The suburban neighborhood we currently live in has a partial grid pattern and streets that loop around, so it’s relatively easy to navigate. The town I live in is one fenced in neighborhood after another, often with no through streets, which leads to one of its major disadvantages of forcing all traffic onto high speed 4-6 lane arterials. This means kids are “trapped” within their own neighborhood which makes it hard to just run over to a friend’s house in another neighborhood, even if that house is just a mile or two away. We do have an extensive trail system that connects various neighborhoods and our library and a recreation center, so it’s easier for older kids to bike to someplace more interesting and to meet up with friends there. But the biggest disadvantage is definitely the high speed arterials.
I spent some time in the suburbs growing up and am now a huge advocate for smart growth urbanism. I recall learning how to ride a bike in suburbia. I had domain to visit my friends in the neighborhood but the biggest ask was asking my mom, about biking to a corner store just beyond the suburb.
You are spot on about the mental ability, it wasn't the distance so much as the monotony of biking just over a mile at around 10 years old. I now live alongside a multiuse bike path and take my daughter (2.5) down a few times a day to get steps in and it certainly helps. She rarely asks to be picked up and she knows how to get home. It's the little things.
I grew up in a rural area of a county with an urban city in the middle. I knew my rural streets well, as well as the woods around my house and the hunting trails in my neighborhood. I've lived in the suburbs for most of my adult life, and I am sometimes sad that my kids won't grow up understanding the forests as I did. The urban area near where we live now is walkable, but cost prohibitive for most people. So the suburbs it is :)
I have found that Southern cities tend to be a bit more haphazard and difficult to learn. In some cities, I've had to learn walking navigation and driving navigation, as they're not always the same. I've learned mostly by driving around and getting lost, and then finding my way again. In suburban neighborhoods, I've always just walked the streets. When I made my first big solo move in adulthood, I bought a city map of my new city and studied it (my dad believed reading a map was a life skill, so I already had years of practice).
My city is notoriously difficult to navigate for newcomers, and it's also constantly changing, which makes it hard even for people who have lived here forever. Outside of the city center, very little is walkable -- we can't get anywhere from our neighborhood without getting in a car (except for a state park by a river, which is a huge blessing).
But in defense of suburbs...I am thankful to live in a wonderful neighborhood where I know most of my neighbors. I have people I can count on to watch over the house if we're going out of town, and we all know each other's kids (or grandkids). Our neighborhood has parties for almost every holiday, and we are there for each other in times of crisis. My kids (5 and 2) know where the other kids' houses in the neighborhood are, and they know how to get to the little free library. As they get older and we walk to the state park nearby more often, I'll teach them how to find the official trails from our "unofficial" entrance, how to find our neighborhood again, and what to do if they get lost. My 5-year old already understands that trees are marked with color-coded dots on hiking trails, and I give her the task of finding the next one.
Because we live in a place where cars are necessary, I'm already working on their driving navigation skills. My oldest could navigate to her preschool at 4, and she now knows how to get to her grandparents' house and a few other places. Although certain types of independence will not be available to them until they're 16, they will still be able to walk to friends' houses, and we thankfully (and remarkably) live in a place where kids still play outside with little supervision. I can still teach them how to get around without being dependent on technology, as my dad taught me. We can still go on hiking adventures and learn about the natural world and learn what it means to love our neighbors.
And since I grew up learning the language of streets that made no rational sense (and in the time before cell phones), when I travel, I have absolutely zero fear of getting lost, whether in a car or on foot. If I'm using cell phone navigation, I don't panic if my battery dies or there's an unexpected road closure. When the time comes, I highly recommend teaching kids to drive without benefit of cell phone navigation, and doing what my dad did -- he purposefully got me lost in unfamiliar neighborhoods and then told me simply, "now go home."
I live in the suburbs, but the sort of suburban area sometimes called a streetcar suburb or inner ring suburb where the roads connect and one can walk easily to a park or some shops or public transit. Traffic remains my biggest day to day fear as a pedestrian or cyclist. Our neighborhood, with its mostly but not uniformly gridlike pattern, does indeed make it easy for children to navigate on foot or bicycle. The vast majority of children at our local elementary school walk to school in the morning and walk home in the afternoon. It is uncommon *not* to see someone I know when out for a walk. When children head out to play, they go and find friends and know multiple houses along their way where they could stop and seek help if needed. I recognize this is not normal for a North American suburb. Nor is this some affluent enclave. The neighborhood is a mix of single family housing, duplexes, and apartments. It seems to work well, but major roads do hem it in making wider exploration on foot more challenging.
Also, here's a fun experiment to do with kids: ask them to draw a map from memory of your neighborhood, or depicting how you'd get from home to church, or the park, etc. I get a kick out of seeing which of our kids can do this without much thought, and which are totally off.
