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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

#241

Post by closeparen »

kccqzy wrote: post #237
closeparen wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to capture the hostility of suburbia any more perfectly than a walk down the El Camino in Sunnyvale. Try this on street view for a few blocks. Imagine yourself on the sidewalk. This is the world that the "urban cores in the USA are actively hostile places to be" consensus has given us. Maybe the cities this was built in response to really were some kind of unimaginable horror. But I'm pretty sure the…

Try a walk down University Ave in Palo Alto. That is the kind of place we mean.

A lot of older suburbs have a main street like this, including the one I grew up in. They're grandfathered from before the zoning code, not allowed anywhere else in the municipality, and sometimes illegal to replicate even on the same lots [0]. Sunnyvale is what's allowed to exist at scale and to grow all across America.

[0] http://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#242

Post by rolltiide »

bobthechef wrote: post #109
deogeo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get 'subjugation' from staying at home?

It's the obnoxious, upper middle class hyperfeminist careerist rhetoric that we've been taught to believe. Funny, Chesterton once wrote that he found the feminist clamoring for women in the workplace rather intriguing. Most people, most men, perform rather boring and menial jobs. Why a woman would trade the privilege of raising her kids, shaping the future generation of mankind, for 8+ hours of twisting screws and ha…

I would argue that a lot of actual oppression of that gender comes from a lack of consensus within the gender

But thats only an issue because all the extremes seem to speak on behalf of all women

I have the wrong body parts so my observation is irrelevant

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#243

Post by jacobolus »

mrep wrote: post #190
jacobolus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried being a kid or raising a kid in the city? This description does not match my experience or my general impressions of other people’s experiences at all. Indeed, car-intermediated everything and complete dependence on parents is a much better description of suburban life for children than city life. I grew up in one of the most pleasant and active suburbs in the US, in a little college town, and it was s…

> more small shops of all kinds, more coffeeshops, more live music, more social clubs, more classes, more playgrounds, more museums Suburban playgrounds are way better than urban ones and the rest of your examples require a lot of money. I'm biased because I grew up in the suburbs, but playing sports outside for free like I did as a kid sounds much better than having to get job because the only thing you can do in th…

No, you are misunderstanding me.

There is more of pretty much everything within a kid-accessible distance in the city, including tons and tons of free stuff. There are more and better parks and playgrounds. There are more publicly accessible athletic facilities. There are more and bigger free public libraries. The amazing museums have regular free days for residents, and zoo/aquarium/museum passes can often be checked out for free from the library. There are more free art exhibits. There are more cultural festivals. There are more special-interest meetup groups....

Plenty of city kids play pick-up (or organized) sports outside for fun for free every day.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#244

Post by watwut »

PKop wrote: post #136
magduf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need "low rise cohousing communities" to have families in cities. Japanese cities are extremely dense, yet people raise families there just fine. On my trip to Japan, I was really struck by how many children I saw in the middles of cities (moreso in some districts than others, of course), whereas I never see children in downtown American cities. Of course, Japanese cities don't have enormous parking lots, e…

Because they have a high trust, homogenous culture. How many people feel comfortable taking children on public transportation or allowing to roam the middle of cities? Culture matters, and quite frankly Japanese culture is different.

Americans cry child neglect when 10 years old play alone outside in residential are with no traffic and last crime 20 years ago. People being uncomfortable with 7 years old playing on playground without direct supervision is literally a thing.

Homogenity has little to do with it. Same paranoia is applied to playground structures, when the child can stay alone home for 1 hour, to everything.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#245

Post by whyenot »

When I lived in San Francisco, during the aftermath of the first dot-com boom, it was not uncommon to find used syringes at the playgrounds in GG Park. I was living in an apartment in the Inner Sunset, and every could of days the building manager had to hose down the steps to our building because someone was using them as a public toilet. By all I have heard, the situation in SF has only gotten worse. I don't know, it's not where I would want to raise kids.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#246

Post by asdff »

ggm wrote: post #37

See that column of "white college grad, no kids" -what do you think happens demographically to that column in 10/15 years time? Sure, some people move on. But, also, some people stay and have kids. Come back in 50 years and say if this was a glitch in a trend or not Demographics is sometimes a story which is only really told in hindsight.

I agree especially if "living in the city" selects for someone career focused who is already putting off kids or even marriage until they are more financially stable.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#248

Post by rebuilder »

tathougies wrote: post #80
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…

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…

I'm guessing your 7-month-old takes naps? When that stops, you may find yourself re-evaluating the evils of TV.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#249

Post by nostrademons »

wcunning wrote: post #220
volkl48 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenore_Skenazy

This is almost exclusively a Millenial/Homelander thing (with Boomer or Gen-X parents). My mom took the elevator train in from Jackson Heights to Manhattan every day for school from the time she turned 12. That's a 50 minute train ride with 2 connections. This was in the early 60s.

I feel like there's basically a two-generation swath where kids were treated like they'd break if you breathed on them, which coincides with the first generation that's never known real deprivation (Boomers) raising kids in an environment where their leaders are trying their hardest to create an environment of fear to maintain social control in the absence of war and real deprivation. It's slowly reversing itself as Millenials are themselves having kids and realizing all the ways that they were screwed over by not being forced to face risk & adversity in their formative years. (There's a big selection bias, too, in that Millenials who buy into the culture of fear are just not having kids because they think the world is hopeless, meaning everyone who has a next generation tends towards the un-anxious population.)

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#250

Post by tathougies »

rebuilder wrote: post #248
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…

I'm guessing your 7-month-old takes naps? When that stops, you may find yourself re-evaluating the evils of TV.

Well no. Most of the time she screams honestly. She actually screamed the entire time we were giving our marriage prep talk at church and screamed for another two hours while my wife and I read articles to each other
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