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
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.
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.
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
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.