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America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

theatlantic.com

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Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#121

Post by Kalium »

raducu wrote: post #83
Kalium wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be worth considering that there are non-punitive ways to encourage having children - universal provision of child care seems to work. Carrots tend to be more popular than sticks.

Sure, but realistically that money has to come from somewhere, I never considered that explicitly calling it a childless tax would be thought as punitive. Free childcare is why I don't think tax exemptions for parents actully work or are fair -- because low income people don't really benefit from it, the costs of raising children are pretty much fixed at a given age.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704187604576288...

Fairness aside, the question of if it works seems reasonably well-studied. Among other things it can really decrease the disruption to someone's professional life from becoming a parent, which is something that leads a lot of people to delay or avoid doing so.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#122

Post by Izkata »

kccqzy wrote: post #26
madhadron wrote: post #14

I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. Beyond it is as asphalt with two ton steel contraptions w…

> replace them with low rise cohousing communities I agree with almost everything you say but this. Why low rise? With high rises, we can use less space for housing and we would have more space for parks, libraries, and greenery.

Probably one of two things, one of which I believe is a mistaken correlation:

* High-rises block more of the sky, making it not seems as worthwhile to go outside.

* Mental detachment from the local area.

The second one is what I've only in the past year or so realized myself. I used to live on the 3rd floor of a 3-floor building, and my apartment had a front and back entrance. The front entrance went to inside stairs out to the front of the building, but the back entrance when straight outside to a wooden porch, then had wooden steps down to ground level. Where I am now, only on the 5th floor of 24, there's only one entrance, to a hallway where I take the elevator to go down and outside.

At my old place, I regularly went outside to do whatever on a whim. Nowadays, it's a really rare thing. And while there is a low-rise/high-rise correlation, I think it's the patio and the stairs, vs the hallway and the elevator that actually caused it. Having so much more distance between inside and outside creates an emotional distance where you don't even think about the outside, let alone decide whether or not to bother.

I've yet to live in one, but I'm thinking if the high-rises have balconies, it would create the same effect as that patio did for me.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#124

Post by dmitrygr »

dpeck wrote: post #88
tathougies wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So my moms parents had three children and my dads five. So not huge families but large. They grew up in a city in a third world country and frankly their childhood was a lot more dangerous than your imagined paranoia. Also your ideas of children are way off. We have a seven month old and we read to her, take her to the library, go to space talks, etc. Actually we do a lot more intellectual stuff now. My wife has take…

| Parks exist in most urban areas and are perfect for kids to play in. Minus the used needles and other debris that litter many of them. It’s a sad state that that’s the best place people with drug problems can go, but it seems they don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s just not where I want to bring my kid to hangout.

Singapore solved this problem, and we should probably follow their example

> Singapore's top diplomat in the UK, Michael Teo, defended Singapore's harsh drug laws by pointing to the country's lower rates for drug use.

"8.2% of the UK population are cannabis abusers; in Singapore, it is 0.005%. For ecstasy, the figures are 1.8% for the UK and 0.003% for Singapore; and for opiates—such as heroin, opium, and morphine - 0.9% for the UK and 0.005% for Singapore," claimed Teo. "We do not have traffickers pushing drugs openly in the streets, nor do we need to run needle exchange centers."

https://www.tripsavvy.com/drug-laws-in-singapore-1629780

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#125

Post by rayiner »

joebadmo wrote: post #113
rootusrootus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They must be so bored… Your preconceived notions of what suburban living is like are just as inaccurate as the perceptions of city life of the person you responded to.

I grew up in suburbs, and couldn't go anywhere without a car, so I was very bored and watched a lot of television (though I read a lot of books, too). Currently raising two kids in an urban center, and I'm excited for them to have way more opportunities than I had.

We raised our daughter from 0-5 in big cities, and there is definitely a huge appeal to that. But on the flip side, kids don’t need to “go anywhere.” They just need other kids around. When I grew up, we just roamed the neighborhood causing trouble. That element is missing in most cities today. You can’t just count on having a mess of kids on your block. Parents are the minority, so they have to more consciously get together and schedule activities with other parents.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#126

Post by fzeroracer »

compiler-guy wrote: post #104
fzeroracer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, that's just wrong. You need to be only above 1.0 children per couple on average in order to maintain population growth. You don't need 2 children per woman and mandating that sort of thing would be absurd, not to mention sexist (in the way that it reduces the autonomy of women and removes the choice of having children). For two, humanity has no innate value that makes maintaining infinite population growth s…

