Cleveland's Population Could Hinge on Keeping or Attracting Young People Once They Start Having Kids (Lakewood: best neighborhoods, apartments)

[reioh]

https://www.clevescene.com/cleveland...t=HomeThisWeek

Is the city doing enough to make that happen?

[Urban Peasant]

I read that article too and it pretty much sums up all of the ongoing problems facing many mid-sized to large cities including the coastal cities. It would take immense effort on the part of the city government to make that succeed. They would have to improve the public schools, cap certain taxes such as property or income taxes, and convince new families that Cleveland is indeed a safe and comfortable place to raise a family. For a city that lost so much jobs, population and more importantly trust, it will be a challenge but not impossible. We Cleveland lovers are more easily convinced but in the eyes of the general population, a city's image is all so important. The mayor and city council ought to consider implementing yearly performance measures on everything public from schools to infrastructure to public relations and communications and how well they are doing their own jobs.

[mbowes80]

"... Once They Start Having Kids" is a pretty presumptuous way of putting it. Actually, roughly half of adults now don't have kids. Those bodies are relevant in the population numbers as well.

Percentage of Childless Women on the Rise, Cenus Bureau Data Shows | Time

[bjimmy24]

Originally Posted by mbowes80

"... Once They Start Having Kids" is a pretty presumptuous way of putting it. Actually, roughly half of adults now don't have kids. Those bodies are relevant in the population numbers as well.

Percentage of Childless Women on the Rise, Cenus Bureau Data Shows | Time

An awful trend indeed.

However, I'd be willing to bet that coastal cities have significantly higher percentages of childless reproductive aged women than midwestern cities.

[Minervah]

I don’t like this “half the women aren’t having kids” thing. Where are the men in this? Maybe they’re stepping down from their participation in the process.

Anyway, moving to the ‘burbs for better schools seems to be a common issue in other cities, not just Cleveland. It is in the two cities in which I previously lived, Chicago and Portland. Of the two, from what I have observed, I think Cleveland public schools are better but I wouldn’t commit to that without seeing actual rankings.

I think though that in many if not most cases, the ‘burbs win in this because they have more money to spend on education as a rule.

[bjimmy24]

Originally Posted by Minervah

I don’t like this “half the women aren’t having kids” thing. Where are the men in this? Maybe they’re stepping down from their participation in the process.

Fertility rates by definition can only measure women though. I think you are reading too much into a statistical category. Certainly it takes two to have a child, but the stat only makes sense by looking at women.

Anyway, moving to the ‘burbs for better schools seems to be a common issue in other cities, not just Cleveland. It is in the two cities in which I previously lived, Chicago and Portland. Of the two, from what I have observed, I think Cleveland public schools are better but I wouldn’t commit to that without seeing actual rankings.

True. Though one unfortunate thing about Cleveland, at least it seems to me, is that to get those good schools in Northeast Ohio, you have to go pretty far away. Here in Boston, Brookline and Newton border the city and have incredible, nationally recognized schools. You can live in an urban area, especially in the case of Brookline, and still have excellent schools. Not just "good" schools, truly excellent ones.

[Minervah]

Originally Posted by bjimmy24

Fertility rates by definition can only measure women though. I think you are reading too much into a statistical category. Certainly it takes two to have a child, but the stat only makes sense by looking at women.



True. Though one unfortunate thing about Cleveland, at least it seems to me, is that to get those good schools in Northeast Ohio, you have to go pretty far away. Here in Boston, Brookline and Newton border the city and have incredible, nationally recognized schools. You can live in an urban area, especially in the case of Brookline, and still have excellent schools. Not just "good" schools, truly excellent ones.

That’s why I kept it to the two cities with which I was familiar. Of course I haven’t lived in Chicago for decades but I do remember going to school there and of course the best schools were only in the best neighborhoods. I went to a total of three grammar schools. One was in an upscale neighborhood. We lived just barely on the wrong side of the tracks so to speak but my parents managed to get my sister and me in the really great school that served the good area.

Two other schools we went to were in the middle of much less affluent neighborhoods and the difference was like night and day. I will wager not much has changed in the way these things go today. The more affluent the neighborhood, the better the school.

