What's the way kids & dogs play outside here?

[BATCAT]

Originally Posted by homesinseattle

What shocks me these days (showing my 48 year old age here) is how little playing there is outside. I often am outside showing homes on a perfectly gorgeous day with clients, the streets are eerily quiet, I see the kids gaming inside on their computers.

Living on Capitol Hill, I notice the opposite. The very minute the weather is nice, parks are full of young adults and some families, picnicking, barbecuing, playing frisbee, people out with their dogs. It seems like as soon as it's over 65 and sunny, everyone's patience with the winter is spend and they are outside in droves...

[Stonepa]

Originally Posted by BATCAT

If you don't have a yard (or a tiny one), you go to a park- simple as that. *shrug*

Of course, not everyone wants to go to the park every time the dog needs to go out or the kids want to play. We were looking in Issaquah and gave up finding anything we liked that had a yard. The new houses, even up to $1m or so, have postage stamp sized yards.

I also have zero desire to live so close to my neighbors that I can hear them talking in the next house over.

We've moved on to looking in Woodinville.

[BATCAT]

Originally Posted by Stonepa

Of course, not everyone wants to go to the park every time the dog needs to go out or the kids want to play.

Sure, not everyone wants to. It's just what you do when you don't have a yard. I will say though that congregating in parks is a little more social than everyone in their own backyard, for better or worse.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Ira500

Unfortunately, not much built in the last twenty years is on large enough lots. The trend has been to build big houses on small lots, and to convince people that that's what they really want. Sure, older houses in Bellevue, Sammamish, Issaquah, etc have decent sized yards, but the homes built in the last 20 years are either on 3500 sq ft lots, or cost 900,000 dollars. I prefer a smaller house with a bigger yard, but I'm odd that way. As far as dogs and kids? A lot of the newer developments have playgrounds and mini parks, so instead of letting the dog out, you take a walk with the dog.

I saw that beginning to happen in my neighborhood east of Northgate, where most of the lots were double lots. A local real estate agent started buying up the larger lots, tearing down the smaller (affordable) homes, dividing the lots into two, sometimes 3 parcels, and building McMansions on them, that left no room for yards. But that's a tiny percentage of the homes in the area. The vast majority of properties in Seattle are not recently built, and have adequate yards for kids to play in. There may be neighborhoods that have undergone recent change, like parts of West Seattle, maybe, and other pockets around town, but nearly the entire north end, parts of central Seattle, Magnolia, a good chunk of West Seattle, Ballard, etc. have normal-sized yards, some have larger than the standard yard. The OP must have been in a neighborhood that's a more recent development, and somehow took that to be the norm for the entire city. Or maybe they were talking more about Issaquah and certain parts of Bellevue.