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That's amazon.com/adfreenews to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. - We go now to a written question from a listener who writes in and says, Joshua, I can't call in today, but would love if you would address my question this week. I have three young kids and we're going to be moving into a rental in a new city for the next year.

We're evaluating renting a single family house with a yard that they can be set out to play by themselves versus a luxury apartment with no yard, but a pool. We value lots of outdoor time, but the appeal of no maintenance for a year is strong. Can you talk about the various home types and setups you've had as you've moved around the world over the past few years, what the pros and cons are and what you'd recommend based on your experiences?

And absolutely I will. First, I want to point out that a yard is not a yard is not a yard. And so the first thing to clarify will be if we're comparing two properties, one that has a yard and one that doesn't have a yard, let's start by understanding what is the definition of yard.

In general, children are not that attracted to a small postage stamp patch of grass. That does not have a lot of attraction. On the whole, life as a parent is usually a little bit easier as a parent in the suburbs than it is in the middle of the city because of having an outdoor space.

It's nice, however, primarily for the verbal separation where you can send the children outside where they can be loud, they can yell, they can scream, they can get their wiggles out and you don't have to be the one listening to all of that. They can just do it outside where they're not bothering anybody.

But if there's just an empty piece of grass, that in and of itself is not very attractive for children. I myself think of it like fish. Now I'm not a fisherman, but what I understand about fishing is that if you have a big empty lake, you don't just go out in the middle of the lake and plop a line down and expect to catch anything.

The place where the fish hang out is wherever there's texture, or as the permaculture designers would say, wherever there's edge, wherever there's some kind of change. And so in order to have a yard that's attractive to children, there needs to be a significant amount of texture available in it.

What is an example of what I'm talking about? Well, ordinarily you would have something like a play structure. And this is why if you go across suburbia, you'll see many yards and houses that have installed some kind of basic play structure with a couple of swings, a monkey bars, a place to climb, things like that.

And these structures are a good start, but they probably last for about 20 minutes or so in terms of overall engagement, because they're hard to use imaginatively. They're usually kind of bare. They're just some basic stuff and children don't wanna swing for an hour straight. So it's a good start to be able to put some kind of play structure in, but not sufficient.

Now, if you have a yard that is a jungle, an absolute jungle, now you've got some probabilities for it really being engaging to children for a long time. Ideally, we would have trees, we would have bushes you can hide under, you can crawl under, we'd have places you can dig a hole, you'd have all kinds of vines, and again, places you can go up and down and under and through.

Ideally, for the sake of children, there would be a whole bunch of garbage in the backyard, some pallets and some cardboard and random pieces of rusty tin that they can either cut themselves and get tetanus or alternatively build an imaginative fort, something like that. So this is where children are really engaged is when they're surrounded by all kinds of stuff, all kinds of opportunities where they can build, they can change.

And usually, this doesn't exist in suburbia because the postage stamp yard is, that kind of yard, the kind of yard that's actually engaging to children doesn't actually appeal, doesn't appeal to parents. We want a nice, beautifully manicured backyard with strips in the grass from our lawnmower. And if we're gonna have a child's play area, it should be a play area with a small mulched patch in the side and that's where the children can go.

And that's just not very appealing to children. And so my observation is that most yards in suburbia due to keeping up appearances, especially if it's a rented house, they're just not actually gonna be that engaging to children. Is it possible, of course, that you can go out in the backyard and throw a baseball or throw a Frisbee or do something?

It's possible, but it's not, it doesn't last for much. And so why are the yards empty in many cases? Well, it's due to this lack of texture. It's due to this lack of engagement. So I think that's the mindset that you should use when you're judging the particular suburban house that you're looking at is get an idea of how much stuff is there in the yard, how much engagement.

The more packed the backyard is, the more secret hidey holes, the more shovels that you can leave out for your children to dig with, the more engaged your children are going to be. But if it's a beautifully manicured rental house with green grass and maybe one play structure, if that, you're gonna have a hard time making that as engaging as you might hope it would be.

Now let's turn to the luxury apartment with a pool. First, I think that the size of the apartment is really gonna matter. And the room structure is also going to matter. So what I would look for if I'm looking to make my life easy as a parent is ideally to have play spaces.

