The call of the suburbs
The New York Times had an article Thursday on the disappearance of families with children from otherwise thriving urban areas.
This topic certainly resonates around the blogs I read, from 11d to finslippy. Lots of people have either moved out of cities or are struggling with the decision. Between the cost of housing, and the low quality of many urban school systems, many sworn city-dwellers start to hear the call of the surbubs after a kid or two.
Res Ipsa wonders "is it necessarily a problem if there are neighborhoods or communities where there aren’t a lot of children?"
It certainly matters to those of us who value city living and who have kids. I know I feel a stab of pain every time I see a family with young kids moving out of our neigbhorhood. Their moving is one less family to advocate for the quality of the schools, one less family using the playgrounds and keeping them safe and clean, one less family with which my kids can spontaneously play.
If you think (as I do) that our dependence on gasoline is a threat to both the world environment and to our national security, anything that forces people into suburban sprawl is a bad thing.
I also think it’s probably better for the education of poor kids in urban school systems when there are also middle-class kids in the same school systems, even if they rarely attend the same schools. Having middle-class kids in the system brings both attention and money. Affluent childless singles and empty-nesters may pay income and property taxes, but they tend to ignore the schools and — if anything — fight for lower tax rates.
March 27th, 2005 at 10:40 am
Exactly — everything you said. I’m in an urban neighborhood with a lot of middle-class families, but a bunch of them move out when their kids hit school age. As it is, we’ve got one very good public school, but if we didn’t lose so many families to the suburbs, we could probably pull the other (now truly bad) elementary school out of the the state it’s in.
March 27th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
I don’t know the land use patterns in DC as well as I do here in the midwest, but where I live it’s not always an either/or decision. My husband and I *would* like to live in the City for all the reasons of culture, community, and value, but as so many others know, I just can’t send my kids to the public schools. We’re also very committed to the public school system and unless there’s a compelling reason, my kids will stay in public schools.
So where that leaves us is in the inner ring suburbs. These areas were typically built from about the turn of the last century into the 30s or 40s. The schools here range from pretty good to excellent and we get to live in an area with older homes and a real sense of community – right in the middle of the urban area. It can be more expensive to live here – but certainly not as expensive as some of the sprawl-burbs.
My mother and her dh, however, are committed city-dwellers. They’re selling their big victorian that they bought and rennovated about 15 years ago, and moving to a rehab condo right downtown. 🙂
March 27th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
I’m not that far from you, geographically, and this issue definitely resonates with me. We are deeply committed to city living, but then again, our children are only three years old (twins). We have them in an affordable preschool now, but do not want them to go to the public school in our area, which leaves us thinking about where in the city we can move, still afford to bu a house, and be reasonably assured that there will be a school we like.
This is where the charter school debate gains a new dimension for me– I see families all around us staying in cities only if their children get into charter schools, which complicates the class and race questions that cluster with the question of charter schools– at least, it complicates it for me.
love your blog, by the way!
March 27th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
That article really irritated me. If these people were serious about getting families with young children into the area, they’d be busy passing school bond and low/moderate-income housing initiatives, not wringing their hands over vanishing soul. And frankly, I don’t believe them when they say they miss the kids. Sure, they miss the cuties, the 4-to-10-year-olds. But do they really miss the messy yards, the teenagers, the junkers, the noise? I doubt they miss it enough to pay to bring it back.
March 27th, 2005 at 9:20 pm
Just a funny thought – after reading all of finslippy’s comments (well, maybe most) it seems to me that she’s agonizing over moving to a suburban place much like where you and I live, which I think we both consider at least semi-urban (or old-suburban?). It raises the question of how urban is urban. or maybe of where does the urban imagination draw the line. I know my friends who live in Chevy Chase DC think that I live in the ‘burbs, even though I can get to work downtown faster than they can (by car or metro) and can also walk to things . . . but there is a river between me and DC, so I’m somehow further away. Very weird stuff.
March 27th, 2005 at 9:24 pm
re: Invisible _again_, goddamn it
Gaaaah! Just read the NYT Style piece on self-advertising early risers, debunking the “must have” early-rise lifestyle for success & fame. Nowhere, nowhere in there is any mention of the fact that one group of people has not only gotten up early just to get by, but has _avoided_ advertising early-rising: Mothers, especially single mothers, who are in school or have any kind of professional career. Most of whom can’t afford to leave the impression that they’re sleep-deprived and doing something unsustainable. But it’s the only time we get to ourselves while we’ve got energy, the only time to really get things done.
Happily, I have nobody to impress right now, so I’ll go first: 4:30 am. Gives me two hours of writing time before kiddo gets up. I’d get up earlier, but I think stabbing myself would feel better. I know a handful of 3 am risers, and one dissertation-finisher who’s gone to bed at 8 with her girls and gotten up at 2 — that’s right, 2 am — for the last 3 years. And my guess is there’s plenty more, because I don’t know a single student mother who doesn’t get up in the middle of the night to get the work done.
I hate getting up early, by the way. I used to have something like Cynthia Ozick’s schedule – bed at 3, up at 10:30 or so. I felt great, I was in great shape, and I had no kid. I’m convinced that screwing with your sleep rhythms is bad for your bod, and I’m not really in the kind of shape I was pre-kid, despite similar diet/exercise. And I hate having a bedtime. But, you know, it’s get up early and get the work done or go loudly insane because I’m NOT GETTING ANYTHING DONE and trust me, it’s not nice for anyone.
So pthhhbbt, Warren St. James. Next time ask the moms at CUNY what time they get up to do their homework. Now there’s one for the Style section.
March 28th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
Hip Cities Redux
The topic continues to resonate. The blogger Half Changed World raises some of the biggest concerns about what happens when childless people leave the city. Their moving is one less family to advocate for the quality of the schools, one
March 28th, 2005 at 8:59 pm
Hilary, I agree that inner ring suburbs are often a good choice. As Maggie points out, I don’t actually live in DC, but in Alexandria, which is a fairly urbanized suburb. (Although it was a city in its own right when Washington was a swamp, but that’s another story.)
I live close to the metro, and often walk to the grocery store (using the stroller to carry the heavey stuff), but the school system is overall much better than DC’s. However, the particular school we’re zoned for isn’t so hot. And anything close in is incredibly expensive these days — because traffic has gotten so bad that lots of people are willing to pay extra not to lose an hour or more a day to the beltway.
March 29th, 2005 at 10:16 pm
I have these same issues outside of Philly. I wouldn’t mind living in the city–in fact would like it very much despite my rural upbringing. My husband, not so much into city living, but could probably have been talked into it if it weren’t for the school situation. Yes, there are charter schools. There are areas where the schools are good, but they’re just as expensive to live in as the suburbs. We live in one of the older, larger and more urbanized suburbs. I can walk to our little town area and there are several other town areas within our particular suburban area. Interesting little shops, convenience stores, hair salons, all that jazz. But we’re off the train line, which means houses are cheaper, but also means we have to drive everywhere. We do often drive a couple of miles to the nearest station and take the train into the city, but I’d love to take public transportation to work. We both work in another suburb that’s on the train line. There’s also no direct bus route. It just sucks.
My boss lives in the city and is determined to try out their public school. They’re committed to becoming as involved as possible in the school and see if they can improve it. I admire her for that. Since we moved into the area without any knowledge of anything, I think that would have been hard for us to do. We just don’t have enough roots in the city to commit ourselves to that.
I have a friend who says that the fact that there are fewer kids growing up in the city is a failure of Sesame Street, which is a funny way of looking at it. 🙂