Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Most of these yuppies don't have kids, or they send their kids to private schools, or finagle their way into charter and magnet schools. They don't care about schools for anyone else other than their kids, if they have any.
who are the "these yuppies" you are referring to? The post you responded to said nothing about yuppies.
Sure I do. I was just posing the questions to someone who thinks that city and suburbs can be determined by the type of housing. Whether you live in a city or suburb is determined by the city limits.
Wikipedia disagrees:
In the United States and Canada, suburb can refer either to an outlying residential area of a city or town or to a separate municipality, borough, or unincorporated area outside a town or city.
Note for the UK, Ireland and Australia city limits is completely irrelevant. If you responded to someone from there that their taxes and schools are still the same, it would be a meaningless response; the government has nothing to do with being a suburb at all.
What are these childless people supposed to do? It's not like they're actively against education.
Childless people should be concerned about public education in their area because:
1. They pay taxes for the schools. They should be getting a decent return.
2. Schools are a public benefit.
3. They may have kids at some point. Then they will want good schools. Even if they don't have kids, their friends and relatives will have them.
4. Good schools are good for property values.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nei
who are the "these yuppies" you are referring to? The post you responded to said nothing about yuppies.
That said, there are metros #1 breaks down for. As I noted, there are very old "satellite" cities near New York (Hoboken, Jersey City, Union City, etc) and Boston (Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea) which are hard to call suburbs. Indeed, my experience has been people who live there get insulted at the idea they are a suburb of the core city.
The Bay Area is an even more discrete example, because San Francisco doesn't really dominate it. Yes it's much older in terms of built structure than most of the surrounding areas, but there's not a heavy employment concentration in San Francisco - many people reverse commute. Arguably these days San Francisco is more of a suburb of Silicon Valley than the reverse, and Oakland is not a suburb of either.
Other parts of California the municipality distinction makes little sense. Many Californian city boundaries contain some of the densest parts of the region near the center of the city, but outside that it's a somewhat random mix of neighborhoods that got annexed and ones that didn't. There's not much of a difference between the two, and in the same region, it's unclear whether there's a significant demographic, form or school quality difference between places within the city limits and ones outside. Yes, one place gets the city proper services and city taxes, but each suburb gets different services and a tax structure, why is the one in the city proper so special? San Diego has an identical median household income to its metro, and only slightly higher poverty rate. Los Angeles has many places closer to its downtown than the further parts of the city. Is it really that important that East Los Angeles is outside of the city while the western part of the San Fernando Vally is inside? Not a Californian, but I suspect it's not considered that important of a distinction.
Another oddball is Silicon Valley if taken as its own region instead is an another weird case. A bit over half the population is one city, San Jose. But it isn't a job center; it has a large negative outward commute flow.
We've discussed schools many times on this forum. I've posted links to urbanist mags where the the authors admit they never thought about city schools until they had their own kids. A lot of people on this forum are very young, and not even married/partnered, let alone parents. Most of them don't care about schools b/c they're not on the radar screen.
Most people did not like the ideas I suggested some time ago on another thread about schools here on Urban Planning.
Please show me some evidence that city people are more likely to vote to raise school taxes than suburban people.
I think most people don't think very much about kids until they have them, unless they happen to be in the education field. It's just in today's America, childless people disproportionately congregate in cities, as opposed to 30 years ago, when a fair number of people moved to "garden apartments" in the suburbs after graduating college.
I honestly don't think we differ that much in terms of what we want on educational policy. The only clear difference between what you want and what I do is your stated opposition to magnet schools. While I understand they contribute to withdrawal of middle-class students from neighborhood schools, they at least keep students in the public school system whose parents would otherwise either move out of the city or attend private school. Teachers who work there get the same wages and benefits as at the neighborhood schools as well.
Just to use a personal example, I recently found the enrollment percentages for neighborhood schools in Pittsburgh. In my local catchment area, only around 25% of kids go to the neighborhood school. Which does a lot to explain why an 80% white area can have a 80% black neighborhood school. While I am sure it wouldn't hurt my kids in any significant way to go to elementary school there, why not apply to the magnet system when it's free and most of their peers in the neighborhood aren't going to the local school anyway?
Regarding taxation, since my union represents a fair number of public-sector workers, we feel the brunt of taxpayer revolts in suburban towns fairly often. While I certainly know of cities where the local government tries to limit tax increases, I'm not aware of any recent fights where the public has mobilized against a tax increase proposed by a mayor or city council. Here in Pittsburgh people successfully fought for an initiative to raise taxes to pay for the library system, and in New York, one of Mayor DeBlasio's primary campaign issues was a tax on the rich to pay for universal pre-K.
I think most people don't think very much about kids until they have them, unless they happen to be in the education field. It's just in today's America, childless people disproportionately congregate in cities, as opposed to 30 years ago, when a fair number of people moved to "garden apartments" in the suburbs after graduating college.
I honestly don't think we differ that much in terms of what we want on educational policy. The only clear difference between what you want and what I do is your stated opposition to magnet schools. While I understand they contribute to withdrawal of middle-class students from neighborhood schools, they at least keep students in the public school system whose parents would otherwise either move out of the city or attend private school. Teachers who work there get the same wages and benefits as at the neighborhood schools as well.
Just to use a personal example, I recently found the enrollment percentages for neighborhood schools in Pittsburgh. In my local catchment area, only around 25% of kids go to the neighborhood school. Which does a lot to explain why an 80% white area can have a 80% black neighborhood school. While I am sure it wouldn't hurt my kids in any significant way to go to elementary school there, why not apply to the magnet system when it's free and most of their peers in the neighborhood aren't going to the local school anyway?
Regarding taxation, since my union represents a fair number of public-sector workers, we feel the brunt of taxpayer revolts in suburban towns fairly often. While I certainly know of cities where the local government tries to limit tax increases, I'm not aware of any recent fights where the public has mobilized against a tax increase proposed by a mayor or city council. Here in Pittsburgh people successfully fought for an initiative to raise taxes to pay for the library system, and in New York, one of Mayor DeBlasio's primary campaign issues was a tax on the rich to pay for universal pre-K.
We have to vote on ALL our taxes here in CO, per the state constitution. The legislature cannot raise taxes. I'm not sure what your point is. You gave no examples of any suburb opposing a school tax increase.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