And so if you have a larger luxury apartment, maybe you can put all the children into one room for sleeping, but that leaves another room that's totally empty. Now you can start to build texture in an apartment. So if you can put in equipment where they can climb and couches where they can destroy things and make forts and pull everything apart and boxes that they can hide.

And if you can bring stuff in to engage with children, especially, again, some kind of climbing apparatus, then you could probably create something that's mostly equivalent to the other kind of backyard option because you have the space. And if you can fill it with material that's gonna be interesting and engaging to children, then you know you're on the right track.

Now, the pool is definitely attractive and it's attractive because it will give an activity that goes on for longer. It's not what, whereas, you know, just a random play structure in a barren yard is probably good for 20 or 30 minutes of play. A pool is usually good for an hour or more of play.

I do think it's important that you not have a pool in your backyard as a parent. The risks, the drowning risks of having a pool in the backyard, I'm gonna use strong language, they're unacceptable. They are, many people do them. Tons of people love having a pool, but if you have children who can't yet swim, then the drowning risk is enormous.

And you can certainly beef it up. You could have a cover on the pool. You can have a fence around the pool. You can have alarms on the doors. You can have all kinds of special things that make a pool right at your house safer. And those things are all important to do if you happen to live in a house with a pool.

But every single year, there are many, many children who drown due to standing on a chair and pulling open the door 'cause they watch the parents disengage the alarm every single time. So having a pool that's at an apartment complex or an apartment building that you can go to, but it's not so easily accessible is a good idea.

The question comes down here is, are you going to be able to do it? Is your wife gonna be able to do it? Or can you just send the children? Probably not. So now, the pool may not actually be helpful. The whole point of the backyard is that mom can be working inside, it's three o'clock, she needs a break, and she says, "Children, go outside.

"I'll call you when it's time for dinner." And she gets an hour or two in the house by herself with the children away. That's the point of the backyard. The pool, on the other hand, is she's gonna have to go and she's gonna have to watch them, usually. It's very rare to find a place where you're allowed to or where it would be culturally appropriate to just send your children, especially young children, unaccompanied to the pool.

And so that may not be such a big difference for her, as is hoped. What it may help out, though, is doing things like having parties. You may be able to have more pool parties, which will help in the social life. It may provide your wife with more tools that, let's say she's gonna get together with other moms and other children, invite them all over for a pool party every Thursday afternoon.

Usually, you'll have a lot more payoff with a pool as a social anchoring mechanism for children to have children's parties rather than a simple swing set. And then you just have the swing set in a bare backyard, you won't quite know what to do. But if you have a pool, then that'll occupy the children for a couple of hours while the moms and dads can sit around and talk.

I would suggest, however, that you not just evaluate this on the single dimension of backyard versus pool. What I'm more interested in is what other infrastructure is there in the area. So let's start with things like a park. Having local parks is enormously helpful as a lifestyle option. Local parks usually will offer some measure of texture, like I described, where they're gonna be more engaging for children.

I've seen some bad parks. Bad parks are usually beautifully manicured, grass everywhere and some play structures, and they're dreadfully boring for children. But if you have a park that is wooded and has some brushy areas and has a few different amenities that the children can engage in and they can go off and climb trees and be off by themselves, that's a very attractive thing.

And so look to see how far away is the local park. Ideally, it would be awesome if you had a park that was within a short walking distance. So if I had to choose between the two options, I would rather have a luxury apartment with a pool in the complex and be able to walk to the park in five minutes.

I'll take that over a suburb where the park is a 15-minute drive away. The local park is a 15-minute drive away. Having a local park is an enormous booster of quality of life. And sometimes in the city where the apartment is, you may have closer access to that. Think about other activities and other amenities, things like classes, community organizations, activities that are not related just to school, but also you should think about school, but let's focus on other kinds of things.

If you can be close enough to activities where you can say to your child, 10-year-old, ride the bike and go down to your karate class, it's four o'clock, and he can just ride over two or three blocks and he's there, that's enormously valuable as compared to being car-centric. I'm enormously passionate about this subject because I believe that we need to improve our cities and towns, at least in the United States, quite a lot.

