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In the case of yards some space to run around in without being in danger of damaging something. In the case of traffic, I would have preferred less of it interrupting play in the alleys. I really couldn't bike in the streets too busy.
In the case of arcades, malls, laser tag and pizza hut the same way I got around the city ask your parents or your friend's parents to drive you. Kids need to be at least 11-12 before you use public transit for simple routes and more like 14 to do anything complex with it which greatly limits your range before 16. Also between school and curfew there isn't that much time you can do stuff before 16.
Any extra money we might have had, was spent to pay for and maintain the car. So, there were no trips to the arcade, very few trips to the mall, and I never played laser tag. The only time I had Pizza Hut was when I earned a personal pan pizza through the Book It program at school.
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In addition heading out of your neighborhood can be dangerous at young ages. You can get picked on by other kids and get into an fight and there will be no adult around. There are issues with gangs and public transit itself is not safe I know about someone who got stabbed and died. Not to mention the occasional fights at the bus stop some people I knew got into. And as for walking all you can walk to are things like restaurants and shops and not much else. The shops can't hold an candle to an entire mall full of stuff and an food court and the restaurants darn near want to run you out for being an teenager.
This is also true in the suburbs, you know. (even the presence of gangs, but to a lesser extent)
The only time I had Pizza Hut was when I earned a personal pan pizza through the Book It program at school.
Hell, I worked at a Pizza Hut in MA in the 80's and even though it was free I didn't eat it. The only time I ordered a pizza at Pizza Hut was as a cover so my co-worker/friend could give me pitchers of beer when I was 16 (a favor I frequently reciprocated). I regularly left Pizza Hut after work and went to a local pizza place to pay to eat pizza.
I left Pizza Hut to get more pay working at a paint factory, and even there we had better food.
I'm almost 24 and I've been married for a year. Hubby and I are definitely wanting out of the city. Not just out of San Francisco, but out of California.
We're planning on having 2 kids, and we feel that California isn't a good place to have a family. Too expensive, too many taxes, state budget is a mess, public schools aren't good, and the environment isn't a great influence on kids, IMO. To avoid the latter two issues, we'd have to be in a prohibitively expensive part of CA.
And San Francisco itself is not a family-friendly place at all. I wouldn't even want to be pregnant while living in the city. Hard to get around, I see pregnant women being treated like a nuisance or gawked at by strangers, it's expensive, too much city stress, etc.
And good luck being a mom for the first two years if you live in a $3000/mo moldy roach box in the Tenderloin with no dishwasher, a laundromat 5 blocks away, no car, and neighbors that complain because they can hear your baby crying through the super thin walls. And forget about saving money by having roommates. They'd complain about the constant messes, noise, etc.
There's a reason I don't know anyone my age in the city who's married with kids.
I'm almost 24 and I've been married for a year. Hubby and I are definitely wanting out of the city. Not just out of San Francisco, but out of California.
We're planning on having 2 kids, and we feel that California isn't a good place to have a family. Too expensive, too many taxes, state budget is a mess, public schools aren't good, and the environment isn't a great influence on kids, IMO. To avoid the latter two issues, we'd have to be in a prohibitively expensive part of CA.
And San Francisco itself is not a family-friendly place at all. I wouldn't even want to be pregnant while living in the city. Hard to get around, I see pregnant women being treated like a nuisance or gawked at by strangers, it's expensive, too much city stress, etc.
And good luck being a mom for the first two years if you live in a $3000/mo moldy roach box in the Tenderloin with no dishwasher, a laundromat 5 blocks away, no car, and neighbors that complain because they can hear your baby crying through the super thin walls. And forget about saving money by having roommates. They'd complain about the constant messes, noise, etc.
There's a reason I don't know anyone my age in the city who's married with kids.
There are much better cities to live in that provides that walkable community, urban feel, and is much more liveable.
In general I don't think a focus on "what are millennials doing" is useful at all. Focusing on what any generation is doing is sort of pointless - it turns discussions about what is happening in urban areas into a crappy lifestyle discussion.
What is happening is that people who have the income to choose where they live, and like to live in urban areas, now feel much more comfortable doing so than they did 20 years ago, and so more of them are doing that (no matter what generation they're from). I'm old enough to remember when that was not the case at all. This is a good thing that is a reversal of 40-50 year long trend.
