Where do the children play?

As a parent, I relate to all this. Great piece.

When the kids were babies we had the standard debate of move to the countryside for fresh air and gambolling in the fields etc. But so glad we stayed in London, the kids have so much freedom with public transport they can organise their own meet ups and activities and go running around all over town without any parental assistance or intervention at all. Whereas elsewhere we'd need to drive them everywhere, they'd be stuck at home way more, they'd have no real agency in their lives - I grew up like that and hated it.

I can relate. Nice article. We had that same debate and ended up moving to the countryside. Surprisingly, it worked out well. + real forests. With today’s e-bikes, even hills or longer distances aren’t really a blocker for kids anymore. In the end, it feels like the bigger factor is how you organize daily life, not whether you’re in a city or in a rural area.

Whitewashing motorcycles as e-bikes scares me more than anything else for the next generation.

Limited to 25 kph they seem fine (if only just, and a helmet is a good idea at that speed) but violations and disabled limiters are common

>With today’s e-bikes, even hills or longer distances aren’t really a blocker for kids anymore

Unlike public transport, with an e-bike, the chances of getting a puncture or a malfunctioning battery increase with usage. Plus, there is also the very common bike theft and road accidents if you live in a country where bikes need to go on the road (like the UK)

There's a middle-ground between a big city and full countryside.

I lived my childhood in a place with about 4000 people in it. School, friends and everything else I needed was within walking, or at least biking distance. My parents didn't have to drive me everywhere. Obviously there weren't as many possible hobbies and events as in big cities, but mobility wasn't an issue.

I have just done the opposite - left London for the countryside and am currently very much enjoying it. As our toddler gets older it will interesting to see how we deal with the challenges of letting them find their own space.

It doesn’t take much time to fix a puncture with a tiny kit the size of a matchbox. There are also tubeless tires with liquid sealant.

An e-bike with a dead battery becomes a heavy bike.

Theft and accidents, okay, but the first sentence is just fearmongering.

Likewise. All my friends were within cycling distance and we had nature to play in. Personally I can't imagine growing up in a city like London.

Smaller cities with about 40k-200k inhabitants can also be a nice sweet spot: big enough to have a decent number of events and hobby opportunities, small enough that you have low-traffic sidestreets within walking distance of the city center, and nature is still very much in reach

Assuming a European city layout where a city center exists and the 200k inhabitants aren't all spread out into suburban sprawl. Suburbia quickly kills the idea of walking and biking distances

You're more thinking suburban, or super rural. I grew up in a rural Welsh town (~3000 people), and was is walking distance of basically everyone we knew. I walked to school, to the pool, to the shops, my friends, everything.

Cities feel riskier, but in many ways they offer more room to grow. Kids don't just need nature; they need space to navigate the world on their own terms

Wait, how old are your kids, that they gallivant around London on their own? Are we talking about teenagers?

Because yeah, I agree with you that in that sense cities are better than the often car-centric countryside for teenagers; but for young kids (elementary school and below, which is what the article covers) it's a very different equation.

I relate to this as the parent I am and the kid I was.

I went to boarding school in the 80’s and 90’s. There were houses, there was the school, the masters, the usual abuses - but there were also the gangs. They’d all have a name along the lines of “The Orcs” or “The Goonies”, and a clubhouse built of scrap and brush somewhere in the woodland attached to the school, usually accessible only by crawling through tunnels of brambles and a hidden trapdoor, and knowing where the tripwires and murderous sash weights were concealed. Most would have a few dozen boys in them, spread over the five years of the school. Younger boys would be skivvies, diggers, and by the time you were 12 you’d be a war chief, and organising and leading raids against other camps. Old pool cover was a particularly sought after commodity during raids - not only did it keep the rain out, but it kept the place warm in the winters.

Outside of term I’d go and saunter around abandoned factories and rail yards near our home.

Anyway. I think they cut the woodland down decades ago to replace it with more playing fields.

That thing, however - that little, tribal community of kids - is very much live and kicking, but non the west, very much no longer in the physical world.

My kid is being raised in a forest - and I’m acutely aware that sooner rather than later she is going to need a gang.

There's two aspect of "country" relative to somewhere like London. There's an estate in various towns, where there's plenty of actual public space, playing fields and grounds, walk into town, to shops, bus/train to larger towns. Plenty of open space.