We live in a pretty big subdivision that even after 7 years I still get turned around in. I've heard one reason for the design (sometimes it's somewhat gridlike, but not always, and some streets just stop for a few blocks before continuing with the same name on the other side of the neighborhood) was to prevent cars from using the neighborhood as a shortcut.
I'm super grateful that the we have sidewalks -- this has been the key to getting our kids acclimated to navigating on their own. Having their own space that's relatively safe from cars means they can focus on honing their sense of direction and learning landmarks. We used to live in a much more walkable -- as in, things to walk to, not just more houses -- small town in New England, but with fewer sidewalks, and with the narrow, windy roads that basically follow 17th century maps of the area, it was more dangerous for young kids to go off in their own.
Also -- I grew up wandering winding subdivisions on my bike, and I think I saw it as a type of exploration -- it might mean back tracking, but hey, I'd never seen that culdesac before, and now I have. (But this is way less frustrating than walking with little kids in tow!)
This is blowing my mind. I can’t believe I never connected the dots as to why it was so much easier for me to learn to navigate a grid city I once lived in vs a twisty-turny suburb I once lived in. I blamed my own sense of direction in the latter neighborhood.
I am a map lover and used to pore over maps pre-smart phone or even mapquest to get my bearings and plan trips. I dislike being completely dependent on a navigation system and feel like it’s important to familiarize yourself with your surroundings and the various barriers to motility. Often when driving my nieces I will get them to navigate for me (the excuse being they live there and I don’t) and they will usually take me a very roundabout route for fun; they do get me back to their home though! I think it helps them orient themselves and think strategically, even if they aren't the ones behind the wheel, and it kind of gives them ownership of the area more than just as passive passengers. Their parents let them walk to some destinations that don’t cross busy roadways but the driving navigation gets them thinking about a larger area around their home.
I loved reading this and seeing the map comparisons. I successfully navigated a bunch of San Francisco neighborhoods without a smartphone. Still, when I was home walking in our subdivision neighborhoods, I got lost or stuck in the neighborhood and had to find someone to ask how to get out. It's so taxing because you invest so much time in that walk, and knowing you have to retrace your steps back means tiring out before you make it back. I think your points make a lot of sense. These subdivisions are built to maximize the number of houses in a given space and create the desirable cul-de-sac housing option for many. But I think you're right, something important gets lost in the process.
The suburban neighborhood we currently live in has a partial grid pattern and streets that loop around, so it’s relatively easy to navigate. The town I live in is one fenced in neighborhood after another, often with no through streets, which leads to one of its major disadvantages of forcing all traffic onto high speed 4-6 lane arterials. This means kids are “trapped” within their own neighborhood which makes it hard to just run over to a friend’s house in another neighborhood, even if that house is just a mile or two away. We do have an extensive trail system that connects various neighborhoods and our library and a recreation center, so it’s easier for older kids to bike to someplace more interesting and to meet up with friends there. But the biggest disadvantage is definitely the high speed arterials.
I spent some time in the suburbs growing up and am now a huge advocate for smart growth urbanism. I recall learning how to ride a bike in suburbia. I had domain to visit my friends in the neighborhood but the biggest ask was asking my mom, about biking to a corner store just beyond the suburb.
You are spot on about the mental ability, it wasn't the distance so much as the monotony of biking just over a mile at around 10 years old. I now live alongside a multiuse bike path and take my daughter (2.5) down a few times a day to get steps in and it certainly helps. She rarely asks to be picked up and she knows how to get home. It's the little things.
I grew up in a rural area of a county with an urban city in the middle. I knew my rural streets well, as well as the woods around my house and the hunting trails in my neighborhood. I've lived in the suburbs for most of my adult life, and I am sometimes sad that my kids won't grow up understanding the forests as I did. The urban area near where we live now is walkable, but cost prohibitive for most people. So the suburbs it is :)
I have found that Southern cities tend to be a bit more haphazard and difficult to learn. In some cities, I've had to learn walking navigation and driving navigation, as they're not always the same. I've learned mostly by driving around and getting lost, and then finding my way again. In suburban neighborhoods, I've always just walked the streets. When I made my first big solo move in adulthood, I bought a city map of my new city and studied it (my dad believed reading a map was a life skill, so I already had years of practice).
My city is notoriously difficult to navigate for newcomers, and it's also constantly changing, which makes it hard even for people who have lived here forever. Outside of the city center, very little is walkable -- we can't get anywhere from our neighborhood without getting in a car (except for a state park by a river, which is a huge blessing).
