
All of us love the freedom of not dealing with cars and everything that implies. We could never move back to a “car culture” city again.
But I'm torn about pushing winter cycling on people. I realize that if it's miserable for somebody, then they're not going to do it. I happen to love cycling and bikes, so the idea of riding during the winter just means more chances to ride under different conditions, and a chance to tinker with one more bike.
In terms of ditching the car altogether, that's a toss up. For most families, to understand their commuting situation, you have to draw the triangle from the two parents jobs to school or day care, possibly different schools if they have more than one kid. For a while, my daily commute was a labyrinth involving dropping people off at different locations before turning the minivan around and heading for work. But today, everybody takes a bus or rides their bikes. Our high school has basically no student parking. Cars are part of our transportation mix, but we try to minimize their use.
At one point it had been so long since I drove to work, that I forgot about a big construction project, and got lost.
As for cold, the kids can stay under a bubble canopy if it's really bad. I have this bike, though we've never bothered with a canopy, we just dress them warm (in New England): https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=workcycles%20kr8%20...:
Of course, hygiene is important any place, but specially the city. Now, on the other hand, maybe it does strengthen your immunity... but it's also not fun getting sick cuz you forgot about washing after MUNI.
Kids are prone to go from dirty surface to face without thinking.
At least in Japan, while vomit in the late evenings is an issue, you know those systems get washed --not so for MUNI.
At some point in the nearish future I will probably put some kind of kid seat on the back of my bike.
We do this year round: snow, rain, or sunshine.
We live in downtown Bellevue, so we don’t need to drive to hit the park, mall, or grocery store