Then there's the real country, where there's very little public space - nowhere to ride a bike other than narrow country roads, you can walk but only in restrictive footpaths over fields - some of which are sabotaged by farmers (I file 2 or 3 complaints with the right-of-way office each year as footpaths get blocked, barbed wire put over stiles, etc). We have an open forest area, but it's a 2 mile walk.

There are 4 children in our village at the "local" primary school, across the 7 years. My youngest's nearest friend is 6 miles away - again via 60mph roads. That means having to be driven to places. There is a school bus (which for americans reading is relatively rare in the UK -- you get one upto age 11 if you live more than 2 miles from the nearest school, or 3 miles for 11-16), but that doesn't help for after school clubs.

A toddler isn't going to be independent with travel, so driving them places is fine. In a few years though, you want them to be able to travel and meet friends, go to the shop etc, independently. That's easy enough in a city or in a town, not in the country.

That said, just having that access doesn't mean they will use it. My 13 year old's main social interaction is via minecraft sessions where they have a group call and yell at each other, doesn't matter if someone lives nearby (which one of the group does), or 30 miles away (which another does).

(It's worth highlighting that UK suburbia is very different to US suburbia)

We haven’t had a malfunctioning battery in ~40 000km of ebike use in our family. We have one that failed to charge due to age. The number of times we ran out of battery due to forgetting to charge can be counted on one hand. The number of flat tires is in the single digits - modern general use tires are really sturdy, especially if you combine them with sealant.

Why? Plenty of elementary aged kids use the tube

Legal e-bikes are fine. The ones you are complaining about are probably illegal, not that there is any real enforcement.

Not really. I live in Zone 4/5 West London (postcode TW area), and kids as young as I'd say around 9 or 10 are getting themselves to school on buses, trains and tubes every day. Not much different to my day - I was taking myself to school around 7/8 years old living in a small (10k pop.) semi-rural town.

After school they're getting themselves home as well, often in groups causing the traditional nuisance in newsagents and supermarkets (thank god the energy drinks are now not sold to kids!), and going to parks and whatever.

I think they have to be a little older to confidently get their way into Zone 1 on their own if they should need to, but I regularly see youngsters I'd guess are 11-12 years old going into town on their own, clearly to meet friends.

Despite what the media (and for crying out loud, the US President), says, London is actually a remarkably safe city. Murder/homicides are at a low they haven't been at for decades (possibly centuries), and while sexual assaults are rising, that is seen as mostly attributable to more reporting (victims coming forward more). In the case of assault on a child, that's more likely to occur in a family setting than it is in a public place during daylight hours.

Do they? I don't think I've seen anyone younger than 12 unattended on the tube

The DLR at some hours between some stops is practically a school bus.

I guess it's possible they're small but not <12yo

I grew up in a town outside of London (100k pop.) and it was pretty decent as I could walk pretty much everywhere.

I live in a massive city now (1.5m pop.) and I'd be nervous to let my kids walk around alone because there's quite a lot of crime.

I feel a town is probably the sweet spot.

Serious Q: What is the fundamental difference between a legal and illegal e-bike. This largely is differentiated by the location but I don't know what illegal e-bike means.

The other comments already pointed out that there is plenty to do for kids growing up in villages - it's not until they're teenagers that it becomes limiting, really (speaking from personal experience and what I was told by friends who also grew up in the countryside).

Funny that you're talking about having to drive them everywhere though, because the main worry I have as a parent is the impact of car traffic on child safety.

I grew up in a Dutch village of 1500 people, and my parents let me wander about from when I was five, six years old or so. If I still lived there I would feel completely comfortable with giving my child the same freedom (once she's old enough - she's only a toddler now).

The main reason for that is that there is only one road that goes through village. Everything else is a street (see the wiki page on "stroads" for a clarification about the distinction [0]). And anyone driving through the village knows there might be kids playing there.

Contrast that with where I currently live: in apartment block in a city that is right next to a crossing of two stroads. We actually have very nice parks and playgrounds within walking distance. But to get here we have to cross at least one road or stroad. The thought of letting a six year old do that by herself scares me.

