We had walkable American cities for centuries. It was the norm. Kids played in alleys and walked to school, neighbors chatted over the back fence, we reaped the economic benefits of density and proximity. Then millions fled America's inner cities in the 1960s due to skyrocketing crime and racial violence. The suburbs were seen as an inferior substitute by many from the start; the upshot was that their kids would be safe from muggings on the street, gunfire in schools, and race riots. Chicagoland writer Ray Hanania (no relation to Richard) wrote about his family's experience with this in Chicago:

https://suburbanchicagoland.com/2016/01/29/midnight-flight-c...

"Yes, it’s wonderful. And, instead of placing your garbage cans in the alley where the stink and unsightliness of the trash would be hidden from view, you will place all that on the front lawn. At the curb. Next to your new mailbox. Oh. I didn’t tell you that your mailbox was a metal little box on the top of a wood poll in your lawn in front of your house along the street? Where any Tom, Dick or Harry could drive by, reach in, and easily steal your Social Security check any time they want?"

The suburbs were spaced out and isolated on purpose. The alternative was worse:

https://suburbanchicagoland.com/2016/01/29/midnight-flight-c...

"When I returned to Bowen High school that fall, there were more Black students registered at the school and there were frequent gang fights between Black and Hispanic students. The Spanish Kings were really up in arms, painting street gang symbols insulting Black gangs, and vice versa. The increase in Black and Hispanic gang violence at the school only fed the stereotype and the growing fears of Whites in the area."

"One day, there was a shooting in the lunchroom. That was bringing it real close to home, so to speak."

The people who by their own actions and choices ruined America's inner cities have never been held accountable. Instead we blamed ourselves, the auto companies, skip-floor elevators in public housing... The same antisocial patterns of behavior continue. They make Memphis, Philly, New Orleans, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. what they are today. And today we blame TikTok, drill rap, ourselves again...

Milwaukee's murder rate in 2023 was ten times the rate back in 1920, before antibiotics and modern medicine and 911 emergency services:

https://devinhelton.com/why-urban-decay

For as long as this continues the suburbs will remain a preferable alternative for many, especially families with young children. Young childless people can tolerate more urban anarchy, and today more people in cities are childless, but this is not how to sustain a civilization.