Quality of Life

~ Laura

Yesterday, I was strangely fascinated with the New York Times’ article about the hip young cities. I looked at the slide show with pictures of ski slopes, bike paths, and microbreweries several times. I like that stuff, too. Why are those cool things in cities and not out here in the suburbs?

Schools, jobs, housing and spending priorities. People in their 20’s have different needs than people in their 30’s.

Cleveland made the list as a place where young people are moving back to the urban areas. Cleveland with its decreasing population growth, actually has young people moving in. Why? There are a couple of neighborhoods that have cool restaurants and bars. They have funky old housing that is dirt cheap. The schools are horrible. So, once people have kids, they usually move back to the suburbs where they grew up. For the childless, these urban areas are perfect.

About fifteen minutes north of here, just over the border into New York state, housing is cheap. New restaurants and music shops are opening up there like crazy. Even though there isn’t a tech center or other cool jobs, they have the cheap housing and lots of places to build funky restaurants. It’s nice for us, because it’s a lot easier to get there than shlepping out to Brooklyn.

My particular suburb isn’t very exciting. It has a lot of restaurants, but most of them have been around for decades. There’s no industrial lighting or artisanal pickles. They cater to meat and potatoes old people. There are some apartment complexes, but there  hasn’t been any new construction in ages. In fact, local residents continually block the construction of apartment buildings. But people still pay a premium to live here. Why? It has a ton of pre-schools, after school sports, a bazillion civic groups, great SAT scores, a train to Manhattan, and large funky houses.

We’ve been here for three years now, and I’m starting to become more involved in the community. I could go to a meeting for some group every day. Last night, I went to the board of ed meeting. Wednesday night, I’ll be attending an information meeting on special education. There are book clubs, movie groups, spin classes, art centers. I’m throwing a pasta party for the cross country team on Friday night. Ian has a school dance that night, too. On Halloween, we’re having a bonfire party in the backyard. Most of these local activities are aimed at families, so I can’t imagine younger people going. But, for me, it’s a big playground.

So, there’s some comparative advantage going on here. Cities can short change the schools and put their resources into creating fun things for childless people. Suburbs put their effort into families. Personally, I would love artisanal pickles and bike paths AND good schools and lots of civics groups, but that’s hard to pull off.

Published by Laura

28 thoughts on “Quality of Life”

  1. “..e artisanal pickles and bike paths AND good schools and lots of civics groups…”

    Arlington, Virginia. Paradise on the Potomac.

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  2. A trend in our city is people staying in the city when they have kids. The school district keeps underestimating population growth in the schools, because they are expecting the old pattern, of families moving out when their kids reach school age (along with population increases because of immigrant populations living in the city). The school makes estimates of demand based on births in the city, but expects a larger percent to move away, than do, by kindergarten. But, in the wealthier city neighborhoods (made exclusive by housing prices), families are attached to their neighborhoods and to their houses (and, with the exclusion of the one district on an island, don’t think they will avoid urban problems by moving to suburban districts, which resemble their wealthy neighborhoods, anyway). Switching to a neighborhood school plan, where the location of a house determined access to schools (and, potentially, fundraising that can stay within the neighborhood school) have played roles.

    And, there aren’t enough private schools to take up the extra, even for those willing to pay, though new schools are being developed.

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  3. That mix exists here in Vancouver too as well as Seattle (I’m there 3-4 times a year to visit friends). People/families will live in basement suites and small apartments to be a part of it. The city is increasing the density with lane way housing (you build a small 900 sqft house in place of your garage off the alley) and 3-4 story condo complexes along major arteries. And bike lanes are going in everywhere in order to reduce the number of cars.

    And Seattle’s housing is not as crazy expensive as here.

    It’s definitely doable.

    And I find that it’s the younger folk who are super involved in civic groups, grass roots arts organizations, schools, etc. The old guard (the ones who owned their homes long before the crazy increase) are the ones who are much less involved in day-to-day city life, whether it be entrepreneurial ventures or neighborhood activities.

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  4. “But people still pay a premium to live here. Why? It has a ton of pre-schools, after school sports, a bazillion civic groups, great SAT scores, a train to Manhattan, and large funky houses.”

    You’ve got the causality wrong. People don’t pay because SAT scores are high. SAT scores are high because they come from families who can afford to pay to live there.

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    1. YES. I heard a high school principal asked once the easiest way to raise SAT scores, and he said, “Build more houses with three bathrooms.”

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  5. It’s circular, though. The high SATs just raise the property values further and attract even wealthier people, who pressure the school to invest in APs rather that ESL which raise the property values further.

    I think you have one thing wrong. It’s not Brooklyn or Cleveland or wherever that invest money into things that young single people like – it’s businesses that cater to those populations and who can afford to take chances, either because real estate is cheap or because the customer base is, well, Brooklyn.

    Suburbs that are affluent enough to price the poors out and keep the SATs high have priced themselves too high for people who would take a chance opening an artisanal pickle shop or a funky restaurant at the same time.