On a rational level I'm aware that this is probably my sheltered upbringing and that she will understand the dangers of car traffic better than I did at the age of six because she's growing up in a city, but I can't help but worry that she'll underestimate it until she's a bit older - a voice in my goes "it doesn't matter how often she does do it right, she only has to absentmindedly cross the road and get herself run over once."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad

Same, somewhat bigger town but it had everything within walking or cycling distance, it was only when I was 17 or so that I had to cycle to the next town over for school. But small towns are emptying out too, a lot of aging, elementary schools are merging and closing, local shops and amenities are closing down. The town used to have a bank, post office and police station, but banking and mailing changed to the point where it was no longer viable to have those services in town.

I'm going to get criticism because I feel HN is mostly urban based... but I don't think kids need "cities" to grow. They need nature.

I picture rural/suburban areas that aren't fully built out with small wooded areas , creeks and playground 5-10 minute walk. They need to get dirty, play in water etc.

When I think cities, I think dense urban areas that rarely offer this unless living in a expensive or unique neighborhood (like within 1-2 blocks of Central Park or Prospect Park).

I live in suburbia in a sprawling European city of 200K inhabitants, and design can fix a lot of that. The neighbourhoods are designed like little towns themselves, each having stores, schools, day cares, sports / leisure activities, restaurants and other businesses of their own, as well as playgrounds and nature areas which are often used by local youths to build shelters and play in.

The old city center - museums, historical buildings, big library, cinema, theater etc - is a longer trek, but still doable in ~20 minutes cycling. Plus there's trains and buses.

TL;DR, suburban doesn't mean it should kill things being in reasonable distances. However, big caveat, it's all kind of built in a compact way; garden space is often limited (total ground is usually 2x the house itself, so 50m2 ground floor space + 50m2 garden), roads are narrow (but this is good because it's bike / pedestrian optimized, cars can't go fast), etc. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinex-location for a superficial description, or look at a map of Dutch suburbs or houses (https://www.funda.nl/) to see what it's like.

Didn't you have a bicycle?

I dunno - I have a seven year old whom I try to allow to be as feral as possible. We let him go alone to the neighborhood park, which requires seven small residential street crossings. But I would hesitate also about a multi-lane stroad if there wasn't a lot of pedestrian traffic. Kids are small and cars have gotten huge and drivers are very distracted, especially post-pandemic.

(We're in the US, and I draw the line at letting him cross ordinary 25mph residential streets but not the "25mph" artery road on which many of the drivers go 40mph. It's only one lane in each direction but there are no lights or crossings and the effective speed is quite high.)

You're right. Personally, now that it's getting wet and cold, I'm getting kind of landlocked by mud. There's one tarmac road out in both directions, but only one of them leads to somewhere that somewhat resembles civilisation, or has pavement.

Maximum power output and maximum (assisted) speed are generally legislated. In the UK, an e-bike is up to 250 W and 25 kph. More than that, it would classify as a motorbike and you'd need a license (not particularly onerous). The bike itself is often built differently to accommodate the different power profile.

As a pedal cyclist, I feel that's a reasonably sensible limit as much faster than that you should be more experienced as a cyclist to control the bike and anticipate the conditions.

That seems like a sensible cut-off point. You would probably (and probably rightfully) laugh at what I consider a stroad in the Swedish city of Malmö where I live, with traffic lights and zebra crossings everywhere. Like I said, I know on a rational level that my fear is irrationally heightened from my own memories of being extremely careless at a young age because I safely could be.

In addition to the other answer you got. E-bikes are pedal assist, so illegal ones usually have throttles in addition to more powerful motors. This depends on the region though.

I used to live round the corner from a private school in London (ages 5-16 or 5-18, not sure).

They were never on the tube with me, but plenty of children would be arriving at about 8:15, as I was departing to get to work for 9:00. Private school children are more likely to have a longer journey to school, therefore less likely to have a direct bus, and presumably more likely to have parents who will pay for the tube/train. (Only buses are free for children.)

> It doesn’t take much time to fix a puncture with a tiny kit the size of a matchbox.

That's a dependency. Now you need to remember to have that kit with you. This is like solving the short battery life in phones with a portable battery charger. You still have to remember to charge the charger beforehand and bring it with you. Small kits are easy to lose sight of that by the time you need them so you don't know where they are.

