In my neighborhood, children still play in the street. It's a small 80 acre unincorporated neighborhood completely surrounded by two otherwise bordering cities, so most of the streets dead end, with through traffic on only one street along the edge of the neighborhood. This probably helps a lot. Also, it's old enough that more houses don't have sidewalks than do, and the streets are wide, so everyone walks on the streets anyway, making it less awkward to have children running around on them.
Far north side of Chicago still has children playing in the streets. Not sure about the suburbs, but the city supports it when the residents do.
We moved to the Netherlands so our kids could do this and I pity kids living in the US