In Japan, there is a tv show that secretly follows 4 or 5 year old kids on their first trip to the store alone. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMZp8KsZ5k

So free ranging is not decreasing in all countries, just a few.

I think the word we're missing is pedophiles, we don't let kids roam far due to the increase fear of pedophiles - although I suspect the risk level havent changed as much as the publicity. Im probably better with traffic back then than I am now. Back in my day say when we were 9 or 10 so, we're be away from home for several hours at time during school holidays, sometimes we'd venture a little further than we'd admit to our parents - and bunk on a train to nearby city to cause a bit mayhem there etc.., we're try a get back before tea time incase the parents started calling each other and stories weren't solid. At age of 7 we certainly accustomed to the local shops and parks. I speak to parents now and the phrase often is 'the world is a different place' they mean there a new awareness of nonces. That's the unfortunate truth, of course there were still extremely cagey parents back then too, I felt sorry for those kids.

Corner store? You mean the Mega-lo-mart only accessibly after hopping on the free way?

Where I live my kids can go on a 5 minute walk through a quiet neighborhood then cross one street to get to McDonalds. If they go a different direction they wind up at Subway.

In 10 minutes they can go to a wide variety of places, everything from IHOP to a dollar store. Albertsons is an 11 minute walk. Less if they run. More if they stop and play at the park on the way.

Not all of suburbia is big box malls off of freeways. There are a lot of little strip malls around as well. And you can choose a place for how walkable it is.

That's anecdotal.

10 minutes of walking won't even get you out of my subdivision. Plop down a 15-minute radius on my map and there are literally zero places of business anywhere in it.

This is largely due to zoning. There is a strip of land zoned for local businesses a mere 10 minutes away, but unsurprisingly, no one has chosen to build anything on it.

You can't always prioritize walkability if you have a limit on your housing budget. My current place costs $11k/year, and the commuting to work by car isn't entirely horrible. But walking anywhere is really out of the question.

I live in a suburban neighborhood. We're near a number of stores and restaurants without crossing any streets, and the number multiplies if you allow a crossing or two. An actual grocery store is about half an hour's walk, but it's closer than the freeway, and you'd pass three or four convenience stores and about a dozen restaurants within the same distance.

Getting to Mega-lo-mart would be a 45 minute walk, and involves going under the toll road overpass and crossing about 4 streets (so, a little farther than I'll want my kid going anytime soon).

There was always some stigma against free-range parenting (think the grocery store scene in Home Alone) but it's gotten much, much worse

What we would now call "free range parenting" was normal until recently.