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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

#331

Post by ssharp »

asveikau wrote: post #203
mrep wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You know it's okay that other people don't want the same thing as you, right?

It's difficult to go anywhere without putting yourself in a "deadly metallic stress machine", whether it be a car, plane, train, boat, etc. I suppose if you have that much fear of transportation, living somewhere with ample options within walking distance is best.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#332

Post by watwut »

tathougies wrote: post #57
georgeburdell wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure subjugating women to be home makers is going to win a lot support for your point. The problem is that there is no support in the U.S. for working couples who choose to move away from family for economic opportunity.

I would not describe these women as 'subjugated'. First of all, most can work if they choose, because they are all college educated. In at least one family I know, the wife is college educated and capable of earning more than her husband. They just choose not to, and their families take whatever hit that means. I mean, I tell my wife all the time she should work if she feels like it (she is a software engineer actual…

> I also don't want to work, because it'd be more fun to be with babies all day and make more of them.

I mean, this is just not true, you know. Being with babies whole day every day is not fun for overwhelming majority of adults, neither male nor female. They may see meaning in it, but like, fun it is not. And it definitely is not easy fun when you are on fourth or fifth baby, meaning care about siblings too.

Also, managing both 5 kids and full time job would be pretty hard even if good daycare is available. Your "she can go to work because she has college" completely ignores logistics of it and expectations on software engineers these days.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#333

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #249
wcunning wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

[deleted]

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#334

Post by dhdidhdu »

volkl48 wrote: post #198
dhdidhdu wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Big difference between a four and a 12 year old.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#335

Post by watwut »

tropo wrote: post #5
coldtea wrote: post #4

> There are many reasons New York might be shrinking, but most of them come down to the same unavoidable fact: Raising a family in the city is just too hard. Harder than in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, up to 80s? Millions of dirt poor immigrants raised children in the city just fine, and tons of working and middle class people were born and raised there. I seriously doubt it's "too hard" in any other sense, except job/ren…

That'll do it though. It used to be that the cities had lots of single-income families. They only had to compete with each other in the bidding war for good housing. Women entered the job market due to birth control and legal changes, so now we have lots of two-income households in that bidding war. Same-sex couples also became legal, adding even more two-income households. Meanwhile, low-cost forms of housing were l…

> Women entered the job market due to birth control and legal changes

Legal changes is fascinating euphemism for "not being punished for it anymore".

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#336

Post by nickserv »

stouset wrote: post #181
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 a suburb and was bored shitless. I had one friend that lived within walking distance, and everyone else was too far away to get to without a car, which meant that I didn't get to see my friends unless it was convenient for one of my two parents (who both held full-time jobs). Cycling anywhere outside of the local neighborhood was out of the question, since the roads connecting neighborhoods were full of…

My early teenage years were in the city, my later teens in the suburbs.

I hated that move to the burbs... Nothing to do except getting kicked out of the local mall or Borders. No libraries, no parks, no pools nearby... And no public transport.

When before in the city I could just take public transport and go downtown, meet my friends, go to the library, etc..

Now that I have kids, I live in a city. But it's a quiet neighborhood, and we have a yard -- that I did appreciate from the suburbs ;-)

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#337

Post by taysic »

selectodude wrote: post #225
pbourke wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think that’s a particular New York City issue.

I think it applies well to a number of affluent urban areas in the US.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#338

Post by dexen »

CalRobert wrote: post #316

A city has 100 homes. Local homeowners vote against any new construction to preserve taxpayer-funded parking welfare (aka neighborhood character) This means that house prices are a race to the top so to speak. You're always competing with your neighbors. The first thing you do is have both of them work (this happened ~4 decades ago). Even if you don't want to, you have to, because your neighbors are doing it and they…

>Not sure what comes after step 3

The steps 1...3 you described are literally "the demand for housing will gradually fall". What follows is, naturally, gradual lowering of the prices, with subsequent stabilization and rebirth.

Curiously enough we observe the same patterns in nature: a species out-grows its prime ecological niche; the population starts falling down (usually without outright crashing), and then stabilizes at the optimum point. The cycle repeats.

The only possible source of instability in the whole housing/population cycle would be the government trying to prop up the house prices once the price correction starts. Some people have this misbegotten idea that real estate has to be a magical kind of investment that always appreciates in value.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#339

Post by dralley »

peanutgal2600 wrote: post #294
pmart123 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

20 years after Roe vs Wade.

And, simultaneously, the removal of lead from gasoline

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#340

Post by ianai »

The US is optimized for corporations. It’s not news that while company profits are at all time highs, individual income has stayed stagnant. Family growth won’t happen without societal factors reinforcing families.

The US just went through the Great Recession. It took a world war and a national initiative pro-household building to birth the baby boomers after the Great Depression. There’s been nothing like that following the GR.

Meanwhile, many factors are against family building:

Income being stagnant to negative.

Record setting real estate prices. Tract housing projects provided affordable housing after WW2.

Poor job prospects - people were getting CAREERS after WW2. Complete with PENSIONS. People in 2019 are lucky to have full time work with health insurance and benefits. Pensions are unheard of outside of select few positions.

Carbon level increases tend toward more violence.

Warming climates tend toward societies that are more hostile, less expansive.

There are other factors, but I’ll stop there.

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