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I have a general yardstick on risk. The US has always had high rates of innocents being killed in car accidents. Being a pedestrian and driving cars are base levels of risk taken on by most Americans without much thought. If someone is safer a daily commute or crossing the street, then it is safe enough for me.
The rates of school shootings, domestic terror attacks and freak homicides are much much lower than death by car or suicide. (The 2 main sources of death for young kids). Compared to a few decades ago, kids are doing fewer drugs, cars are safer and tech has made freak accidents easier to respond to.
I worry that the fears may be overblown. Safetyist neuroticism. It's a meme, but men used to fight wars and die in trenches. The US is so much safer today than before.
People don't live in amorphous clouds of statistics. They live in particular locations and can watch those places actively get worse year over year even if national stats show otherwise (because other places are actually improving or because the stats are gamed). You couldn't pay me to raise kids in the town I grew up in even though for most of its history (including the first half of my own life) it was a fine place to live.
People's eyes deceive them. Cars and suicide risk have remained high across all neighborhoods, safe ones or otherwise. The statistics match my anecdotes. I know multiple people who have died from car accidents and suicides. I don't know anyone who has been gunned down or stabbed in a random mugging. Statistics are useful because the country has a history of collective hysteria around hoaxes like killer clowns and child kidnapping vans.
To be fair to you, neighborhoods and cities go through boom-bust cycles. So yes, some places will get worse. But, the US is not uniformly getting worse.
As of 2026, it is much easier to keep your kids safe. With find-my functionality, it is easy for parents to ensure their kids stay within safe geographic boundaries. Ring cameras allow you to leave you kids at home, fully monitored. Uber allows them to go from point A->B safely. Technically, it should be easier to let kids be independent. But, safetyism leads to the opposite problem.
urban design rant incoming
I've long believed that malls replaced all acceptable public-places in post-war America. When malls inevitably collapsed, the only safe low-supervision space was lost. IMO, Levittown style suburbs (post war suburbia) are fundamentally flawed. They eliminate all the benefits of safety in numbers. They break up common playgrounds into tiny yards, so kids have to go further away to play real games instead of playing within walking distance of home. They put cars on the critical path of everything, increasing the number of interactions that kids need to have with said cars. It's a lose-lose-lose.
I am not anti-suburbs. In fact, the US created some of the prettiest and most effective suburbs before personal cars and Levittown. Bungalow courts in LA and SD allowed families to have SFH and yards, but pooled the yards together. This allowed multiple parents to supervise the kids from the home and gave the kids a larger playground to work with. The inner courtyard also naturally cages the kids off from the road, making it unlikely that they run into traffic to collect a stray ball. This is safety by the very nature of the urban design itself. Courtyard housing is the standard way of doing this in Europe, beloved college towns and pre-war USA.
I know I am not being completely fair. Cul-de-sac style suburbs are really artificial barriers that allowed whites to self-segregate better. Now that inner city crime isn't as big a deal, the natural defense provided by the maze like structure of a levittown style suburb appears redundant to my eyes. The low density of suburbs also wouldn't have been an issue if the primary residents were young, couples had multiple children and all socializing required humans to be outdoors. In 2026, socialization is digital, people have fewer kids and suburban couples are older. These same lonely suburbs were probably bustling with social activity back during the baby boom.
But that is not a good excuse. Even during the baby boom, designers should have seen that this would not last. The success of the post-war suburb was based on a ton of unlikely things going right all at once. Baby boom Americans may have been the only generation anywhere where all the unlikely things went right. Inevitably, suburbs began giving under the weight of their shaky foundations. Parents complain that the suburbs aren't what they used to be. But really, suburbs were never going to be what they used to be. Post war America was a lightning in a bottle situation and that era is never coming back. Moreover, if they'd just let suburbs abide by design principles that'd been around for 100s of years , then suburbs would have been more resilient to the shocks that come from changing circumstances associated with changing generations.
Levittown style suburbs are unitaskers. They were good for one thing and they served their purpose. I like classic suburbs styles like Courtyards, Bungalow courts and street car suburb style designs because they're Lindy for a reason. I believe they will be able to restore some degree of lost independence to kids and lost peace of mind back to parents.
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I agree with your general point, but his kids are too young to play outside unsupervised(they’ll run into the street).
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