But in defense of suburbs...I am thankful to live in a wonderful neighborhood where I know most of my neighbors. I have people I can count on to watch over the house if we're going out of town, and we all know each other's kids (or grandkids). Our neighborhood has parties for almost every holiday, and we are there for each other in times of crisis. My kids (5 and 2) know where the other kids' houses in the neighborhood are, and they know how to get to the little free library. As they get older and we walk to the state park nearby more often, I'll teach them how to find the official trails from our "unofficial" entrance, how to find our neighborhood again, and what to do if they get lost. My 5-year old already understands that trees are marked with color-coded dots on hiking trails, and I give her the task of finding the next one.
Because we live in a place where cars are necessary, I'm already working on their driving navigation skills. My oldest could navigate to her preschool at 4, and she now knows how to get to her grandparents' house and a few other places. Although certain types of independence will not be available to them until they're 16, they will still be able to walk to friends' houses, and we thankfully (and remarkably) live in a place where kids still play outside with little supervision. I can still teach them how to get around without being dependent on technology, as my dad taught me. We can still go on hiking adventures and learn about the natural world and learn what it means to love our neighbors.
And since I grew up learning the language of streets that made no rational sense (and in the time before cell phones), when I travel, I have absolutely zero fear of getting lost, whether in a car or on foot. If I'm using cell phone navigation, I don't panic if my battery dies or there's an unexpected road closure. When the time comes, I highly recommend teaching kids to drive without benefit of cell phone navigation, and doing what my dad did -- he purposefully got me lost in unfamiliar neighborhoods and then told me simply, "now go home."
I live in the suburbs, but the sort of suburban area sometimes called a streetcar suburb or inner ring suburb where the roads connect and one can walk easily to a park or some shops or public transit. Traffic remains my biggest day to day fear as a pedestrian or cyclist. Our neighborhood, with its mostly but not uniformly gridlike pattern, does indeed make it easy for children to navigate on foot or bicycle. The vast majority of children at our local elementary school walk to school in the morning and walk home in the afternoon. It is uncommon *not* to see someone I know when out for a walk. When children head out to play, they go and find friends and know multiple houses along their way where they could stop and seek help if needed. I recognize this is not normal for a North American suburb. Nor is this some affluent enclave. The neighborhood is a mix of single family housing, duplexes, and apartments. It seems to work well, but major roads do hem it in making wider exploration on foot more challenging.
Also, here's a fun experiment to do with kids: ask them to draw a map from memory of your neighborhood, or depicting how you'd get from home to church, or the park, etc. I get a kick out of seeing which of our kids can do this without much thought, and which are totally off.
We live in a pretty big subdivision that even after 7 years I still get turned around in. I've heard one reason for the design (sometimes it's somewhat gridlike, but not always, and some streets just stop for a few blocks before continuing with the same name on the other side of the neighborhood) was to prevent cars from using the neighborhood as a shortcut.
I'm super grateful that the we have sidewalks -- this has been the key to getting our kids acclimated to navigating on their own. Having their own space that's relatively safe from cars means they can focus on honing their sense of direction and learning landmarks. We used to live in a much more walkable -- as in, things to walk to, not just more houses -- small town in New England, but with fewer sidewalks, and with the narrow, windy roads that basically follow 17th century maps of the area, it was more dangerous for young kids to go off in their own.
Also -- I grew up wandering winding subdivisions on my bike, and I think I saw it as a type of exploration -- it might mean back tracking, but hey, I'd never seen that culdesac before, and now I have. (But this is way less frustrating than walking with little kids in tow!)
This is blowing my mind. I can’t believe I never connected the dots as to why it was so much easier for me to learn to navigate a grid city I once lived in vs a twisty-turny suburb I once lived in. I blamed my own sense of direction in the latter neighborhood.
I am a map lover and used to pore over maps pre-smart phone or even mapquest to get my bearings and plan trips. I dislike being completely dependent on a navigation system and feel like it’s important to familiarize yourself with your surroundings and the various barriers to motility. Often when driving my nieces I will get them to navigate for me (the excuse being they live there and I don’t) and they will usually take me a very roundabout route for fun; they do get me back to their home though! I think it helps them orient themselves and think strategically, even if they aren't the ones behind the wheel, and it kind of gives them ownership of the area more than just as passive passengers. Their parents let them walk to some destinations that don’t cross busy roadways but the driving navigation gets them thinking about a larger area around their home.
I loved reading this and seeing the map comparisons. I successfully navigated a bunch of San Francisco neighborhoods without a smartphone. Still, when I was home walking in our subdivision neighborhoods, I got lost or stuck in the neighborhood and had to find someone to ask how to get out. It's so taxing because you invest so much time in that walk, and knowing you have to retrace your steps back means tiring out before you make it back. I think your points make a lot of sense. These subdivisions are built to maximize the number of houses in a given space and create the desirable cul-de-sac housing option for many. But I think you're right, something important gets lost in the process.