Tubeless tires are sadly not compatible with most bikes. I am not trying to be downer, this is just my experience (losing the kit and finding out that the bike I bought is not compatible with tubeless tires). I do agree though that bikes are definitely the way to go. But I wouldn't rely on them too much, especially on the electric components. Humans have a tendency to aim for convenience above all and being stranded in the middle of nowhere with dead phone and a bike with a dead battery in winter is not fun

Must have been a high end bike because the ones I have used have had multiple punctures within a year and running out of battery in the middle of trip has happened several times which is not great if you live in a hilly area

The bosch drivetrain is pretty much bog standard on the german market and available on almost all price classes and Schwalbe Marathon/Big Apple tires are aren't exactly restricted to the higher price classes as well.

Now, if you're riding Mountainbike or Gravel tires, your tradeoffs are different - they sacrifice puncture resilience in favor of less weight.

The thing that cities provide that's harder to access in the countryside is exposure to people other than you, with different (not necessarily incompatible) perspectives and value systems. I think it's actually really important for kids to be exposed to people that disagree with their parents and learn that people can disagree with their parents while still being reasonable, kind people that their parents more or less trust in their presence.

Rural and suburban communities are far more likely to be a monoculture than cities, which, if you're not careful, can make your child's social development trickier.

It's by no means universal or impossible, just a consideration I don't see verbalized a whole lot.

> There are 4 children in our village at the "local" primary school

Four? How... What? How does any of this actually work (you clearly live there, so it obviously does?) That seems like you're living somewhere that's just like ... empty? How do any services/infrastructure/... How many old people live in this village?

Is this the demographic collapse people are going on about?

When I was growing up 90-ies, a mix of using public metro and buses to roam the city (since I was in second grade, when I was allowed to take metro to do afterschool karate) and spending summers in various countryside locations where my grandparents resided was a good mix.

I disagree that the kids need or want to roam without grownups all the time. Grownups are not the problem. Kids are fun for the parents, the company of parents and their peers is kinda amazing.

Systems and institutions are the problem. When kids are stuck in the daycare or school, in a very limited space, grownups are stuck at the office and grandparents are in a different state for tax purposes - that is the problem.

I don't know if this is true, but Patagonia claimed at some point that they used to maintain daycares and allow kids to roam the campus...

I also really like that you can find groups of people doing the same thing you like to do, no matter how niche it is.

This sounds really different from present-day America where helicoptering seems to be the new default. sigh.

I grew up with something different - "go out and play", coming back for dinner.

The “high-end”-ness of a bike and the likelihood of punctures are completely orthogonal. You can get a low-end e-bike and just put decent tires on it. Since weight is less of an issue with e-bikes than acoustic bikes, it’s common for people to choose heavier tires like Schwalbe Pickups that offer very high puncture-resistance.

> That's a dependency. Now you need to remember to have that kit with you.

You put it on the bike and don’t worry about it. This is less onerous than remembering your bus pass or cars keys.

People have been stashing a puncture repair kit in a small saddle bag since the nineteenth century. The kit just sits there until it is needed, potentially for years. To depict this as a big stress and risk is a real reach.

That sounds like the village in which I spent my teens. Population of ~500, and for <18s there was myself, my sibling, and there was a "new" housing estate had a handful of kids around 5.

We didn't have nice paths, there was a (former) main road going through the middle of the village. As far as local infrastructure, there was the pub, a car mechanic, and every few years a corner shop would open up and last about 2-3 years before shutting down again.

If you needed groceries you went to the larger village (population ~1000) which was about a 40 minute walk along the main road (which only got dedicated pavements after I had moved out), or a 5 minute drive. For amenities that larger village had 2 bars, 2 churches, a takeaway, a supermarket, a primary school and a garden centre.

If you needed anything more than groceries, you needed to go to one of the nearby towns which were ~20-30 minutes by car and (according to google maps) ~2 hours walk.

You can find mono-culture in both cities and rural areas. In cities there are more options, but in rural areas you can really get into it. In cities you can select from several different mono-cultures and ignore all others. In rural areas you can really get deep though because a commune can ensure you never encounter anything else, while in cities you still see them on the streets you just don't interact (though my experience is communes have outsiders come in for various supplies from time to time). If you don't live in a commune though rural areas don't provide choice - your neighbor is the only option no matter how strange they are.

Right. Most people in "rural" places live in small towns. My wife went to high school in a rural Iowa town with 2,000 people. You can walk from the high school to anywhere in town in 30 minutes.

E-Bikes are sold & regulated in "classes" (at least where I live in the US).