    I feel lucky to live near Boston, where universities guarantee a decent level of new and cool. Cambridge is right down the road. But if I had it to do over, I’d move to Philadelphia – you can get a gorgeous townhouse for under $300k. I’m surprised it wasn’t on the NYT’s list.

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    1. Here, you can get a gorgeous townhouse for under $300,000 and here every neighbor come up to you about how it sold for $60,000 just ten years ago.

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  6. but, I do think that places like Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland can face collapse if the balance of smaller living spaces/cool neighborhoods/schools v expense becomes too difficult. As an example, can two faculty members (and, that’s basically two professionals) afford a house in a neighborhood they want to live in, with good schools? I think a lot of New Yorkers are deciding it’s not possible, with two professionals, and certainly not with one. That situation can develop in the hip/expensive cities, too, and it develops slowly, because at first, people whose kids are going to elementary school bought their houses 10-15 years ago, when housing was cheaper.

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    1. I was just talking to a local college administrator who had weighed the choice between our local college and University of British Columbia. She said that UBC is currently offering downpayment help! The math still didn’t make sense for her family even so, so they moved to TX.

      Of course, being in TX, I didn’t have a chance to talk to a UBC administrator who made the opposite choice.

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  7. Why are those cool things in cities and not out here in the suburbs?

    Lack of density, mostly. For those things to do well, you need enough people going to them. For that, you need a cluster, really. And then, you need people who can walk to them. None of that is easy in the suburbs, where things are spread out, people drive everywhere, and zoning makes a lot of stuff impossible anyway. That’s always the advantage of more dense living. Even if the percentage of people who want to go to a non-bad restaurant isn’t higher than in the suburbs, there are still more people who want to go, because there are more people. That can then support more places, which in turn encourages a greater percentage to go. In the low-density suburbs you don’t get that (even in places like much of NJ, where the suburbs are higher density than in many parts of the country.)

    And can we lay off the pickle bit? That was a silly, mostly made up by the NY Times tread from what, 5 years ago? (The only time I’ve ever had an “artisanal pickle” was in NYC, but sold by people who had been in the pickle business for three generations.)

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    1. If you can’t make it anywhere without a car, it really puts an intolerably low cap on how drunk you can get.

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  8. Just for that, I’m thinking about renaming this blog, “Artie Pick.” And thank you for the picture, Wendy. I’ll will post it tomorrow.

    There are a lot of restaurants in this area. I think my town (30,000 residents) has about 40. They are all rather boring, however. So, tastes differ.

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    1. The really authentic French pastry place in my neighborhood (macarons for $2+ each from a guy with an accent straight out of central casting) is still there after a year. The fancy bar ($4 is the cheapest pint there, no bottles or cans, $7 french fries) has expanded its hours and is still drawing crowds. I think we’re gentrifying, which is weird because I thought we were pretty gentry-like before.

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      1. If I were going to start something, it would be a laundromat. There’s now none on the main bus lines in my part of town.

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      4. I’d be very happy if someone would start a drop-off laundromat close to my place. When I lived in NYC you could do that at the Laundromat just around from my building, and I did it maybe 1/4 of the time, on the way to work. But if I had to drive to it, there’s no way I’d make a special trip.

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    3. About 50% of our local restaurants are Tex Mex, which takes getting used to as a ratio.

      A lot of them proudly advertise their menudo specials. Menudo, is a beef tripe soup that Wikipedia somehow contrives to make sound surprisingly tasty: “Menudo is a traditional Mexican soup (also known as pancita) made with beef stomach (tripe) in broth with a red chili pepper base. Usually, lime, chopped onions, and chopped cilantro are added, as well as crushed oregano and crushed red chili peppers.”

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      1. When I lived in Denver and was looking for good Mexican food, I’d look for places that sold menudo, not because I wanted to eat it (I don’t) but because it’s a fairly decent proxy for “authentic Mexican food”.

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  9. Where are you in Philly, MH?

    Don’t knock the pickles! I have a friend who started an artisanal pickle company maybe 15 years ago. You can get them at Whole Foods and if $7 pickles are in your budget, they are awesome.

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  11. Atlanta’s suburbs are fairly dense, so they have all of those things. I like the restaurants in my suburbs more than the ones in the city. I just saw an amazing play at a professional theater (in a suburb) and we even have a professional orchestra. Many of suburbs here are more like small cities, because they are also large employment centers (IT, for example), so they bring with them culture and the arts. It’s a pretty ideal situation to have farm to table restaurants, fantastic public schools, huge racial diversity, as well as a large city nearby.

    I’m not moving.

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  12. Madison always makes those “quality of life” articles. we have decent schools, restaurants, lakes, etc. But it is winter here for 6 months of the year. Somehow, that frigid fact escapes the articles. I think every place has trade-offs, there is no perfect place. (Although I had *fried* organic artisanal pickles at at Madison restaurant the other night. yes, fried. and they were delicious)

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