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…
“violent downtowns typified by the ‘mean streets’ of the 1970s became clean and safe in the 1990s”
While I’m not trying to be overly critical, he is also off base with his violent crime statistics as the nineties had the highest aggregate number of murders up until the end of the decade.
Japan is not tiny, and has a fraction of our drug use. They’re also brutal with drug crime. I wouldn’t execute drug addicts. But their pushers? Line-em right up!
Just curious: would you advocate lining up liquor store owners? Bartenders?
If alcohol was as illegal as the drugs are today, sure. Even during prohibition the actual laws against alcohol were much more lenient than today’s laws against opiates.
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…
I currently live in SF and could not imagine having kids here. I’m sure some people do, and have a great time. But it’s not a life that I would want, nor would I want for my kids. This narrative captures pretty accurately why I would not want to raise kids in this city. Now, some other city? Maybe. Probably in Europe. US cities though are just hard places to be. Hard people. Aggressive homelessness. Dirty. Unfriendly…
I am not sure what part of town you are in. Can you open google maps and tell me how much "green space" you see? More than I grew up with. Hint, there is a rather large rectangular one on the west side of town.
But I have noticed (and been criticized on HN for claiming) that the parenting cultural bubble in SF seems completely unknown to many other subcultures. It is indeed a very good community, though.
In the context of race would you measure equality against the standard of “white?” I should hope not. For the same reason measuring women against the standard of “men” isn’t equality.
> 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…
> driving downtown This is your problem. In a city you don't need to put yourself and your family in a deadly metallic stress machine to get places. And as a result you will feel happier and more connected. Even in a city I am sometimes very shocked at what we put ourselves through to use a car. People constantly honking and flicking each other off with various insults and me on the sidewalk wishing they'd all calm d…
> deadly metallic stress machine
A packed 4-5-6 line on a sweltering summer late afternoon can be a bit of a metallic stress machine. Not deadly, at least.
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.
I think it's highly dependent on your area. In my smaller town I never have traffic. I have plenty of restaurants and activities and more "parkland" and nature than a city dweller could dream. City dwellers seem to think of smaller towns as some sort of dessert wasteland, but I can get to anything a city dweller can in the same amount of time. There's just as much stuff out here, we just also have enough room to live…
Same amount of time? I have 20 restaurants within a 30 second walk. There also is never, ever the diversity of food or entertainment.
Also, many small towns have higher crime rates per capita than cities.
A major problem in American cities is what's called "contraception zoning." It's a de facto and sometimes de jure ban on large (as in 4 or more bedroom) apartments.
Could you expand on this? I've never met a couple that could afford a 4 bedroom apartment on their own, so I'm not sure how allowing even larger apartments solves anything?
The reason you can't afford a 4 bedroom apartment when you can afford a HOUSE is that large apartments are rare in American cities, because municipal governments do everything to prevent them from being built. The few that exist were built mostly before WW2, and are rented to students.
In other countries, large apartments are plentiful, and they are cheaper than houses the same size, because of economies of scale.
I apologize. I don’t understand. My understanding was women were fighting to be equal, but men were the bar. What rights are being fought for by women that men don’t have (“people”)? What is the “baseline” for “people”?
Japan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, well below replacement rates. Their society is also consists almost entirely of Japanese that all share the same culture. It would be very hard to emulate what they do and even so, no real guarantee that it would change anything.
Japan does have a low birthrate, but it also has a rising birthrate. Since 2005 Japan has seen a long general trend of increasing birthrates since the ‘60s. This turnaround coincides with efforts to make housing cheaper and cities more kid-friendly. They’ve gone from 1.26 to 1.44. It’s not a complete reversal, but the fact that Japan’s rising birth rate has defied regional and global trends and persists despite conti…
I think this nails it on the head. The writer is conflating the affects due to socioeconomic conditions with the affects he wishes to perceive as it strengthens the arguments he brought forth in prior essays. This seems like an exercise of mental gymnastics as marriage age and birth rate have been pretty correlated with the cost of living throughout the world. When I left London during its peak costs, the average age for marriage was 36 for me and 32 for women. The displaced rural American worker clinged to both Sanders and Trump in the last primary. This isn’t some massive conspiracy. Home owners in SF and NYC have discouraged development through NIMBYism. Meanwhile, magnetic schools and private school options haven’t really grown their pupil base. If you are making a million a year, the equation works out, but if not, you need to make sacrifices, and, for many millennials that means sacrificing reproduction over lifestyle.
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.
It was rare enough that allowing a kid to do that made Lenore Skenazy [0] famous not that long ago...