America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#191

Post by sullyx » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

zachsnow wrote: post #184

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…

This feels like hyperbole. Instead of saying you are wrong objectively, I’ll say instead that my subjective experience of “the city” is in stark contrast to this. Green spaces and the ocean abound. My neighbors are wonderful people. The businesses around me are owned and operated by local people. I can’t walk down the block without running into good folks with smiles on their faces. I try to bring the same energy to…

Where do you live?

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#192

Post by rmuesi » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:23 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #135

Well, yes. Most of the developed countries have birth rates below replacement rate.[1] Over the next century, the poor countries and the ones that keep women home and pregnant win. Within countries, the groups that keep women home and pregnant win. [1] http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/total-fertility-r...

This is an unpopular opinion but one that seems to be self evident, at least from a demographic and perhaps cultural “win”.

Many articles, including this one, champion the cause of immigration as a positive to society, a reason of which is making up for the low birth rate of said societies existing members. And I’m not refuting that.

But since immigration tends to occur from undeveloped countries to developed countries, what happens when you apply this trend across many generations and across many developed parts of the world?

And what does this, or should this, mean for a society and culture in present time?

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#193

Post by jpindar » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:25 AM UTC

mrep wrote: post #116

jinushaun wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m raising a child in NYC right now. What is this dystopia you are describing? It’s the opposite of my personal experience. NYC is such a kid friendly place to raise kids: Museums, zoos, aquariums, free events for kids, concerts just for babies, parks, swimming pools, little league, soccer league, skate parks, etc… we have it all. I can’t fathom how people raise kids in the suburbs. They must be so bored… You have a…

> Museums, zoos, aquariums I don't know about you, but those are things I'd go to at most once a year so taking the train/driving downtown for those rare events wasn't a big deal for me growing up. > free events for kids, concerts just for babies, more details? > parks My friends and I used to play basketball, american football, and ultimate frisbee all the time growing up. Now I live downtown and the parks I walk pa…

Just for the heck of it, and because I have a thing for Google Earth, I counted the number of baseball diamonds (easy to spot from the air) within the city of Boston but gave up once I got over one hundred. Not counting Fenway Park :)

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#194

Post by tropo » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:25 AM UTC

oposa wrote: post #23

toomuchtodo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the argument that dual-income households becoming necessities for home ownership and raising a family is plausible, if unsupported. "Elizabeth Warren’s book, The Two-Income Trap, explained Before she was a politician, Warren wrote a controversial book about family life and economics. The “two-income trap,” as described by Warren, really consists of three partially separate phenomena that have arisen as families hav…

As a Northern European it does seem a bit of a bad deal that women are expected to work but there isn't much of a guarantee for parental leave, affordable child care or even vacation. But I guess there isn't that much precedent for such things.

None of those things ("guarantee for parental leave, affordable child care or even vacation") seem to help. If anything, the evidence suggests the opposite: there are very few births in the European countries with the greatest amount of those things.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#195

Post by esoterica » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:30 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #179

Urban real estate is as small as the market allows and gradually shrinks as each iteration of smaller becomes normal. Nobody wants open offices or six hundred square foot apartments but zoning laws and the real estate economy are engineered to promote space per human trending towards zero. Who wants to raise a child like that. I grew up on more acres than some apartments I've lived in had square feet and the transiti…

> Nobody wants open offices or six hundred square foot apartments.

Maybe if you hadn’t grown up on a 1000 acre lot in the middle of nowhere you would have interacted with more people different from you and come to the realization that not everyone shares your lifestyle preferences.

> zoning laws and the real estate economy are engineered to promote space per human trending towards zero.

This is utterly factually wrong. The vast majority of the land area of most cities are zoned single-family only. The size of the average new construction has also trended dramatically upwards over the past couple generations.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#196

Post by toomuchtodo » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:33 AM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #173

bobthechef wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That expectation is rather cruel. For decades, women who make motherhood their "careers" have been looked down on as somehow inferior to women who pursue careers. Even the terminology used to describe such women is disparaging and loaded with shame and disappointment, as if the woman in question had chosen or had been forced to choose an inferior option. That she is in some sense a failure for prioritizing her childr…

It’s perverse that in our (supposedly) liberated world the standard that women are held to is men.

