Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 443 posts

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#421

Post by magduf »

iron0013 wrote: post #41
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…

Your description doesn't really sound like any actual city that I know of, although it sounds a little like how someone who's never been to New York City might describe it. Do you have a particular city in mind? Because "car-centric and pedestrian hostile" sounds more like most suburbs than most urban areas.

>Your description doesn't really sound like any actual city that I know of, ... Do you have a particular city in mind?

Actually, it sounds a whole lot like the Phoenix metro area. Atlanta, SLC, and most of LA probably qualify too.

>Because "car-centric and pedestrian hostile" sounds more like most suburbs than most urban areas.

Most American "cities" really are more like suburbs, when you compare to real cities in other countries. Especially the cities which grew up after cars became popular. These cities were never very pedestrian-friendly. Phoenix is probably the poster child for this. The amount of sprawl there is ridiculous, and there's really no place that's pedestrian-friendly, just because everything is so far apart that it would take forever to get to your destination on foot, even though sidewalks generally do exist.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#422

Post by tathougies »

watwut wrote: post #412
tathougies wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry let me rephrase. If she would like to work and me stay at home id be happy with that. Children are work but they are by far the most important. As a child I wanted to be a stay at home dad, which i realize makes me somewhat odd, but we are odd people

Gotcha now. Maybe you will be able to switch for some time at least.

My wife and I are working towards financial independence so we can both stay home / work from home part time.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#423

Post by JoeSamoa »

bsder wrote: post #260
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…

A Two-Income family also is a significantly less mobile family. When you want to move, both partners need to find better jobs at roughly the same time. And that just doesn't happen very often. And, if you are already established with support networks because you already have kids, rebuilding those networks can be almost insurmountable without one of the parents literally taking time off to put that support network ba…

Holy shit I never thought about it like this.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#424

Post by belorn »

clairity wrote: post #410
belorn wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Women entered the job market due to birth control and legal changes >> women entered the job market because they wanted to realize their ambitions and support their families From a historical perspective, women entered the job market because a world war (ww1) consumed the pool of available men through drafting them to die on the front line and having a war engine that increasingly needed more and more resources. We…

sure, women worked during the world wars out of necessity, but they didn't enter and stay in the workforce because of it. while women working during war helped to unveil the value and abilities of women in the workforce, war didn't drive the shift to 2-income households by itself. if women had no other ambitions, they would have just gone back to "home economics" after the wars and the economy would have stayed the s…

It is indeed true that there are many reason why society continued with both women and men in the work force after the war. One of those were political, as it is difficult to argue first that women and men should shoulder equal responsibility during the war and be included in the military draft and equal right to vote, only to do a 180 degree turn a few months later because the war ended. The writing was on the wall and Women's right to vote got voted in 2 years later. The women military draft however was dropped as the emergency of the war died down.

The president said a month before the war ended: We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?

It is hard to find a stronger sign of a cultural change. 20 years later the second world war started so even if there had been a movement to return to "the old days", it would not have had time. The second world war saw again an major increase in women participation in the work force, including major initiatives for equal pay. Men were being sent to the front line and the factories needed people.

The world wars was the period where the cultural change occurred. Trying to revert the culture back to pre-1914 mindset would had been about as impossible then as it is now. Instead people continued on the cultural path that had been established.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#425

Post by tptacek »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #150
rayiner wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that’s not really true, right? Here’s a residential neighborhood in Chicago: https://images.app.goo.gl/o9crCx8EYGJcz7NcA . Another view: https://images.app.goo.gl/2AFgALbMTH3KsxYbA . Not exactly the hellacape you describe. And homier than many new suburban subdivisions. (None of the suburban neighborhoods I’ve ever lived in have even had sidewalks.) You can get a surprising amount of density from low rise buil…

I thought of replying, thought better of it. But it's true that you can get a lot of density from low rise buildings. My old neighborhood of 100 year old two story town houses is about 18,000 people per square mile. Friends of mine with older kids just let them roll around the city. There's a lot to do. My take on the bad thing about sprawl and suburbs is the amount of time and driving needed to get to not sprawl and…

I don't understand. What would your reply have been? Rayiner posted an image from a high density part of Lakeview, which is an inner urban neighborhood of Chicago, about a mile further from the (significantly larger) commercial core of Chicago than 16th and Mission is from 2nd and Market. I could give you pictures of the same neighborhood with mixed 2-3 flats and single-family homes on streets with total tree canopy and parks at the end, and Lakeview is one of the more urban parts of (residential) Chicago --- go to Avondale or Humboldt Park and and find more parks, more trees, and smaller houses, all in inner ring neighborhoods.