And I'm always torn between what the data indicates on this and how things could be. So if we look at birth rates around the world, what we can see is that cities seem to be toxic to children if we're measuring them by birth rates. When we have large, built-out cities, people stop having children.

And all around the world, the biggest cities wind up being fairly barren of children. If people can spread out and they live in the suburbs, then they tend to have more children. So we know that families prefer the suburbs. It's a fairly obvious thing that people prefer and they want to do.

They go to the suburbs when they have children. We know that families prefer the suburbs, and we know that families are able to, and people in the suburbs have more children. The problem is I don't think that the suburbs are actually that great for children. I think that the suburbs tend to be fairly isolating.

One of my favorite videos that I send out frequently and reference to people frequently is from the YouTube channel, Not Just Bikes. And the video is titled, "Why We Won't Raise Our Children in Suburbia." And the summary of the video is that this Canadian father and his wife, when they had children, they knew that they did not want to live in London, Ontario, Canada, where they were from, because it was a suburb-focused lifestyle.

Instead, they wanted to live in the middle of a vibrant city. And they chose Amsterdam, Netherlands. And the reason they did that, one reason, is that living in the city can provide children with a much higher level of independence and personal autonomy. Suburbs tend to be very isolating for children because in order for them to go anywhere, in order for them to do anything, in order for them to see their friends, they have to be driven there by their parents.

And so they wind up sitting in their house all the time, alone, instead of being able to go elsewhere. And as the evidence demonstrates in Not Just Bikes video, he shows how in the Netherlands, where in Amsterdam, where the planning authorities have taken great care to create both safe pathways for pedestrians and bicyclists that are separated from cars, as well as to build out a robust public transit system, Dutch children have greater personal freedom and greater autonomy.

A nine-year-old Dutch boy can easily ride his own bicycle to his school and ride home again. So he can take himself to school in a neighborhood school easily and back again. And as a parent, you can feel totally happy about that because, and totally confident about that because of the good engineering that keeps bicyclists separated from dangerous vehicles.

In addition, though, the same Dutch boy can ride to his friend's house. He can take himself to his sporting events. He can take himself to his after-school events and classes. He's basically an independent child that doesn't have to rely on his parents for everything. And in my interest in maturing children, this is actually enormously important to me.

I think we infantilize teenagers and still children even, eight, nine years old, and we expect them to do things, in today's world, we keep them from doing things that they really should be doing. Throughout history, it's not been any way abnormal for eight-year-old children to run freely around a city.

But in today's world, there are various reasons that we highly restrict our children from doing that. Now, some of those reasons make sense. I think the biggest reason that makes sense has to do with the threat of vehicles. For those of you who are not parents who are just listening to this particular commentary, the way that you perceive automobiles changes enormously when you have children.

And everything that formerly seemed like, "Oh, it's no big deal," when you have children, you understand how unpredictable children are and how unpredictable cars and drivers are. And separating your children from the presence of automobiles becomes a very high concern, something that is very important. And most American cities are designed primarily around convenience of drivers and automobiles and not around the convenience of pedestrians or other forms of transit or transportation.

So this makes cities very dangerous places for children. The vehicles are the major problem. And so if you can separate vehicles out of a neighborhood, or if you can separate vehicles away from the pathways where individuals will walk or will bicycle, it creates a much more welcoming, much more wholesome environment where you can be more confident for your children going back and forth to school, going back and forth to their friends' houses.

Now, some of those things are cultural and some of those things are real. The culture has become so uptight around managing children that if you allow your children to do something that was totally normal 20 years ago, then there's a good chance that somebody's gonna call the cops on you, at least in American society.

That's a separate problem. But it is genuinely a problem that we need to create distinction and differentiation and keep the cars where the cars belong and really build neighborhoods that are safe for children. So that's a real danger. There are other dangers that people worry about. People worry about dangers from predators and things like that for children.

Those concerns obviously have to be considered, but from an analytical perspective, they really don't bear out. Today, we have far greater safety for children than ever before. And in fact, the best and safest places for children are in highly populated areas. If you have someplace like the suburbs, where there just aren't that many people out on the roads, aren't that many people out, then somebody who wishes to harm a child can often do so without a great deal of external observance.

