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CityGirl: Not ONE friend--multiple friends, whose kids vary between preschool and teenagers. As I have mentioned, there is a growing number of things for familes WITH KIDS to do downtown--from movies in the park to family restaurants to kid-oriented art classes. My friends with kids don't necessarily do as much of the "adult" stuff as they used to, they do more of the "family" stuff that happens here. But heck, at 40 I don't do as much of the "adult" stuff either.
Some people do make it work. We make it work as best we can. It's not for everyone. And just because your friends make it work, doesn't mean I can, or you could.
Seattle has more dogs than kids. You will find similiar stats in Portland and SF. Its tough to find many children in any of the walkable urban gay neighborhoods. These neighborhoods have so few children because they just aren't well suited for family life.
There are no census tracts in the Sacramento region with a higher concentration of households without kids than the downtown grid. These are neighborhoods where 90% of the households do not have kids.
See the 2000 census tract map here, then look at the subcategories of "family structure" and "% of households without kids".
As the region gets bigger, there homosexual population in this area is going to go up and a lot of that is going to land in or near the grid. Most gay people don't breed and that gives them both the money and the time to spend going out to dinner and supporting the local arts community. Single straight people have a lot in common with gay people. Most of these people don't have kids and being in a neighborhood with out families is a plus because it means that there is a higher density of single people to meet, date and sleep with. They also have higher disposable incomes for any given level of income.
When you don't have kids you have a lot more money and a lot more free time on your hands.
In previous post wburg, you mentioned going to cafes and the cheap restaurants in the grid. But you have cheap restaurants and cafes in the burbs. You can find Bella Bru, Boulevard Coffee and Peets in the burbs. Just about every doughnut shop in this town sells coffee from Java City. There are plenty of places to get coffee in burbs.
But if you really want to understand why parents don't bother with the grid, you have to look at where parents end up going for coffee the most often. When you have kids and you want coffee, you want to find a place to relax. But you can't relax unless your kids are occupied. When you have kids, generally you end up getting most of your coffee at Starbucks and McDonald's for two slightly different reasons. At McDonald's the coffee isn't as good, but it has a play structure. If you need some down time with your kids, you know that jungle gym at McDonald's will keep them occupied for a good 15 to 30 minutes. That is more than enough time to finish your coffee and have some downtime.
At the cafes with the nicer ambiance, your kids generally are bored before you are done with your coffee. There just isn't enough stuff for them to keep them occupied and if they are bored, you have to make sure that they are coming up with ways of occupying themselves that might break something. So you aren't really relaxing, you are spending more time watching and policing them. They will often pester you to go home, so they can play with their friends and their toys. With kids, the places with nicer ambiance aren't actually more relaxing for the parents, they are just more expensive. So you spend a lot more time at McDonald's, where your kids aren't bored and you get to have some real downtime. The other thing is that small children really do like the food at McDonald's. They will eat the french fries and part of the burger. At the places with more ambiance, there is a really good chance, that your kid will pester you to buy something expensive that they later will decide that they don't want to eat. This is why McDonald's is such a safe choice.
The other time you can manage to get coffee is when your kids fall asleep in the back of the car while you are driving around. Its a pain in the rear to get a sleeping child out of the car seat of a car. Often she will scream because she is just tired and really wasn't ready to wake up yet. Starbuck's and McDonald's have drive thru's, so you can buy coffee when your kid is still sleeping. I have yet to see a small independent cafe with a drive thru. I am sure it would kill the ambiance of the place, but these drive thru's serve a real need for parents with small children.
For any given size home, housing is more expensive in the grid than just about anywhere else. A family would only pay a premium to live there if they found things to do in the grid that justified the extra expense. Just offering cheap restaurants and cafes isn't enough. You can find that in the burbs.
You talked about various cultural activities, like chalk it up and movies in the park. But the thing is that the burbs offer more activities that occur on a regular basis. Additionally kids actually prefer watching the same movie repeatedly. So you end up buying videos. The problem with movies at the park is that you can't stop the movie if your kids needs to go potty. Additionally there is a good chance, they will just fall asleep. With small children its just easier to watch videos at home than at the park. Because you don't have to bring all of the supplies to put them to sleep. You don't need to bring the night diaper, you don't need to bring the blanket and onesy, all of that crap is at home. If they get hungry, you have food you know they will like, its easy to prepare a bottle. To go anywhere, you have to bring all of that crap. So you spend a lot more time at home.
You have the little league, soccer, karate, girl scouts all happening in the burbs. Most of the rec and park districts have regular programs for families. While you might drive down to the grid for a weekend excursion, the number of activities in the grid by no means outweigh the downsides to life in the grid for families. Kids do best on regular schedules. They love familiar faces. They feel safer playing with people they already know. The activities they enjoy the most are the stuff like karate or school where they see the same familiar faces on a regular basis.
