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I grew up on Long Island (the suburbs of NYC). My town was small and safe...now whenever I go back I remark how much it has grown (mainly Puerto Rican and Mexican Immigrants) and I always read about fights, beatings and shotings at the local mall, schools, etc. It has definitely changed.
Read a similar article about the same issue at least a decade ago. Instead of New York it focused on the inner ring suburbs in the midwest for metro areas like Minneapolis and St. Louis. Gist of the article was that the major city has the resources and/or tax base and the outer suburbs is where most of the migration is going. So the inner ring suburbs are attracting crime, low income housing and poor residents.
Raised in Chicago, now loving the burbs....you can tell it was a warm weekend in the City 5 (murdered)dead and 18 wounded, lol... wait till its 100 degrees out..
if you gave me a free big house in the city (free), Emm no thanks..O and it comes with a 200k job.. Hmm , no thanks,lol...comes with free bullet proof vest, Emm no thanks...
also comes with all the free Agenda 21 propaganda one could take, Emm no thanks...
Well, here in Dayton the city is anything but thriving, and the suburbs are becoming poor, too....Dayton ranked 13 out of 90 metro areas in the growth of suburban poverty. And these arent necessarily 'inner ring' suburbs either...blue collar places that are further out are getting slammed.
Read a similar article about the same issue at least a decade ago. Instead of New York it focused on the inner ring suburbs in the midwest for metro areas like Minneapolis and St. Louis. Gist of the article was that the major city has the resources and/or tax base and the outer suburbs is where most of the migration is going. So the inner ring suburbs are attracting crime, low income housing and poor residents.
It's more like this:
Urban areas have great appeal in the modern era for some. Many of the old drawbacks are gone in many neighborhoods. With deindustrialization, they aren't particularly dirty. With gentrification, they aren't particularly crime-ridden. Even the schooling situation isn't anywhere near as bad in many cities as twenty years ago, and given so many people either delay, don't have kids at all, or only have one (meaning private school is more affordable), this isn't a huge deal. Sure, for some people the conditions may be too cramped, but some people don't want a lot of space, while others are willing to deal with less space for other amenities, like easy walking access to a business district, or mass transit.
Outer suburbs and exurbs maintain the traditional suburban positives. Larger houses on larger plots, often available at fairly cheap prices in the exurbs. Low crime rates. Sometimes quite "good" school districts.
First-ring suburbs generally lack the features to attract either group. For those who want city life, they have worse public transit and limited walkability. For those who like the suburbs, they seem a dated, inferior product, with generally small houses on tiny lots. Thus, they're all primed (being areas no one wants) to be ghettos.
Of course, one shouldn't generalize. Depending upon the area of the country, first-ring suburbs can either be "streetcar suburbs" or largely post 1945 creations. The former have been holding up better in many areas. Here in Pittsburgh, the first-ring suburb of Mount Lebanon (which was in part built up before WW2, has a walkable business district, and a light-rail line into Downtown) has remained one of the most desirable parts of the county, while Penn Hills (which is the first post-WW2 suburb to the east of Pittsburgh, and lacks any walkable character) is declining rather rapidly into a ghetto.
I looked at where the best and worst ranked public schools of Toronto were located... The worst ones are in the post-WWII areas within city limits in South Scarborough, North Etobicoke and Jane-Finch mostly (all pretty cheap by Toronto standards and the poorest parts of the metro) although there are some in pre-WWII areas like York and Junction that are still pretty cheap and not gentrified.
The best ones are in Southern York Region (Markham, Richmond Hill, Thornhill mostly) and within a couple miles the Yonge Subway in Toronto. The areas further North (mostly South York Region) are largely suburban... but not cheap. Typical housing in these areas would be $700,000, 3000 sf homes on 1/10 an acre. The areas around the Yonge Subway are even more expensive with lots of $1.5-2.5 million, 3000-5000 sf homes, also around 1/10 acre but narrower and deeper lots. There's also clusters of condos and apartments but they're generally not cheap. Oakville has good schools too, but like Southern York, it is a quite expensive suburb, maybe even a bit more so.
In the more middle class suburbs like Mississauga and Brampton, the schools are pretty much average, neither good nor bad. I suspect the difference between lower and upper tier schools in Toronto is not as high as in the US though.
Do the cheap US outer suburbs actually have good schools, or are they more average?
Do the cheap US outer suburbs actually have good schools, or are they more average?
Exurbs usually do not have the best school systems. They usually sell themselves by having housing which is modern, big, and dirt cheap. In addition, in many states, exurbs are across county lines, and have much lower tax levels compared to suburbs within the core urban county.
The people who care about schools first and foremost tend to pick the handful of first-to-third ring suburbs which have historically had the reputation of top school districts. Which of course, continues the historic rankings, as the people who self-select to live in overpriced suburbs for excellent schools have to have a great deal of money, or care enough about schooling to impoverish themselves.
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