But if your child is passing through busy city streets and somebody tries to harm him, then there's a much greater sense of safety and security for him in those city streets where there are many people around that can see and protect the child. So what I'm kind of opaquely driving at here is that it's not all about the backyard.

The backyard is really only relevant for a few years, that point in time from say two or three years old to maybe seven or eight or nine years old, where the child really just needs a place to be able to play and the noise level is super high, so you want the child to be outside of the house.

Once you get past those years, however, I think it's all this other stuff that winds up being much more impactful and much more valuable. Your 10-year-old will appreciate the park much more than a small backyard in suburbia. Your 10-year-old will appreciate proximity to friends and other families more than the particular feature of any particular house.

Your 12-year-old and 13-year-old will gain more from being able to have a higher degree of independence and autonomy, being able to come and go rather than being stuck where mom and dad have to drive this person everywhere. There are some other factors we could add in. We could talk about weather.

For example, I grew up in South Florida. I grew up where it was hot. I grew up in a house where we didn't have air conditioning and in my day, back in my day, we just played outside all year round. I didn't really care about heat. What I've observed, however, with friends and family members is that the heat has become a bigger deal.

It may be hotter than it was before or we just could be softer than we were or maybe just the distinction between an air-conditioned house and outside is more shocking than it was. But if you're in Florida or in Arizona and you're thinking about the summertime, it doesn't matter how much texture you have in the backyard, there's a good chance that the children won't wanna be in it.

And so the vote would go for the apartment complex with the indoor pool so that it can be used more. So weather is always a factor. Also though, think about factors for you as a father or for your wife as a mother. Factors of where are your friends, where is your work?

If you could live in an apartment that is two blocks away from your job and you can walk back and forth to your job, I would pick that over a house in the suburbs that's 30 minutes away from your job. Because if you can walk back and forth, not only can you trim your expenses by perhaps being a one-car family instead of a two-car family, which is convenient, but you just free up so much time.

So you can leave for work at 8.55 and you can come home for lunch, have lunch with your family, and you can be back home at 5.05 to take the children to the park, and that's when your wife gets a break. So as you obviously already know, it's not just one thing versus another.

If I had to choose between having a yard versus having a pool, probably the yard is the winner because of the ability to send the children outside, get noise separation from the house, and the fact that you're probably never going to be able to send the children unsupervised to the pool.

But if the apartment were two blocks from my work and I could walk back and forth easily, and I could come and go with the children, and I could walk them down the street to their piano teacher and everything is super integrated, I'll take the apartment because of the whole factors, especially with the park.

And we'll just insert an hour or two at the park every day, which is just around the block, rather than having the barren backyard. So I really like urban living while also recognizing that it's not the choice that most parents usually make. Where I would like to see us go is to take the things that are good about the suburbs and change the way we design houses so that we design villages that cater to the needs of families rather than just houses and we'd got to do everything ourself.

That is really the model. And the model that has been historically normal throughout time is to have clusters and clumps of houses pushed together for all of the benefits of neighborliness and community living, things like that, but then to also have common areas where all of the things that you need common areas for are set up.

And when you do that, I think you get the best of both worlds. So that's really what I would like to see us do is build and develop more village models and that integrate that without trying to do everything on individual land. When you try to do it all on your individual land, you wind up with big yards, big houses, spread out suburbs where there's not enough people nearby to get up any kind of outdoor game.

There's not enough friends. So the outdoors just doesn't seem appealing. And there's not enough real recreation spaces because it's just not big enough. You drive down a suburb and as I said, you see every seventh house has a place structure in the backyard and it's usually empty. So I appreciate the benefits of the suburbs, but I think we need to go a step further and we need to redesign the suburbs in favor of families and we need to redesign cities in favor of families.

And that's a real personal interest of mine. If you're interested in more of this, check out some of the urbanism stuff that you can find online. I would say not just bikes is probably a good introduction to that. I'm really a big fan of the strong towns work. So check out strong towns where people are actively talking about it, not just from a utopian pie in the sky, we can fix all of this, but more of how do we work with what we have, the infrastructure that we've inherited and make our towns flourish in a way that is possible.

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