It's also important to recognize the difference between being a political entity with a large population and a truly urban area. Jacksonville FL is larger than SF, Boston, DC, Portland, and Minneapolis, but it is in no way urban. Unfortunately the way data is gathered and provided to the public it is difficult to parse out data to make comparisons based on "urbanity" - things like population density and transit options. MSA/CSA data is just as useless, since it is a macro level view of a shift that is happening at a micro level.
There are some things that can be looked at to give us an idea of what the trend is, and where it's heading:
- Changes in education and income levels within a city's boundaries compared to the national average.
- Transit ridership
- Car ownership, licensed drivers, and miles driven
- Real estate prices and sales
It is difficult to break data down to show real groupings of changes based on these criteria, and a lot of BS gets tossed around talking about data that includes wildly disparate groups living in incredibly different environments - and that can happen just in a 10 sq. mile area! We need better data, and we need better analysis.
(I should note that I say this as a happy 40-something parent with a kid in Chicago Public Schools, who is basically surrounded by other professionals doing exactly the same thing, but that's a post for another time).
There are much better cities to live in that provides that walkable community, urban feel, and is much more liveable.
Where are you two thinking of moving and why?
You're gonna hate us, but Portland is our top choice.
The husband wants a place where it doesn't really snow much and isn't the South, the Southwest, California or Texas. (Yes, he has single handedly ruled out the entire country in a single sentence, haha)
I didn't really like Seattle that much (it felt too city, not enough green), so that pretty much leaves Portland. I was born and raised there until I was 7 though, and I remember it as a pretty good place to be.
We promise not to be the annoying stereotypical CA transplants (he's from NY anyway). We just want to live a mellow but productive lifestyle where we can enjoy the great outdoors regularly.
You're gonna hate us, but Portland is our top choice.
The husband wants a place where it doesn't really snow much and isn't the South, the Southwest, California or Texas. (Yes, he has single handedly ruled out the entire country in a single sentence, haha)
I didn't really like Seattle that much (it felt too city, not enough green), so that pretty much leaves Portland. I was born and raised there until I was 7 though, and I remember it as a pretty good place to be.
We promise not to be the annoying stereotypical CA transplants (he's from NY anyway). We just want to live a mellow but productive lifestyle where we can enjoy the great outdoors regularly.
Haha, I don't hate you, heck I don't blame you.
My wife and I made the mistake of moving away from Portland for a couple years to NYC. I always thought I wanted that big city life, but have realized that I belong in Portland which is that perfect balance of city and walkable communities.
Good luck with your future move here, Portland is a great place to put down roots and raise a family.
My wife and I made the mistake of moving away from Portland for a couple years to NYC. I always thought I wanted that big city life, but have realized that I belong in Portland which is that perfect balance of city and walkable communities.
Good luck with your future move here, Portland is a great place to put down roots and raise a family.
I don't think of it so much an issue of race as of class. The better urban schools tend to be located in more affluent neighborhoods that have the taxbase to pay for better schools (same with the suburbs - better schools are located in the better neighborhoods). These schools may happen to be more proportionately white, but are where students (of all races) tend to come from better backgrounds and are more motivated to do well in school.
I don't think you understand how public school funding works. All schools in a district get the same per-pupil allotment, plus then schools with high number of students in poverty, high numbers of English language learners, and the like get extra funds on top of that. In addition, cities generally have decent tax bases and often have higher per-pupil allotments than suburban schools.
It's not an issue of money. I may be a left-winger, but the left-wing orthodoxy on schools (that if you throw more money at under-performing schools, they'll become better) is just wrong.
Nine times out of ten, you need to alter school demographics to make a substantial change to performance on standardized testing. This means less disadvantaged minorities (particularly Blacks and Latinos), and more upper-middle class families (note, more upper-middle class kids in the schools actually seems to improve disadvantaged minorities scores too - perhaps because the peer culture of performance changes).
This sort of change is semi-organically happening in many cities - or at least in portions of many cities. First racially mixed areas become much whiter, resulting in a big drop in neighborhood school enrollment. Then a handful of "pioneer parents" (usually moms) make a pact to enroll their kids at the neighborhood school. A few years later there's big "improvements" in test score performance, and it becomes increasingly seen as the default for middle-class parents in the area.
Wht really happens is the schools get better access to more amentities. More extracurriculars, more AP classes, more after school programs, newer books, cutting edge curriculumn, more experienced teachers.....
Teachers raise their expectations ans everyone wins. Unfortunately we have this perception that poorer parents do not care. But reality is that it is an access problem. We only give access to those who have power.
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We just want to live a mellow but productive lifestyle where we can enjoy the great outdoors regularly.