Not commenting on any other part of your post, but, replacement fertility rate is roughly 2.1 children per woman. In other words, to sustain a population at its current level, most women need to have two babies, and some need to have three. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

Fair enough, I'll concede that point.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#127

Post by mattupstate »

madhadron wrote: post #14

I look at it a little differently. The urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places for anyone to be. You step outside your door...into an empty hallway of doors. You take an elevator or stairs down to a place with a few mailboxes, then step outside. Outside, you have a narrow strip of concrete, possibly with a few trees, that you are allowed to inhabit. Beyond it is as asphalt with two ton steel contraptions w…

Sounds like the words of someone who didn't grow up in a city, currently/recently lives/lived in one they dislike, and hasn't found happiness somewhere else.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#128

Post by refurb »

dmitrygr wrote: post #124
dpeck wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| Parks exist in most urban areas and are perfect for kids to play in. Minus the used needles and other debris that litter many of them. It’s a sad state that that’s the best place people with drug problems can go, but it seems they don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s just not where I want to bring my kid to hangout.

Singapore solved this problem, and we should probably follow their example > Singapore's top diplomat in the UK, Michael Teo, defended Singapore's harsh drug laws by pointing to the country's lower rates for drug use. "8.2% of the UK population are cannabis abusers; in Singapore, it is 0.005%. For ecstasy, the figures are 1.8% for the UK and 0.003% for Singapore; and for opiates—such as heroin, opium, and morphine -…

Solved by extremely harsh penalties including execution.

Not exactly aligned with Western countries of human rights.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#129

Post by souprock »

1stcity3rdcoast wrote: post #61
dahfizz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's harder than ever relative to living in the suburbs . Every day the suburbs get cheaper, more spacious, and more enjoyable relative to the city.

For you, perhaps. But for me and my family, raising children in the densest urban core is a highly enjoyable experience. Imagine never being in traffic again. Having your choice of activities, parkland, and restaurants. Hundreds of friends within a single square mile. That’s what draws many of us to the city over the suburb. But to each their own.

OK, I'll try to imagine it. I'll assume you don't mean living like Trump did, in a personally owned tower with lots of servants including chefs and drivers. Note that I actually do have 12 kids. Imagining...

I herd my 12 kids down from my far-too-small apartment. My wife and I go in separate elevator cars so that we can fit. We'll go enjoy a trendy restaurant because we're city people and we do that. We walk along toward the subway station, sometimes stepping out into traffic to avoid tents. Every 30 seconds, we count the children to make sure that we have the same number we started with. We really should do more than count, in order to prevent substitutions. Sometimes we have to back up to find a kid who is slow. Sometimes we must run to stop a kid who is running ahead. We check shoelaces, then lead the kids onto the escalator. At the platform, we continue counting while keeping kids away from the platform edge. Once the subway arrives, we get on, hopefully 100% of us. We guard the door to make sure nobody exits before the correct stop. At the correct stop, we herd them off, hopefully getting 100% of them onto the platform. We check shoelaces again, and then head up the escalator. We continue on our way, counting as we go. The kids are tired. Some need to pee, without warning. Too late! We find the restaurant. People glare at us. Oops, backtrack for a missing kid, hopefully not swiped or squished or infected. Again we go to the restaurant. We order a meal. It's only $1400 for the family, such a deal. Oh, they want to tack on a huge tip for themselves, so more. People are still glaring at us. Food gets dropped. A glass slides off the table and shatters, splattering the drink on several people. At least my kids don't scream and throw things, so I get some credit for that. Now we can go to the parkland or activities, but several kids are looking sleepy. Well, back home we go. This happens 3 times per day, every day, just so we can eat. We can't possibly carry enough overpriced groceries home for cooking, and anyway the kitchen in our apartment is a joke. We just have to accept spending $1,533,000 per year to eat.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#130

Post by danbolt »

raducu wrote: post #51
antisthenes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> taxes should be steadily increased over time and incentivise child rearing until birthrates become sustainable again. How exactly do you define sustainable here? Sustainable what?

Sustainable as in 2.x births per woman if you want to keep a population steady, or a lower number at first, but eventually you will want that 2.x births per woman because otherwise we go extinct as a species.

In earnest, I do not believe that a lack of population is the biggest hurdle in ensuring that people won't go extinct. I would suspect that climate change, geopolitical tensions, and poverty are larger factors.
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