Of course it is US-centric, the post is from a US newspaper. Nobody would comment "This is all pretty German-centric" if the post came from a German newspaper. Maybe I don't understand your point.
That aside, I completely agree with your comment. Public spaces and well designed cities that allow for those clusters are very important to kids.
For whatever it's worth though, I don't think things were that much better in the US back in the 90s. In recent history the US has always been worse in this regard than Canada and Europe.