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I live in Seattle with a 2 year old and one more on the way. I can't believe I ever considered leaving the city to have kids. I can walk to a coffee shop 3 blocks away without taking 15 minutes to strap my kid in a car seat and the amount of parks we have access to in a short walk in incredible. We take the bus to the zoo and aquarium and my son loves seeing all the people and looking out the window.

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’m surprised by this, we visited a friend in Seattle with my son and it felt like the least child friendly city that I’ve ever been to. After seeing people tieing off to shoot up midday in Freeway Park any thought of having my kid play in the park was gone, no need to risk a needle stick.

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.

Those are basically the city core neighbourhoods. Seattle city limits stretch rather far north into neighbourhoods like Ravenna and Phinney Ridge. I am not sure which neighbourhood the person you are replying to is in, but their story doesn't sound unbelievable outside of Capitol Hill plus the "core" neighborhoods you mentioned.

That makes sense.

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.

Seattle is a city of neighborhoods. Move a few block away and the experience would be completely different.

With that said, you visited what I would consider some of the worst places in the city to spend time with kids.

I suspect when your kids become older, your life will become more dictated by your kids activities that you don’t control as much. Sports practices and games, school, etc. These will be unlikely be centered around walking distance from home. And, then, I will welcome you back to the fold of parent indenturedness. :)

Being forced onto a schedule dictated by your kids is a choice parents make, not a necessity.

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.

When the kids become older they should be able to take public transport by themselves. I took the bus to school when I was six. In Japan it's common to send little kids shopping by themselves. There are popular shows available on Youtube that show five year olds going on errands for the first time. For example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5k5XTZy0rA

Well, the elementary school is two blocks away, the middle school is two blocks the other way, and there is a high school about four blocks away (though by high school the neighborhood school isn't as relevant, at least in NYC). There are little league soccer and baseball teams that practice & play games at the small park a block and a half away and the larger park three blocks away. I'm pretty sure that neither of those particular developments require a car.

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.

Why would anything change? I live car free and everything is either walkable or public transportable distance away. Same for the activities you mentioned. When I was a kid and played a lot of sports if there was an out of town meet the team bus would take us.

You don’t have kids, that much is clear. And if you do, you certainly don’t have more than one.

Where in seattle because I live in south lake union and there are no parks anywhere near me that I could have used as a kid to play ultimate frisbee, basketball, and football like I did as a kid. They are all way too small, overcrowded, and not generally safe in my opinion.

You just need to buy a $1M house in Wallingford or Ballard, it's as easy as that.

I assume you are being sarcastic because my parents raised me in a $1M massive single family home in midwest suburbia which was also in one of the top 100 public high school in the country.

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.

Yes, I was being sarcastic. I don't like the homeless problem here either, but it gets slightly better once you move out of SLU to a residential area with $1M houses. We still get things like car break ins though, my neighbor had one just this Tuesday. I'm also thinking about moving some quieter nicer place, but knowing myself, I probably won't.

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.

I grew up in manhattan, and I really just think this is a situation of people wanting something different than what they previously had. The ability to drive instead of being jam packed on highly congested trains was something that I enjoyed when living in other cities, traffic does suck, but at least you're in a temperature controlled place where you can control the radio and what not. Additionally, point to point transportation is nice as well.

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.

I don't think it's as simple as rebelling against your parents -- plenty of my schoolmates are perfectly content to be slaves to their cars, and a good number of my city friends grew up here.

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.

Out of curiosity, what neighborhood/borough do you live in? Is it a middle class area?

And then you live in a tiny apartment that looks and smells like shit, otherwise pay $4000 a month for a decent 1 bedroom. Been there, done that. NYC is so much overrated.