SALT LAKE CITY—Normally I do my man-on-the-street reporting by going to the local pubs or coffee shops. In Utah, I know I have to do it differently. Today I walked around downtown Salt Lake City and an adjacent neighborhood called The Avenues. I had a few telling conversations with parents, and came across some interesting research.
I grew up in the very kind of kid-walkability neighborhood you're talking about, where children & teenagers can run around freely, & there's plenty of space, but there's nowhere much to go but the 7-11. I think that's the typical upper middle class white bread suburban childhood, right?
Whereas you grew up in walkable-for-everybody NYC, right? So. There are some problems you probably haven't thought about.
It's not healthy for a neighborhood to be inhabited ONLY by children. There should be adult-with-adult interaction going on the public spaces, too. Which happens a lot less if all the adults leave their houses only to get in their cars, because everywhere they need to go except the 7-11, or a walk around the block, requires a car.
This is bad for the adults. You should know your neighbors. How else are you going to love them?
But also it's bad for the children to be in a child-dominated environment. They shouldn't running around in packs raising themselves & each other, and they shouldn't be in a space that has only consumption in it, no production (zoning strikes again!).
It would much better for them to be in a small town or a corner of NYC with with Norman Rockwell drugstores with soda fountains where they could get after school jobs (as in It's a Wonderful Life), be monitored and mentored by adults, see the adults working, etc.
Also they would not feel like they were growing up in a barren suburban white bread wasteland, hanker for connections and diversity and an environment with something significant--not just leisure and children raising themselves in packs--going on it it, and have to become hipsters (or ex-LDS ex-Catholic cool people who vacation in Paris, or similar) in order to give their lives meaning.
Well put. Everything you say is true, except that we moved from NYC to a small town suburb in Westchester when I was 9 (my oldest brother was 14), and we could walk to three pizza places and the movie theater where our job is. Not all suburbia is created equal.
I grew up in the very kind of kid-walkability neighborhood you're talking about, where children & teenagers can run around freely, & there's plenty of space, but there's nowhere much to go but the 7-11. I think that's the typical upper middle class white bread suburban childhood, right?
Whereas you grew up in walkable-for-everybody NYC, right? So. There are some problems you probably haven't thought about.
It's not healthy for a neighborhood to be inhabited ONLY by children. There should be adult-with-adult interaction going on the public spaces, too. Which happens a lot less if all the adults leave their houses only to get in their cars, because everywhere they need to go except the 7-11, or a walk around the block, requires a car.
This is bad for the adults. You should know your neighbors. How else are you going to love them?
But also it's bad for the children to be in a child-dominated environment. They shouldn't running around in packs raising themselves & each other, and they shouldn't be in a space that has only consumption in it, no production (zoning strikes again!).
It would much better for them to be in a small town or a corner of NYC with with Norman Rockwell drugstores with soda fountains where they could get after school jobs (as in It's a Wonderful Life), be monitored and mentored by adults, see the adults working, etc.
Also they would not feel like they were growing up in a barren suburban white bread wasteland, hanker for connections and diversity and an environment with something significant--not just leisure and children raising themselves in packs--going on it it, and have to become hipsters (or ex-LDS ex-Catholic cool people who vacation in Paris, or similar) in order to give their lives meaning.
Well put. Everything you say is true, except that we moved from NYC to a small town suburb in Westchester when I was 9 (my oldest brother was 14), and we could walk to three pizza places and the movie theater where our job is. Not all suburbia is created equal.