We would ride our bicycles more than 5 miles along US-44. It has 2 lanes each side for a total of 4 lanes, 2-foot shoulders, and traffic that often got to a decent highway speed. There could be snow on the shoulder. One of the older bridges was narrow, with only about a half-foot shoulder. We went anyway.
We had similar woods. We went out there and built a fort. We camped. We misbehaved. We went to the railroad tracks and put coins on the rails. We hiked a mile to a lake, carrying an inflated raft and fishing or camping gear.
Don't blame the suburb if you chose to play video games. I hear that cities also have video games.
And I bet it was uphill! Both ways!
The "woods" I mentioned were small enough that there was no point away from easy eyesight from some neighbor's living room windows. Sure, we played in them. But there was no actual sense of isolation. There were no train tracks anywhere nearby. There were some tiny lakes, but they were clearly on other people's property.
It's great that you seemed to live in somewhere more rural than me and that was an area you were able to thrive in. Still, if you look at populations of people as a whole I suspect you'll find orders of magnitude more bored and unhealthy kids (who start getting into real trouble) in suburbs than you find in cities where there are actually plenty of opportunities and things to do.
I grew up in a city of 75,000, in a house currently worth about $150k (purchased new in 1976 by my parents for $38k and sold in 1993 for $120k), on 2.5 acres. It was about 30% lawn, gardens & sports area and 70% wooded (with a creek, even!). I only had 1-2 good neighborhood friends but I did have a younger brother & sister and we were constantly outside doing something.
I think you need to think about how you define "city" and "suburb" a little more.
There is an international airport. It has seasonal flights to Ottawa, Toronto–Billy Bishop, and Windsor. Those are in Canada.
There is a professional sports team, the USSSA Pride women′s professional fast-pitch softball team. Another is the Brevard County Cocoa Expos, a member of the Women's Premier Soccer League.
There are top-rate museums. One has a Saturn V, a Space Shuttle, a Saturn 1B, the Apollo 14 Command Module, space suits, moon rocks, and related stuff. Another has the Gemini 2 spacecraft and a bunch of missiles. Another has spacesuits and Sigma 7, the fifth manned Mercury spacecraft.
I get that everyone is living the best existence out there, but c’mon people, isn’t it clear that there is no objectively better place, only places with trade offs that appeal to different folks?
I hated that move to the burbs... Nothing to do except getting kicked out of the local mall or Borders. No libraries, no parks, no pools nearby... And no public transport.
When before in the city I could just take public transport and go downtown, meet my friends, go to the library, etc..
Now that I have kids, I live in a city. But it's a quiet neighborhood, and we have a yard -- that I did appreciate from the suburbs ;-)
We don't have any metro lines but have bus and train.
Prices are reasonable because we are on the north face of a large hill and get little sun in the winter, and are not close to the downtown area.
There were "woods" between the endless maze of houses, but all of them were just parts of other people's property. And who was I going to play with in them, except for my one nearby friend?
I ended up just playing a lot of video games.
For all that urban centers are supposedly "hostile places" (according to the GP), I look at the adults and children I know in cities and I see mostly fit, healthy, active people with multiple hobbies and interests. I look at the adults and children I know in suburbs and I see overweight, sedentary people who spend so much of their life commuting between work, school, and home, that they barely have time for more than one day of a week of something fun like an organized sport. The rest is just spent at home watching TV or playing video games.
If I do decide have children, I definitely know what kind of place I want to do it in.