Addressing only the second point (technology) not the first (risks): Our neighbors have small roaming kids (near the same ages), and they have walkie-talkies that range a pretty good distance from the house. It seems like their parents can then pretty easily/quickly contact them from inside the house, and the children can also easily/quickly contact them from outside. It also looks like they make regular use of them for normal messages (e.g. “time for dinner, start heading home”) instead of emergencies-only.
I think having these, combined with having a small group (as opposed to solo) seems to help lower a bunch of the risk factors.
It really helps if there are many children. Our small municipality of 260 rowhouses used to have 5 playgrounds and now has only two. I have an old book on architecture that says you need one playground per 64 households. But I guess with the low number of children per family these days it has gone way down. It also varies from place to place. When the houses in our street were originally built many families with kids moved in. Then everybody grew older at the same rate and when we moved in most people were old. Now, 20 years later a lot of new families move in the age distribution has become more uniform. On sunny days there are always groups of two to four kids playing together somewhere.
Addressing only the second point (technology) not the first (risks): Our neighbors have small roaming kids (near the same ages), and they have walkie-talkies that range a pretty good distance from the house. It seems like their parents can then pretty easily/quickly contact them from inside the house, and the children can also easily/quickly contact them from outside. It also looks like they make regular use of them for normal messages (e.g. “time for dinner, start heading home”) instead of emergencies-only.
I think having these, combined with having a small group (as opposed to solo) seems to help lower a bunch of the risk factors.
It really helps if there are many children. Our small municipality of 260 rowhouses used to have 5 playgrounds and now has only two. I have an old book on architecture that says you need one playground per 64 households. But I guess with the low number of children per family these days it has gone way down. It also varies from place to place. When the houses in our street were originally built many families with kids moved in. Then everybody grew older at the same rate and when we moved in most people were old. Now, 20 years later a lot of new families move in the age distribution has become more uniform. On sunny days there are always groups of two to four kids playing together somewhere.