Downsides are that it’s almost as expensive as the city (you can get a bit more space for your money, but not a lot more) and closer proximity to “urban” issues like grit, crime, homelessness, traffic that you can be more insulated from in the sprawl.
I grew up in the suburbs. I loved we had a 2 car garage with tools. My dad had a radial saw and built all kinds of stuff. We ran a neighborhood haunted house in it. We also had a pool in the backyard, all our friends came over often. We had a 20x30ft family room that was build to be sound proof so my dad could practice drum playing. It was at the far opposite side of the house from my parents bedroom and they let us use it for slumber parties often. There was a collection of hobby stores a few minutes away by bike. One neighbor had a small farm in his backyard with 4 fruit trees and various stuff in between. I loved all the neighbors. One had a go-kart that we would ride from time to time. My parents entertained often including an 80person new years eve party every other year. Could walk or ride our bikes to school where we launched model rockets and watched people fly radio controlled gliders.
That said I'm not dissing the city. I can't really imagine what its like to be in NYC as a kid but many European cities seem like great places for both adults and kids.
Personally, I prefer to take my car to the shop because I don't want to carry a car load of stuff home. And Central Park is something I like to visit, but I wouldn't send a young child to play there by themselves.
Back in the suburbs now and the kid would spend his Saturdays watching TV if I didn't stop him because the alternative is ... the one playground in driving distance? The movies? Target?
People really underestimate the volume of activity you can put in front of a young kid in a city.
- regular (meaning periodic) physical activity is essential, for the adults and kids. Sports leagues, gym classes, whatever. If you’re not into sportsy physical activity, you need a physical hobby like woodworking, gardening, or literally anything to get your blood flowing
- your weekly schedule looks totally different as the seasons change. Skiing in winter, hiking and camping in the fall, beach vacationing in the summer, etc
- regular domestic vacations to escape the boredom, and to make you long for home.
- regular home improvement, to make your life in your house 1% better every month
- regular visits with nearby close friends and family. At least one visit to a close relation every two weeks. Non negotiable, and ideally tied to holidays
- overdo your holidays. Birthdays are huge, winter holiday (Christmas etc) is huge. Thanksgiving is huge. It has nothing to do with the meaning of the holiday and everything to do with getting people together.
These kinds of things are less achievable in the city because you have less money, less space, less autonomy. Just my observations from happy suburban families, I’m curious to see others’ notes.
The idea is to expose your kids to a wide range of activities, and support them doubling down on an evolving handful of them. Avoid setting super specific constraints (you must play a team sport), and instead try setting goals (find a physical activity you enjoy and find motivating). From my perspective, parenting is about exposing children to their options, and making some choice recommendations where you have experience.
Parents can do that anywhere, and fail to do that anywhere. I do agree that if your parents aren’t doing a good job of that in a walkable city, kids are more likely to discover those options on their own.
For example, imagine that your kid wants to pursue rock climbing or small boat sailing, and your family lives in NYC. Or, you want to have a holiday gathering of 20+ people. The options exist but they're exorbitantly expensive.
I feel you. We did the same, but that's because our son has ADHD and public or private schools in the city weren't cutting the mustard. We all miss the city and our friends there, and I miss walking everywhere. It was an awesome place to raise a child, but circumstances forced our hand.
What's so bad about a nice suburb? By nice, I mean "with parks, and nearby mountains, and community centers", not just cookiecutter crap from horizon to horizon.
Sure, there's no live jazz around, but it's not like the city is so far away that I can't go and get some of that when I want it, and meanwhile I can leave my kid's bike on the lawn overnight and it'll be there in the morning.
Autonomous Zones are only going to make this worse.
We moved from a big city to suburban hell a few years after having a kid. In those first years, we took our kid to museums, parks, playgrounds, etc. all over the city. Now there is jack shit to do in the suburb we're in except going to the mall, cannot walk anywhere, have to use the car 100% of the time to even go to a shop. A backyard is a sad place compared to something like Central Park. I feel so sad for my kid. If the prices keep going lower in cities and remote work becomes the norm, we're moving back. (Un)fortunately my wife hates it here too, and we've often talked about moving back to a city.