What you've described would be the experience of living inside the Loop in Chicago, amidst class A high-rise office space. People do this! But they actively select themselves into it; by far, most people in Chicago live in residential neighborhoods that read as such, are close to the heart of the city, and don't respond at all to your description.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#426

Post by jacobolus »

jakobegger wrote: post #311
jacobolus wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is great appeal for sure, but the better long-term solution is to get the kids helping with cleanup, laundry, and dinner prep, even from an age where they can’t do anything yet. You might be surprised how interested they are in helping out.

> You might be surprised how interested they are in helping out. Maybe there are some super-parents out there who can manage to always make that work, but in my experience trying to get my kids to help when they are hungry and tired after getting home from some activity on a hot summer day is just an exercise in frustration.

If kids are hungry and tired, maybe a snack and a nap would be effective? YMMV.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#427

Post by souprock »

ajross wrote: post #373
pattrn wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mirrors my sentiment prior to moving to Boston. It turned out to be the opposite. It took more time to get to most places in the city than it took to get to equivalent places when I lived in New Hampshire. You name it: grocery stores, restaurants, pubs, cafes, shopping, parks, markets, etc. My wife and I moved back to NH after a year due to our quality of life dropping so drastically. Two of my childhood friends…

> Now I can get to [grocery stores, restaurants, pubs, cafes, shopping, parks, markets, etc.] via car in under 5 minutes I... sorry, I don't believe that. I've never seen a suburb anywhere with ALL that stuff within the 1.5 mile radius you postulate. Sure, you get some of it locally. We have restaurants within 5 minutes, but the place we want to go tonight is 11 minutes away. There's a park next to the local school,…

He's in New Hampshire. It sounds legit for a place like Concord or Manchester.

I have that too, and I didn't even try for it. I'm in unincorporated land just north of Indialantic, FL.

I had to check for pubs, because I don't use them. There are some within 5 minutes. In that distance I also get a beach on the Atlantic and a fishing dock on the brackish intercoastal waterway. It's 8 minutes to Walmart and 11 to a commercial airport. My workplace is only 3 minutes away.

Near me, 3-bedroom homes of about 1200 to 2000 square feet on 0.25 acre lots are going for $120,000 to $240,000. For 4-bedroom homes of about 3000 to 4000 square feet on 0.35 to 0.65 acre lots I think you'd pay $350,000 to $650,000. To get up over a million you'd need to be on the beach (sand and waves in your yard) or on the intercoastal waterway (with a dock for your yacht).

It can't be helped if you insist on going to the far-away restaurant and the far-away park. There is always something better, so you'll end up traveling the farthest that you tolerate.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#428

Post by sershe »

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…

It's actually completely opposite from my experience. The kids on the low-rise neighborhoods and burbs are stuck in the house unless there's a parent present whose full time job to haul them around. My nephews are growing up in the burbs, and they can barely walk to a gas station without the risk of being hit by a fast moving vehicle, and cannot reach even e.g. a park without driving. Sure, they can play baseball in the backyard. How exciting is that? I grew up in a major city... I was walking to play soccer on my own starting perhaps at 7yo (short walk to a field on streets with tons of foot traffic and hence slow cars), went to school on my own since around the same time, took the subway by myself starting perhaps at around 10; around the same time (very short, and safe walk), or a little later when I could be trusted with money I could go buy bread or whatever, all by myself. A friend of mine transferred to a specialized middle/high school around 8th grade and took a subway for 40 minutes every day to get there, by himself; if one of my nephews in the low-rise neighborhood wants to do that, that will throw his parents' day in complete disarray.

Re: America’s urban rebirth is missing actual births

#430

Post by samhain »

war1025 wrote: post #176
jonknee wrote: post #119

Birthrates are also declining outside of cities at similar rates [1]. It may be a little more apparent in expensive cities because childless people tend to not like suburbs and choose density if they can afford it, but I don't think cities are the root cause. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/10/19/us-fertilit...

I've got my money on the "We spend twenty years telling adolescents that children are terrible and having them will ruin their life, so when the time comes they have to climb over a mountain of conditioning to even consider the idea" space.

Could the internet, and the idea of things like "bodily consent" training that result in things like antinatalism be a cause for this? Or maybe that sort of reasoning about how we fit into this world is a result of that conditioning?
Post reply on HN