Oak Park is cheaper than the grid, but Oak Park has gang members, street prostitution and drug dealers. If you are 19 and you grew up in the suburbs, living in that type of enviroment might have some sort of fight club style false bravado appeal. But when you actually have kids, the general feeling is that is the type of stuff you would rather shelter them from.
The more the grid becomes a neighborhood for homosexuals and single people, the fewer families with children you are going to see in that neighborhood. In many respects its probably best for the neighborhood. The reason you don't see as many bars and nightclubs is that in the burbs people go to bed early and wake up early for work or because their kids just wake up at the crack of dawn. The noise and the drunks would be a real problem. In the grid, proximity to bars is a feature. It means you can walk home when you are drunk.
But I don't see that neighborhood ever having a large contingent of kids in just the same way that Seattle, Portland and SF don't have many kids.
Oak Park is cheaper than the grid, but Oak Park has gang members, street prostitution and drug dealers. If you are 19 and you grew up in the suburbs, living in that type of enviroment might have some sort of fight club style false bravado appeal. But when you actually have kids, the general feeling is that is the type of stuff you would rather shelter them from.
I'm in Oak Park right now, having a barbecue with friends, an engineer and an office manager, who have a 13 year old and a 2 year old, with another on the way. They have no plans to move. My other friend, a system administrator who lives in Southside with his teenage daughter, is also here. I'll ask them if they know Tyler Durden.
There is a McDonald's in the Grid and many Starbucks. At Pete's Pizza on J and 20th(the heart of the supposed gay art scene) I see a ton of kids. Just saying.
It is not a surprise that more people with kids live in the 'burbs, but I think the nicer parts of Midtown are fine for raising kids, but what do I know. Around the H and 21st area you'll see a lot kids out playing.
I looked at the census tract data Damnitjanet referred to. The grid definitely has the highest density of household's without children in the region. I also thought her explanations of why household's without children would value life in the grid a lot less than other groups like gays and single people was also completely spot on. Its not just the schools, but a whole host of other things that make life in the burbs much more inviting for families with kids.
But I also think its probably a good thing families with kids aren't in the grid. Depending on how you measure it the Sacramento region has between 1.5 to 2.5 million people. Moreover the region is growing. The region is probably big enough where it can now sustain at least one and probably several neighborhoods catering primarily to people looking to find mate. In the bay area, most of the city of San Francisco serves that role. In LA, you have communities like Manhattan Beach, Huntington Beach, Redondo Beach, Hollywood, West Hollywood, West LA, Venice and Santa Monica serving that role. In most large urban agglomerations you have either cities or neighborhoods that serve that role. In this area the grid serves that role and that role is probably going to expand in the grid going forward.
A lot of the things that make a neighborhood more attractive for families are going to be things that make a neighborhood less attractive for singles and homosexuals. Proximity to Applebee's, and big box retailers are amenities in a suburb and disamenities in neighborhoods catering to singles and homosexuals. In a household with children proxmity to nightclubs and bars is a disamenity. For single people being in walking distance from a bar is a nice feature.
If you got rid of the bars and nightclubs, you would make the grid a lot more family friendly, but you would also make the place a lot less appealing for a lot of the people who like the grid the way it is right now. Are people with small children going to be excited or just annoyed about the crowds and noise on a Second Saturday type event?
Moreover as the region gets bigger there is probably going to be a group of people who want to do something like Halloween in the Castro or the Filmoore Street Fair or just a nude bike race, or nude run. That type of thing could never happen in Carmichael (the locals would freak) but in the future, more of that type of stuff is going to happen in the region and it will probably take place in the grid.
That type of stuff only happens in communities where there aren't many household with kids and where you have a lot of unattached people looking to show off.
My hunch is that the more the neighborhood makes itself less inviting for people with kids, the more attractive the neighborhood will be to its target audience. Everything that makes the neighborhood appealing to a 19 year old is everything that makes the neighborhood unappealing to that kid's parents.
I live in a suburb and I love it. When you live in the suburbs, you escape the entire coolness trap. You can shop at Walmart and no one is trying to put you down for doing so. Its great. People self segregate by income so everyone in the neighborhood is making about the same. So there is a lot less reason to put on airs.
But when you are single there is a lot of posturing as you try to act cool hoping that will get you laid. You need to follow the same fashions or anti-fashions to demonstrate how with it you really are - especially when you are just looking for a one night stand. That creates a need for a network of boutiques and restaurants for people to buy stuff to show how unique they are - ie to engage in competitive consumption. That process is probably the future of the grid.