Isn't that what equality was supposed to be?

EDIT: Anecdotally, it seems that equality was strived for and it's not turning out as great as a lot of folks hoped for. Educated women don't date down like men did/do which makes finding a partner in itself much more difficult [1], women want the same career opportunities as men while also taking leave that puts them at a disadvantage, which is unavoidable; you will be at a disadvantage to someone who is willing to not take their leave to focus on their career, regardless of gender, and men usually take less or no paternity leave even when offered [2]. A lot of people raced to find success and actualization in the workplace, and it is turning out poorly [3]. We have housing, childcare, and education cost inflation due to more dollars chasing the same amount of those necessities. [4]

I want to be absolutely clear that I support woman having equal rights, equal pay, and should never, ever be discriminated against. I shouldn't have to say that, but you know, the Internet. The above paragraph are my observations as an armchair anthropologist.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/10/dating-... (The dating gap: why the odds are stacked against female graduates finding a like-minded man)

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19878117 (HN Thread: After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids)

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20468767 (HN Thread: The Loneliness Epidemic)

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20474292 (My HN comment above citing the Two Income Trap)

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#197

Post by asveikau » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:34 AM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #144

jinushaun wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m raising a child in NYC right now. What is this dystopia you are describing? It’s the opposite of my personal experience. NYC is such a kid friendly place to raise kids: Museums, zoos, aquariums, free events for kids, concerts just for babies, parks, swimming pools, little league, soccer league, skate parks, etc… we have it all. I can’t fathom how people raise kids in the suburbs. They must be so bored… You have a…

> I can’t fathom how people raise kids in the suburbs. Well, the vast majority of families could never afford to raise a child in NYC or any other 'dense urban' area, so the decision is mostly made automatically.

> the vast majority of families could never afford to raise a child in [any] 'dense urban' area,

You're missing qualifiers like "in the United States in recent times."

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#198

Post by volkl48 » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:34 AM UTC

dhdidhdu wrote: post #178

madhadron wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many people feel comfortable taking children on public transportation or allowing to roam the middle of cities? Public transit? Most everyone in cities that really depend on it like NYC.

Would you let your four year old take public transit in NYC by himself? Because they do that in Japan.

Maybe not a 4 year old, but NYC kids grow up way more independent than in many places in the US.

Middle school kids taking public transit by themselves is pretty normal.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#199

Post by closeparen » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:35 AM UTC

rmuesi wrote: post #168

The arguments in this article seem extremely dramatic, simplistic and unsupported. Just one example out of many I found in the article: jobs in big cities are the highest paying. Thus, the article quickly announces then moves on, living in a big city equals a “winner takes all” situation, which leads to dramatic inequality. How does that remotely support such a dramatic conclusion? Does having a bit less paying job m…

>Does having a bit less paying job mean you have nothing? Do the lower costs of living outside big cities not offset the lower wages?

The word inequality (as opposed to poverty or standard of living) explicitly registers disinterest in this kind of argument. The important thing is that the distribution is too wide; the objective conditions at its midpoint are irrelevant.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#200

Post by tempsy » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:35 AM UTC

Such a bad take. The actual "elite" in urban centers are the ones walking around with strollers.

Have a kid in the big city is the ultimate flex. No one else has kids because they can barely afford to live there themselves, let alone support a kid in it.

Edit: Also, it's not as if the author failed to mention that it's expensive to raise families in the city. It's that he says "yes it's really expensive to raise kids in the big city" but then goes off on a completely different tangent to say that everyone living in NYC and SF are "affluent childless" singles who just want to turn the city into their own childless entertainment machine, which completely negates his earlier comment on cost of living as the primary reason why there are so few young families in the city (plus something about fewer people enjoying sex).