A class 1 e-bike is pedal-assist and stops assisting beyond 20mph (mine, for instance, tapers off starting probably around 15 mph).

A class 2 is the above, plus a throttle.

A class 3 is anything that assists over 20mph. The "basically motorcycle" set exists here.

That's about here, although the town is only a 10 minute drive.

And people moan that some kids get taxis to school, because the government has decided that it's not worth operating a school closer than 5 miles, but when you need to shift 2 people you don't put on a minibus.

There's only two primary schools within 10 miles which have fewer than 50 pupils on the (7 year) roll though, it's not an overly rural area. I suspect townies would have palpitations when they find out about state boarding schools, because if you live on Tresco you can't commute to the high school every day

>On a rational level I'm aware that this is probably my sheltered upbringing and that she will understand the dangers of car traffic better than I did

She can understand it all she wants, it won’t make a difference to a driver who is texting in a huge suv/pickup truck with a hood twice your daughter’s height.

It is objectively more dangerous to be a pedestrian/bicyclist/even a person in a smaller car than in previous decades.

And if it’s dark or raining outside, forget about it. Crossing a 50ft wide road with a 40mph speed limit (which means people are actually distracted driving at 50mph) as a kid is daunting.

A 50ft wide road is just 5 lanes, 2 in each direction, and 1 turning lane. Very common in the US, even in small communities.

My parents like to tell the story about me getting bored at kindergarten class one day.

I grew up in a residential area in a city of several million people.

The teachers had let the kids out for recess. But even that amount of playful distraction didn't diminish my boredom that day.

So I went home.

In the middle of the school day.

Without the teacher finding out...

I had to cross a stroad to get home - two lanes each way. I can't recall if I crossed at the street light or at a crosswalk a few blocks away. But I made my way home unscathed. My mom was surprised when I showed up at home a few hours early.

The next few days at school, I could feel the teacher's eyes boring into my back as I played during recess. Definitely felt like I was being watched for awhile. :)

I think the problem with your thought is that it really requires a "stars to align perfectly" kind of thing for that to actually be achieved, especially over the long-term.

Many people had that sort of experience in say....the 1950-2000. You had a lot of smaller new developments bulldozed into new areas, and for the first 20 years especially - almost everyone who moved in to those new homes, moved in at a similar time and with young children of a similar age.

In this way, those pockets of suburbia had a bunch of temporary features. You had a much higher quantity of local children within walking distance than would naturally be the case in the long-term for that number of mid-sized SFH homes, and you had a highly developed area with a highly undeveloped area nearby. (land not yet turned into subdivisions like your own).

But a few decades down the line, even without the large behavioral shifts in society - now you've got an endless sea of divided-up suburbia with no nearby wilderness accessible by children on foot/bike, and there's only 2 nearby kids of the same age range rather than 20.

Which is to say - I think it's very difficult to achieve that as as a stable long-term environment, at least with the typical US SFH subdivision density.

And once you get out to rural you run into the problem of the kids not being able to see each other without parental involvement.

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Anyway, I did grow up in a "goldlocks zone" environment like you describe. It was very nice, and I was particularly adventurous + had more relaxed than average parents.

But I actually found in (Upstate NY) college that the kids who had the most similar levels of life experience to me were the...NYC kids. The city enabled and outright required them to be much more independent than the more normal US suburb experience was. They'd be taking transit all over the city, many even just to get to school by middle/high school - and then after school they'd be going out with their friends to get snacks or hang out in the park or whatever.

In contrast, many of the "average" suburb peers had basically never been able to go a single place in their lives without an adult driving them until maybe they got a license at 16-17 and seemed very limited in their development for it.

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tl;dr - I think the idealized version of a suburb can be good for it, the average US suburb can't stay that way, but I also think major cities offer a lot of potential for them. Denser + walkable medium towns + nature outside them could also be good - but that's more of a EU than US development pattern.

Curious what age you started letting them ride the tube on their own? I’m in London as well and we’re starting to have the “walk to school” conversation but it is still early days and a 15 minute jaunt so not nothing.

We live in the mountains , our kids ski all the time , lots to do in the summer, can bike and walk everywhere, not sure what you’re on about?

In the United States, throttle-only ebikes that go up to 20 miles per hour (Class 2 ebikes) are legal pretty much everywhere. They're required to have functional pedals, but no pedal assist function is required.