With Portland, that’s kind of an exception in some places. Even in some of the more well-off neighborhoods schools are just okay. Those are in the more trendy neighborhoods that were once teaming with kids but the population has gone down mostly I think due to the new phenomenon of a proliferation of huge apartment buildings being built wth tiny apartments not at all conducive for families. There have been articles written how millennials plan to live in those complexes in the tiny apartments and then move to the ‘burbs to buy homes and send their kids to much better suburban schools when they begin to have families.

If Cleveland wants to attract families, they have to have the housing and schools families need besides the type of things that attracts the young, single professional population all the cities seem to want to attract these days. Some day those are the very people who will eventually want to start families and they will leave the city if they don’t find what they want and need there.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by Urban Peasant

I read that article too and it pretty much sums up all of the ongoing problems facing many mid-sized to large cities including the coastal cities.

There's a few things more or less unique to Cleveland. There are some really strong suburban options for people who want an urban or urban-ish lifestyle. Lakewood and the Heights can go toe to toe against many of the city neighborhoods. Also, the distribution of stable and desirable neighborhoods is very uneven in Cleveland city limits. A west side neighborhood is a tough sell to someone who works on the east side, especially in an eastern suburb.

[kpl1228]

The first three paragraphs of this article are so hipster that even I wanted to go out and buy artisanal bread! Jeez.
What this really is about is the story of Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities probably for about 30 years now. With the closure of heavy industry back then, workers left. The elderly stayed....and the one thing the elderly do more than anyone is NOT have kids (besides die and drain the federal budget, I love grandma too but it is what it is).
I'm pretty much convinced that the main population issue facing Cleveland proper now is not industrial/corporate job loss and people moving (that's pretty much a done deal on the large scale, that's mostly a Cleveland of a previous generation)....it's now instead retaining or attracting young working couples, affluent or not, strictly for repopulating the planet, so to speak. But there's not enough hipster couples (with future children) in Detroit Shoreway to make up for the natural attrition. Neighborhoods have improved, but it's a drop in the bucket citywide when compared to deaths.
The other thing is retaining them large scale, and in Cleveland (but not every city....not all US cities have the city/suburban public school divide that Cleveland has, shocking, I know), that's all about public schools for their kids. They move to the cool city, meet someone, get kids, and then look to move. Not everyone does private or charters. And again, a handful of those that do stay are just not enough to make up for the natural loss.
If we're looking at "growing Cleveland" as a kind of video game, a la Sim City, then having kids, unlike what others have said on this post, is crucial to growth. Otherwise, you're just replacing a person with another single "tenant."
And as an aside, glad to see the reality of young couples in non-hipster neighborhoods discussed at the end of the article. Not every young family is upscale or affluent or "hip." What about them? They, after all, are the majority of the city. Will they stay? Rich or poor, the public schools are the great equalizer. In Cleveland, it's currently the reason to move. Despite numerous improvements, leaving because of schools is what young Cleveland couples do, accurate perception or not. Especially if they grew up in NE Ohio and have been told that's just what you're supposed to do.

[ferraris]

Schools are certainly a factor, but they weren't the driving factor for us. I really wanted to find a place within city limits, but it just didn't add up for us.

We both work in east side suburbs and wanted a reasonable commute, so everything on the West Side was not an option. Here's how the east side neighborhoods broke down for us:

Too expensive: This is basically just the nicer parts of the greater University Circle area, and it's not really a family oriented area to boot.

Too small: Larchmere had nothing on the market when we were looking, and even today there's only a handful of options. Ludlow was an option for us, but it's geographically limited by the section that feeds to Shaker schools, which almost guarantees there won't be much spillover improvement into the neighboring parts of Cleveland.

Too far: North Collinwood is politically in the city, but it's geographically not a great location, being a fair distance from both downtown and our employers.

Too undesirable: The remaining east side neighborhoods seem to simply have too much blight or too much crime. This mattered way more to us than schools.

The city can improve all it wants to on the west side, but with so many jobs located in the east side and east suburbs, those neighborhoods really need to improve a great deal if the city wants to attract middle class and upper middle class residents to them.