Last week, friends with young kids came to visit us from the suburbs in California. As we ran around Manhattan together, they looked at us and asked, “How do you do this all the time? How do you raise young kids in New York City? Do you have to get in the car every time you go somewhere? This seems crazy.” I smiled and told them that, for us, raising kids in the city is actually easier than raising them in the suburbs. We never think about getting in the car. The grocery store is two blocks away. The kids’ doctor is two blocks away. There’s a Barnes & Noble six minutes away on foot. We walk to the Met, the Natural History Museum, and Central Park. We walk to get coffee. There are playgrounds and playdates everywhere. Our building is full of kids their age, and so is our block. Once you get past the idea that raising kids in the city must be complicated, the day-to-day reality is pretty simple. We just walk out the door. And honestly, raising kids in the city is actually a whole lot easier than raising them in the suburbs.