The local shopkeepers in many places are getting pushed out by corporations, especially in less-populated areas. Walmart is your one-stop mini-city for groceries, all household goods, prepared foods—and they are not going to take on the liability of allowing employees to watch over children playing.

Then again they're getting pushed out because the "community" prefers the convenience and cheap prices of the local corporation one-stop shop to the more expensive and less well stocked bevvy of butchers and bakers and corner shops. It's no surprise that the only ones surviving are those crewed by and catering to immigrant and "ethnic" food cultures not well-served by corp marts and fringe spaces (e.g. local coffee roaster, expensive / foodie grocery store, tea shop).

Of course it's never quite that simple.

Now that the supermarkets mostly "won", local bakers, greengrocers and butchers etc are usually cheaper and far better stocked than any of the supermarkets yet of far higher quality. Supermarket prices just aren't competitive any more, as they mostly stopped trying, though of course they beat the open all hours corner shops. Cut price Aldi are now the fastest growing supermarket in the UK. Tesco are laughable on price and quality by comparison with Aldi or Lidl.

There's also an element of having to prefer the one stop shop of a supermarket thanks, in part, to most of us having to have both partners working to survive. I strongly suspect if more couples were still able to support a home and family on one income there'd be many more of those butchers, bakers and greengrocers around and still thriving.

Still, we are where we are, and probably stuck with it.

as for how the economics of a society affects & recreates the spatial design of various localities, we should always keep in mind that technology is part of play, and also enhances play

tho only the rare & remarkable ppl are at the leading edge of that (as is the case with anything else in society)

https://dynamicland.org/

I think both experiences could be true, in American suburbs and towns there is no such thing as a shop keeper or butcher in your neighborhood, it's _all_ residential. In that context it would only be the mothers and retired available.

During my days of play we never were around businesses though we did occasionally see retired people most of our limited oversight was mother based.

Depends where you grew up.

For me, this was early 90s in a big European city, there were zero shops even near where we were playing outside most of the time. So sure, this was after school and being 10-14, but it wouldn't really matter (for this topic) if there was someone at home, because most days I'd be outside just after school anyway.

i agree with all the others here that the claim by 'chongli' is false & inaccurate and illustrates a person that is incredibly biased due to their a) limited experience, and b) knowledge

this mega-problem of there being insufficient spaces for play in our current society is undeniably a human crisis (tho this likely has always been the case as 'play' as a concept is relatively new in the history of ideas)

if or not there's less overall spaces for play relative to the past is unknown, and it would seem supa difficult to get data on. but if anyone has extensive evidence on the topic, i'll like to see the links

it's likely accurate that most places in 2019 has this problems (that kids dont play outside). but there are also places, including within cities, where kids do run around and play on the roads

i'd say the contingency of this affordance is based on how good of an area you live in to be able to give this privilege of play to kids, as well as everyone else in society