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Millennials to Small Cities: Ready or Not, Here We Come

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Re: Millennials to Small Cities: Ready or Not, Here We Come

#141

Post by xkcd-sucks »

thousandautumns wrote: post #137
saosebastiao wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. Raising children in the burbs is a nightmare.

I'm not sure I can envision a scenario where raising children in a suburb is worse than trying to do so in a city. Mind explaining?

They feel entitled to roam around in the woods without adult supervision, they come home muddy, they don't learn that you have to pay for everything, and their self-learned knowledge of manipulating the physical/natural world is scary and disempowering to tech weenie parents.

Re: Millennials to Small Cities: Ready or Not, Here We Come

#142

Post by kwoff »

I wouldn't have expected North Dakota, West Virginia, Idaho, or South Dakota..

“At The Pew Charitable Trusts, return on investment is not measured in profits but in long-lasting, positive, powerful change.”

Is this one of those "philanthropic" tax dodges that very wealthy people put their money in?

Re: Millennials to Small Cities: Ready or Not, Here We Come

#143

Post by saosebastiao »

thousandautumns wrote: post #137
saosebastiao wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. Raising children in the burbs is a nightmare.

I'm not sure I can envision a scenario where raising children in a suburb is worse than trying to do so in a city. Mind explaining?

Children are humans and are social creatures just as much as adult humans are... if not even more so. It is helpful to be around things that humans enjoy culturally, whether that is museums, sports stadiums, restaurants, parks and playgrounds, or just people in general. Population centers allow for critical mass of a lot of things that children enjoy that don’t exist elsewhere (one example in my case is a boys gymnastics competitive team, which is nearly impossible to find outside of cities).

Perhaps most importantly my children spend almost zero time in cars, and will be afforded a freedom that I never had as a suburbanite child...the freedom to go where they want without the explicit accommodation of an adult with a drivers license. It’s also helpful for kids to be afraid of things that can likely hurt them, like cars, and not afraid of things that aren’t likely to hurt them, like black people, gay people, foreign languages, or atheists.

Re: Millennials to Small Cities: Ready or Not, Here We Come

#144

Post by naskwo »

saosebastiao wrote: post #143
thousandautumns wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I can envision a scenario where raising children in a suburb is worse than trying to do so in a city. Mind explaining?

Children are humans and are social creatures just as much as adult humans are... if not even more so. It is helpful to be around things that humans enjoy culturally, whether that is museums, sports stadiums, restaurants, parks and playgrounds, or just people in general. Population centers allow for critical mass of a lot of things that children enjoy that don’t exist elsewhere (one example in my case is a boys gymnas…

This is why I moved back to the Netherlands after years in California. My children and I can bicycle most everywhere (schools, supermarkets, sports) and there is an excellent public transportation grid.

The freedom afforded to teenagers by being able to safely bicycle on dedicated bike paths is hard to beat.

Re: Millennials to Small Cities: Ready or Not, Here We Come

#145

Post by Chiba-City »

thousandautumns wrote: post #136
Chiba-City wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree entirely. Every minute wasted in transit is wasted. I was lucky to make the most of a private school scholarship (Baltimore) and received overlapping theater, voice, writing, instrumental and athletic training alongside academic training and "gifted" early science training provided by state government. From city centers like Boston and DC I was exposed to the world many Americans only know through pictures…

Wow, quite the extreme take there, and a strawman argument at that. I don't know why you think that the alternative to not living in a city is a life "in remote isolation with delusions of Swiss Family Robinson self-sufficiency". The original comment even specifically referred to suburbs. Transit may be wasted time, but for the vast majority of people, that transit consists almost entirely of going to and from work.…

That was poetically agressive. I recommend checking out Strong Towns. Across our shifting political and geographic spectrum folks are looking at 2 phenomena that landed Americans in peculiar distributions. First, Eisenhower era highway building. Even early suburbanization was under panic defense logistics influence. Second was supersizing suburbia with white flight overlapping deindustrialization. We need not moralize to calculate the engineering of that with calculable overlapping downstream costs and grim actuarial funding pictures. Those narratives overlap generations kicked off farms into those cities not long ago.

North Americans who buy homes move every 7 years on average. We have troubles building value in places where people stay over generations to enjoy it. Even educators are learning that "tickets out" is too abstract a target to motivate remote kids to study in schools. We inherited our little patches of planet and histories, but we should not normalize our current widespread displacements. Folks are migrating to specific places for different reasons we can examine on maps. Other folks in tons of places have troubles making a go of where they are for reasons we understand and cannot fix. [Edit: grammar]

Re: Millennials to Small Cities: Ready or Not, Here We Come

#146

Post by vanilla_nut »

naskwo wrote: post #144
saosebastiao wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are humans and are social creatures just as much as adult humans are... if not even more so. It is helpful to be around things that humans enjoy culturally, whether that is museums, sports stadiums, restaurants, parks and playgrounds, or just people in general. Population centers allow for critical mass of a lot of things that children enjoy that don’t exist elsewhere (one example in my case is a boys gymnas…

This is why I moved back to the Netherlands after years in California. My children and I can bicycle most everywhere (schools, supermarkets, sports) and there is an excellent public transportation grid. The freedom afforded to teenagers by being able to safely bicycle on dedicated bike paths is hard to beat.

I realize this will probably go unseen, but as someone who was raised in the middle of nowhere by parents who refused to drive me anywhere to socialize with other kids my age... know that you're doing your children a massive favor. I wish my parents had a tenth your good sense.

Re: Millennials to Small Cities: Ready or Not, Here We Come

#147

Post by vanilla_nut »

humanrebar wrote: post #114
Johnny555 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With minimal impact on commute times That works up to a point, but eventually as more people move out of downtown to less expensive suburbs, roads start to clog and the community can't afford the billions of dollars it would take to build more freeways or public transit.

In small towns businesses are also often smaller and it's easier to get the boss or owner to OK a work schedule that avoids rush hour traffic.

[citation needed]

Re: Millennials to Small Cities: Ready or Not, Here We Come

#148

Post by alexandercrohde »

saosebastiao wrote: post #125
alexandercrohde wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to go to an actual grocery store and you live in a city you're going to spend more than 10 minutes walking. Plus you won't even have access to Walmart, Costco, etc.

In the 6 apartments I’ve lived in in the 5 years I’ve lived in Seattle, I’ve never had fewer than 3 grocery stores within a 10 minute walk.

Well I lived in SF and in NYC presently. Unless you count corner stores (and I don't, because they are exorbinantly expensive) 10 minutes is better than average for those two cities.

Re: Millennials to Small Cities: Ready or Not, Here We Come

#149

Post by sitkack »

humanrebar wrote: post #64
sitkack wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School funds should be distributed equally across the entire population. If we were a democracy, rich neighborhoods wouldn't have better schools.

> If we were a democracy, rich neighborhoods wouldn't have better schools. If we were a democracy, you'd be able to have more choice in how your children were educated. Switching schools or otherwise opting for more innovative educational approaches would be much more viable. People buy into school districts because that's, bottom line, the only way to have a say in your kids' education.

Democracy isn't just about choice. It includes access, privilege and equality.

I think the imbalance in school district efficacy has more to do with classism and a "just universe" than anything else. The betters should have it better.

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