Your class 3 definition is inaccurate. Class 3 is limited to 28mph and cannot have a throttle, only pedal assist.

Anything that doesn't fall in one of those classes is a motorcycle that is not street legal and can only be rudden of private property (unless you can convince your DMV to give you registration as a motor vehicle.)

This can vary somewhat from state to state, but most states have adopted or are moving to adopt these classes.

Why do they “need” nature?

Looking back on my childhood, I think I got tremendous value from the diversity of experiences I was exposed to, not any one specific thing. The nature at my grandfather’s dacha was lovely and enjoyable, but so was urban life in a 4m+ population city. Both contributed equally to the adult I’ve become.

Rural in Wales is not like rural in most of North America.

A lot of older small towns are good but newer stuff tends to be built along highways with no other connecting roads, and more spread out

Also, a lot of the "rural" population in census data is actually living in outer suburbs and newer suburbs tend to be pretty unsafe for kids to walk/bike around

The post I responded to mentioned this:

> But so glad we stayed in London

So I figure they are UK based and not in North America.

"Despite what the media (and for crying out loud, the US President), says, London is actually a remarkably safe city."

I'm not sure what the media or president is saying, but looking at the data I would not call it "remarkably safe". It sounds like the London violent crime rate is 28 per 1000 while New York and Los Angeles are about 700 per 100,000. I wouldn't let my kids ride public transport all over those cities until they were at least teens (the laws might not allow it anyways).

Are you calling 12y olds small? That is an age many female already have their periods. My youngest daughter is 12y old and almost 1m70 (5'7").

In some countries and even US states this is already an age you can marry.

> They need to get dirty, play in water etc.

cities != concrete

There are plenty of well sized parks in many cities. In some case there are even beaches, woods and mountains. Mine has all three.

All the rural towns I've been to in Texas are just farm roads that you'd never want to walk down and towns with no real centers/plazas to hang out at (and you'd have to drive there anyways).

Then I moved to Mexico and they were on to something there: small towns have central plazas that are heavily used for social activities, young men and women can walk around meeting each other, and they build densely enough to where you can walk around the town.

So I envy anyone whose rural US upbringing is like your wife's. I didn't think we had that as an option anywhere in the US except for movies.

Samesies. It wasn't until my friend group in rural Texas got enough licenses that we could actually drive somewhere to hang out that spending time together outside of school became plausible.

Most small towns in New England are laid out like those towns in Mexico. I wonder if it's a question of age? The pressure to create town squares must have been a lot higher before the automobile came around.

Without court approval, no one under 16 can get married in any US state.

I think in the western US, the government gave people parcels of land but the land may have been far away from population centers.

> To depict this as a big stress and risk is a real reach.

Yet here we are, living in a world where most parents would NOT let their kids travel around unsupervised even though it has been going on for longer than the 19th century. People have also been making fires for far longer than that. Both of these are depicted as big risks. You might find it a real reach or not but the overall point is that we don't live in a 19th century world anymore and our worldview is for better or worse different.

Try ask parents who can't barely make ends meet to get a puncture repair kit for their kid. You know the kit will be a cheap 5 star rated one from Amazon/Temu and the second it gets needed it won't work as it is meant to. This is reality

That is what University is for ;)

I don't think they need that at K->grade school level (or younger) where they are first realizing how big the world actually is by exploring safely. You start with your room, your house, your yard, then spiral out until you gain confidence. Hard to do that in a dense urban area by yourself.

for travel to school was 10, but was direct no changes and only a short walk the other end. then for social etc from around 12, by 13 travelling all over london on trains, buses, tubes, albeit always with friends, then alone probably 14

Man, your post is just so out of touch. Puncture-repair kits are cheap, you can find them from hardware stores for just a couple of euro even in countries seen as expensive. And those kits work just fine regardless of how cheap they are, because the tech is so simple and unchanged since a century ago: rubber patch, chunk of metal to work as a tire lever, tiny piece of sandpaper or other abrasive, rubber cement. As long as that rubber-cement tube stays unopened, that kit will last years inside a saddle bag.

I spend a lot of time traveling the world by bicycle (hence the HN username), and I have bought cheap Chinese puncture-repair kits around the developing world, whether in China itself, Central Asia, or Sub-Saharan Africa. They have always served me fine.