Except for a couple of years spent in apartments, this is not all my experience, either of cities or of suburbs. In my childhood and teens in the suburbs, kids would gather in a yard or a drive to play games--tag, hide-and-seek, kickball, touch football, basketball--and so one got to know them and their families. Now, in a city, and on a block mostly of free-standing houses, I know by name somebody or everybody in most of the houses on the street, and know some of them pretty well.