I just finished reading a book "The Old Chicago Neighborhood" with pictures and memoirs by people who grew up in Chicago mostly in the
1940s. Some of the common threads in many of the memoirs are:Your neighborhood was like a small town -- you did all your shopping and school and church and recreation in your own neighborhood, and everybody knew everybody. You might go downtown for shopping once or twice a year, but ordinarily you never left the neighborhood.
Kids had a lot of freedom. They could go to the park from dawn to well after dark and parents didn't worry about them.
Some of this was because of the 1930s depression followed by World War II. It was safe to play in the streets because there was little car traffic because of wartime gasoline rationing. Many people who had cars got rid of them or put them in storage during the war.
jhhaynes at earthlink dot net
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And Independence downtown still has the semblance of the 1930-50's era. PAT]