As Douglas Adams said about NYC.
"In the summer it's too darn hot. It's one thing to be the sort of life form that thrives on heat and finds, as the Frastrans do, that the temperature range between 40,000 and 40,004 is very equable, but it's quite another to be the sort of animal that has to wrap itself up in lots of other animals at one point in your planet's orbit, and then find, half an orbit later, that your skin's bubbling."
Highways are built with “levels of service.” There are no level of service standards for pedestrians: sidewalk availability, trees, protection from car traffic, directness of routes, etc. Bike lanes often don’t exist or are blocked by parked cars or trash. This would never be accepted for a road.
Uhhhhh I think this is also what hkarthik was saying with his first paragraph.
> I think European and Asian cities have done a much better job at this.
.... Either way it sounds like we all agree, urban family life in US is subpar to our economic counterparts.
Asian and European cities did not make themselves more hospitable to families by adding wider roads and providing parking spaces for cars like op was talking about, they did it by doing the opposite, which is what I was commenting on.
> I'm sure there are folks who live in places like SF with families and ride around in heavy urban traffic with 2 kids on an electric cargo bike, but that's just not for many of us.
Maybe riding a cargo bike with your kids on the back is unpleasant because the suburban lifestyle you are talking about has bled into American urban planning. If American cities were designed around people instead of cars many of the problems with urban life you are talking about would be moot.
I point this out because you thesis seems to be that getting older and having kids is orthogonal to urban life. However, historically, and in many cities outside of north America, this is not the case. If you look at the Netherlands for example, where a deliberate effort to plan cities around people has been ongoing for 50 years, many people don't own cars, their kids bike to school and use public spaces for recreation, and they can pickup furniture from Ikea on their cargo bikes while never touching a road built for cars.