Eyes on the street used to be provided not only by stay-at-home parents, but by other folks going about their lives: people walking through, shopkeepers, etc. Over time, modern suburbanism became more and more locked in: extreme separation of uses, strikingly non-through streets, non-street-interacting access to apartments, houses, and shops, lower density, etc. This isn't the only story, but it's certainly a part of it.
Also just general breakdown of people knowing each other in the community. When I grew up, I was a "latchkey kid" with a single parent, yet I was allowed to freely roam the neighborhood on bicycle. The idea was (or at least the perception was): If I ran into a problem, I could knock on any random neighbor's door, and 1. wouldn't get kidnapped or murdered and 2. the neighbor would know my dad and either watch over me or call him. Today, nobody knows the people who live in their neighborhood. Some people don't even know their next door neighbor. Nobody answers their door anymore either, so if you're a kid your only island of familiarity is at home.
Our neighborhood is really good at this. As far as walkability and weather goes I hate it, but we know around 20-30 of or neighbors on a first name basis. And pre-pandemic we would have somewhat regular block parties where we would grill food and setup activities for kids.
We would like to move for other reasons, but what keeps us here is because you just never know what kind of neighbors you're going to get.
That's why I said "perception". People believe kids are going to get kidnapped or murdered, even though the crime statistics don't bear this out, therefore they don't think knocking on a random door is OK anymore.
> Eyes on the street used to be provided not only by stay-at-home parents, but by other folks going about their lives: people walking through, shopkeepers, etc
Not just eyes but they were empowered to police kids as well, the local shopkeeper could "order" you to go home and confiscate the lighter you're burning leaves with without repercussion, but doing so now could just as likely end up with an angry parent coming back with the big "don't tell my kid what to do" speech. Similarly spanking was a punishment that friends parents could dish out, but this slowly faded out and now everyone is scared to make any physical contact whatsoever.
The accepted rules on what sort of justice could be dolled out by non-parents changed slowly and unevenly leaving many confused to the point where they just stay out of it entirely, or maybe just call the police for the worst infractions.
No, I would say we're living in the best times we've ever seen, and I would not want to roll back history.
I do think that modern sprawl suburbanism has some harmful elements and that other styles of urbanism and of suburbanism that don't look like we've built the last 50 years in North America have benefits.