For communities like the grid to succeed, they need to keep out people like me and Hank Hill. Mass market merchants and mass market values need to be excluded in an area filled with people who are busy commidifing their dissent. That means keeping out the families with kids.
Oh I knew you were looking at me when I saw the title of the post
I dunno what I'm going to do. I lived in Midtown and you are right - it's great and the only deterant was the public schools. Had I stayed I would have fought to get my child into one of the East Sac schools. We did a ton of things with my child there and I never felt like having a child in Midtown was hard to do.
But I also rented. And was single too. 1200 sqft is a ton when it's just you are your toddler. But I moved to Seattle and bought (with my now husband) 1300 sqft. Which is not enough space with two kids and two adults - I feel squished to death.
So we need a TON more room. And the older homes don't have it unless we have tons of $$$$
And here's my other issue. We live in Seattle in a very "Midtown-ish" neighborhood up here - where schools are "just okay". Everyone in Seattle does the same and either puts their kid in private schools or moves away to the burbs (here it's the "Eastside") Seems to be a reoccuring theme - I've read many news articles that this happens across the country
So what do I do? Move to the burbs (Folsom) and try to get in the older established area, close to Fair Oaks, and live near the American River Bike trail, and hope that it's "enough" for me? I want my kids to have a good education and be around other families. Ride there bikes in safe clean neighborhoods and have more then 2000 sqft (we are looking at 2200 to 2400), so that I don't want to choke my family to death.
Maybe this is the phase of my life? If we stayed here in Seattle - we decided we need the burbs here too. it's just not family-ish enough here, and the houses are small.
But would my husband and I love to move to Midtown - you betcha! Could you help us find a nice 2200 sqft 4 bedroom home for 400K?? (and not that beat up one - I saw that!)
I have a real estate search looking in Midtown/East Sac/Land Park JUST IN CASE....
Honestly, I don't know why people think they need 2000 square feet for 4 people. I grew up in a middle/upper middle class family and we had a 1118 square foot house 1 1/2 baths (ok we had a basement, but it was not finished off). We survived.
I suppose part of my grumpiness about this comes because I grew up in a generic suburb and HATED IT. I'd visit my aunt in midtown as a teenager in the 1980s (when it was a lot more run-down and a lot less safe than it is now) and was just so amazed how different it was from where I grew up.
The exact kind of support systems you mention (parents knowing each other) occur in the central city, among groups of friends who become mutually supporting, and this mutual support often extends to early childhood care (most of my friends with kids babysit each other's kids on a round-robin basis, etc.) so there's no reason why the same sort of parental support groups couldn't continue into the school years.
I agree with you. We moved from an urban city to the suburbs when I was 6 and I hated it. It was a lot more fun when we lived in the city and I could go outside to play with kids in the street. No pre-planned 'play dates' etc.
This "the schools are bad in the central city" thing kind of becomes self fulfilling. People who care about schools move to the suburbs, leaving behind people who don't have kids or don't have the means to leave (or wh have kids but don't care that much).
If enough people who cared about the schools actually stayed in the central cities, the schools in those areas would be better. But the herd mentality prevails and is tough to break.
But I have to admit, the schools in my city of origin really did suck. Even the Catholic schools in the city were not as good as the ones in the suburbs. If I were a parent, I would probably end up in the suburbs, even if I didn't like it.
Last edited by mysticaltyger; 08-05-2009 at 02:28 AM..
I raised my son in San Francisco until he was 12, when we moved to Davis. The pros of being in the city were the easy access to cultural amenities, the parks, the ocean, etc. The cons were TERRIBLE schools - I put him in a fairly inexpensive private elementary school, but there was no way I could pay $20K plus for private high school like most of his friends back there ended up attending. It was really not that safe for him to ride his bike anywhere, so I would drive him and his bike to Golden Gate Park so he could ride there. Because of the private school, his friends were scattered all over the city, and none lived near us. Very few of my neighbors spoke English, so we had no sense of community.
In contrast, the schools here in Davis were great (he's in college now and breezing through), he could bike anywhere and I didn't worry about him being hit by cars or hassled by panhandlers, and my neighbors, even the foreign-born ones, can communicate with me. There is a very strong sense of community in the neighborhood, and the parks and bike trails are kid heaven. He never regretted us moving here, though he still likes to go back to SF to visit; in fact, he took Amtrak in today to spend the day there with his girlfriend.
I'm not so sure all suburbs are the mind-numbingly dull places some would have us believe. I think you need to choose wisely and if you're located near a large city, you can easily access all it has to offer.
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