Quote:
Originally Posted by summersm343
GOT TO LOVE Philly.com's anti-city bias. Even in a positive article they put a negative spin on it lol by stating that the growth can't be sustained when millennials decide to raise a family and move out to the burbs. They do know the continual growth of NYC, LA, San Francisco, Boston, etc. is not from families correct?
Who is to say that everyone decides to raise a family? And those who do decide to raise a family and move out, who says they won't be replaced by other young professionals and recent grads moving into the city? There are no signs of this trend stopping over the next few decades.
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If i can be honest, I see your perspective as essentially the same misguided perspective as theirs. You're still accepting the fundamental premise of "have family = move to the suburbs". A lot of young couples would LOVE to stay in the city and raise their families there, but most major US cities do such an unbelievable bad job of providing the basic needs for families, that those couples are without any choice. I'm not talking anything fancy here, I'm talking about school districts with better than minimal competency and even a modest number of apartments with more than 2 bedrooms (I also reject the supposition that every family desperately needs a single-family house). The brother of a friend of mine, who is in his mid-30s, recently told me that "average schools not under constant threat of apocalypse" were literally the "only" reason he, his wife and three year old son were leaving Graduate Hospital.
There is nothing ridiculous about raising families in cities. Millions and millions of children are being raised in cities right now. Relatively few are being raised in AMERICAN cities because the particulars of American urban policy and history since about 1930 has turned most cities into hostile, barren places for any family with enough resources to leave but not enough resources to replace the collapsed public commons with private alternatives. Before that period, and continuing well into it in parts of the country, many children of all kinds were raised quite happily in cities. Personally, i was raised in the wretched suburbs of perhaps the only country more suburban than the US (New Zealand), but most of the older members of my family were raised either in Dutch urban neighborhoods or in ancient Norwegian towns small in population but dense in street design and spatial composition.
And while I agree that the media approaches these issues in a ridiculous manner (it appears to be the practice of most American media now to never discuss WHY things might be a certain way, but simply to acknowledge how they are), failure to retain millennials (who, as you note, will not be young forever... the eldest are 34 this year!) is a very real threat. Millennials are the largest generation in American history, larger than their baby boomer parents, AND larger than the generation following them (do those kids have a name yet? I haven't heard one), and quite possibly larger than their own children's generation (assuming the US gradually follows the rest of the developed world towards sub-replacement fertility). So if we solely focus on a particular lifestyle, then yes, we may be betting on a declining horse.
Focusing on the current lifestyle preferences of young professionals is just as foolish as every other mad specialization cities, states, countries and all geographies in between have tried. What happens if there's another mass culture shift, away from cities? etc...
The only smart bet is to try to reconstitute our cities as the socially, economically and lifestyle-diverse places they have traditionally been. We have to find a way to rebuild comprehensive communities that work for as wide a range of people, households and yes, families, as possible. That will not spare us from all outside change, but it ought to help us do a lot better than we did when we had a federal government who thought that diversity was an enemy, and aggressively crafted systems to reorganize our lives along suburban siloed lines, a process so successful that even many of those who fled such places continue to follow their mental architecture as if it were unquestionable truth. Cities in other developed countries that didn't do this, or did this less, have fared much better. Contrary to popular American opinion, there are indeed suburbs in Europe, because some people will always want to live in such places, but there is far less absolute desecration of the city as a place for families to exist.
You name a set of cities that I often think of as "future Parises". By which I mean that while I expect them all to remain dearly loved, I wonder if they will become places not so much lived in as visited. Homes predominantly for the dead. By contrast you could look to cities in the Pacific Northwest, also doing very well: Portland, Seattle and Vancouver over the border. All of whom have made creating and protecting space for families in the city a priority.
Well, that's my ranting budget for the year.
Sincerely,
A Young Professional Who Loathes Cars, Loves Cities and Would Dearly Love to Have Children Without Going to The Suburbs.
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