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Comment by ChicagoDave | Hacker News Reader

We definitely need publicly funded non-religious spaces for kids and families. We used to have these things with monitors at school playgrounds.

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Playground in local park was chock full of kids just yesterday.

In post-Soviet countries there is a concept of non-religious "palaces of culture", which also lost their ideological content and just host arts and crafts now. Albeit, they are less useful for just hanging out than they could be. Also, libraries.

We do, they're called parks and playgrounds - and no one went there even in yesteryear.

Religious spaces have some extra spice, as does the local mall where middle schoolers do random shoplifting to be edgy.

I now live in a small walkable city in Europe and parks and playgrounds are packed. It is very common for my daughter to randomly meet a friend from school there and start playing, or to encounter a friend of ours there also on a walk which usually leads to grabbing a coffee or beer together.

This kind of stuff just won't happen if you have to drive to your local park. Cars and car-centric city design is a huge, huge part of the problem and lack of third spaces in my opinion.

Yep, I'm in USA at the moment, but after my last trip abroad to a walkable city with transit I'm planning my escape. Not my first time being over there, but I'm finally like "why am I wasting my life over in car hell?"

It can and does happen at the local shopping mall, where middle schoolers too young to drive a car play hooky and go to the mall.

"Car centric urban design" is the catch all ill and if we just fixed transit it would go away.

Except it won't, because all the social factors that make car centric urban design preferable will still be there.

Yeah my partner and I moved to Amsterdam last year and it's wild how different from American cities it is. We think of it as a "NYC lite", as in you don't have the bonkers density, height, and din of NYC but you get almost all the benefits (diversity, walkability, liberalism, culture, tolerance), and there are actually children and families here (OK I know this stuff exists outside of Manhattan, don't @ me).

But even compared to NYC the proliferation of parks and playgrounds is astounding. We thought we must live in a green paradise, but it really doesn't even rate (something like 14% tree cover; most major EU cities are > 20%).

I think stuff like this is changing. You're starting to see far less car-centric design, and there are little programs like NYC's request a tree. I worry a little about what self-driving cars will do the trend though, but maybe it's not a big deal?

and what's more interesting, Amsterdam is not even super child friendly city because of the high and thin buildings and it still thrives. I read somewhere that Utrecht is even cooler for families(but less vibes) because of better buildings

We technically have some in the UK but often the local government doesn’t have funds for luxuries such as up keep and toilets. No wonder they’re not as used as much

Honestly, the general feeling I get from people is that such public places are dangerous esp for families with kids. And it makes sense. If you aren't policing and controlling bad group behaviour, then people lose trust in such a thing being possible and simply avoid it entirely. I know I would if I ever visited America or any of the immigration-heavy EU cities.

I can't speak for other cities but I live in a relatively immigrant-heavy area in a relatively immigrant-heavy city (Bos en Lommer, Amsterdam) and our parks are paradises. There's a nice kid pool and everything.

I think it's just an issue of community. Like, evidently our community likes having nice stuff our kids can use.

it's quite the opposite: a nicely designed park/other place is more secure due to 'public control' (it's harder to do illegal stuff where there are many people watching and are against this). If public space is poorly designed, it'll be uncomfortable for kids/parents/teenagers and will attract marginalized people, like a space that looks shady, hard to reach and has design for gathering of drinking people

Also it depends of city strategy> having marginalized only buildings/areas is a bad idea, that's why in states like baltics, social apartments(the new ones) are not separate full buildings, but just apartments spread evenly across the city, contributing to diluting concentration of marginalized people in one spot and 'social control' keeps these regions safe

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