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Therefore, when asked, what do you say? -- I don't want to be a "slut", so I'll underreport. I don't think young people have changed one bit, in America. |
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Everybody has plenty of garage/driveway parking and streets are the least busy. Lane product of the previous eras tends to force visitors to park on the street, rather than the rear parking pad off the lane, and lot widths after the mid 80's are to narrow to allow you to park a RV/Boat/sunday driver at the side of your house thus cluttering driveways and forcing homeowners to park on the street. All this allows for the epic neighborhood street hockey battles I thoroughly enjoyed in my youth. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...ping-1.2641922 its an outdated article, but according to it, 26% of Albertans have an RV. Now, is that 26% of households, or 26% of adults.....either way that's a lot..now account for boats/sleds/quads/sunday drivers and having that sideyard space keeps streets safe for kids to do kids things. It's moments like these..... https://i.postimg.cc/VLDcHbXF/IMG-1548.jpg |
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it would not be my cup of tea, though. my comment was more an opinion on the unfortunate reality that in many newer cities, there isn't a whole lot of that low-rise pre-war neighborhood style urbanism that is very different from both downtown condo towers and post-war suburban tract housing. it's an "in-between" style of urbanism, and my personal favorite now that i have a family of my own to raise. quiet and shady tree-lined side streets: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9647...7i16384!8i8192 a very short walk away from ped-friendly retail districts: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9648...7i16384!8i8192 with convenient access to transit to get around: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9665...7i16384!8i8192 that's my ideal these days. when we're empty-nesters in a couple decades, it's very possible we'll end up back in a downtown highrise. |
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I grew up in the hyper HIV atmosphere. I'm pretty sure that differed from the pre HIV era. |
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rewind the clock 5 years before we had kids and that is probably the type of setting we would have imagined ourselves in when we outgrew the condo. Over the years our vision of what type of neighborhood we would raise our kids in changed drastically. As we got out of our 20's mindset and realized all schools aren't equal...well that changed a lot and narrowed down possible neighborhoods drastically. A huge box that we needed to check off was decent schools. While some central neighborhoods are experiencing a rejuvenation, its not exactly people with toddlers lining up to overpay for some trendy narrow lot infills. Those schools are a long way (if ever) from being fixed. What we zeroed in on was neighbourhoods that have had good schools for multiple generations, with the thinking that other young couples will continue to pay a premium to move into these neighbourhoods and keep the schools desirable. Even though we have an above average sized house and an above average sized lot....I see us moving into something larger, not smaller if we ever move again. |
The quicker the last breeding family moves out and they can shut down the money-pit that is the public school system, the better the city will be (certainly the less costly for the rest of us).
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Our neighborhood city school garners a middling rating from the major school ratings agencies, but 30% of the students are from low-income families. When you control for that low-income student population, test results aren't all that radically different from a typical suburban elementary school. My kids will also be provided with a far more realistic picture of the way the world really is than I was ever afforded growing up in Wilmette (wealthy upper middle class northshore burb). There is real value in socio-economic mixing, but that will never be quantified by a fucking Great Schools algorithm. Quote:
We've got a 3 bed/3 bath 2,300 SF condo spread across two floors in a bog-standard Chicago 3-flat. It feels fairly house-like, other than the fact that we have some upstairs neighbors and shared yard spaces. It's plenty adequate for our family of four. Considering that we have absolutely no plans to expand our family any further, I can't envision any situation where I would ever live in another home substantively larger than our current one. Our current plan is to camp down here for the next couple decades while we raise our kids, plant some serious roots, become part of the woodwork of the neighborhood, and give our kids a strong sense of "rootedness" in their city. After that, it can only be smaller, not bigger. |
Yeah, my parents didn't move into a place with a yard until I was in 7th grade (by then, I had no need for one...). Apparently there are these places called parks where you can take kids to play :).
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This is a bit old, but this 2014 post dealing with the demographic decline of Lower Fairfield County shows the decline in children is not just an issue unique to cities. Very wealthy towns - well known for top-notch school districts, saw declines in the number of small children of up to a third in the 2000s alone:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gGPFDhdW_...nder+5+map.gif The author attributes this in part due to the sort of "snob zoning" common in established suburbs in the NYC metro. High housing costs coupled with this snob zoning mean there simply aren't many starter homes to go around. As a result the average age in these towns continues to climb, with many towns well known for "excellent public schools" having median ages of over 45. There's a reckoning coming in these areas in the 2020s and 2030s, when the boomers who have aged in place die off en masse |
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You're right, of course. Unless demographic/housing preference trends undergo radical changes, there will be a huge reckoning in exurban America in the near future. My parents live in a sort-of-Connecticut in Michigan (Bloomfield Hills), with giant homes in the woods, and I've had the same discussion with them. I have no idea who would buy their home. They have neighbors with 10,000 square foot homes with outrageous taxes/upkeep on dirt roads with well water and septic, and the power goes out five times a year. Any busy young couples up for that? |
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The real issue though is potential residents don't vote, meaning undoing the snob zoning will be hard. I mean, it's in the economic interests of the town as a whole - as well as individual sellers - if the multi-acre estates are broken up with more modest detached single-family homes and townhomes built instead. However, none of the people who aren't looking to sell yet have a financial interest in allowing these exiting neighbors to subdivide, and for whatever reason people either have outdated ideas about what builds property values or don't consider their actual self-interest when it comes to zoning. Meaning you could easily end up with a scenario in some of these towns where a lot of the properties are just straight-up vacant (or used as rentals) before anyone in the town gets it in their head to try something different. |
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for older kids, a neighborhood park/playground can fulfill that role, but for younger kids, they can't really go to a park unsupervised. that's where the magic of a "yard" really shines. now, some people take that too far and erroneously believe that, at an absolute minimum, kids need at least 1/4 acre of private outdoor space. our kids get along just fine with much less than that. between our deck, the back staircase, the shared patio in back, our building's small yard in front, and the long narrow gangway that connects them, they have fenced-in outside space to run around in. if we want to do something more sporting that requires more open space, we take them to the field at the school one block over. |
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How many affluent young families with two working parents can afford to buy and update a 6,000 sf house and then have the time to maintain it and a two-acre yard? |
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The suburbs won't die, but I don't know too many people would want a living space bigger than, say, 3,500 ft, or a multiacre lawn. Too much work, too much money, wrong location. |
informative read on the topic from citylab:
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Something I've noticed about Houston is that I don't think school quality correlates much with what passes as the closest thing to "urbanism" around here.
The poorest, sketchiest parts of the city with the worst schools are either 1) low density old neighborhoods comprised of small, single story homes with a high proportion of empty lots or 2) very high density but not functionally urban clusters of 1970s era apartment complexes. Meanwhile the best urban schools, like Lamar and Memorial HS and their feeders, are in the handful of neighborhoods which are sort of urban-like(pre-war suburban mixed with more recent infill), meaning inside the loop west of downtown. I imagine the bigger trend is money. Rich areas probably have fewer kids. I think that's the big picture trend, the correlation with the built environment is a weak one and probably just a spurious claim. |
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