Hot Child in the City, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

April 19, 2014 Martha Thomases 1 Comment

I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, which was then a reasonable size city of about 100,000 people.  We had a small front yard and back yard, a gold course one block away in one direction and a park two blocks away in another.  I could walk to my elementary school.

When I was a older, we moved a few miles away, outside the city limits.  We had more land, and there were no sidewalks.  I had to take a bus to school until I was sent away to Connecticut.

My parents were fairly typical in their behavior.  They met when they both lived in New York, and then, when they had children, they moved to places where they could own a house of their own.  The suburbs were a dream, with lots of space, good schools, and “good” (i.e. white and middle-class) neighborhoods.

Now, it seems, not so much.  It seems that young adults, even those with children, are rejecting the suburbs and prefer to stay in urban areas.

If you read the link, you will come across a certain amount of Times attitude.  They are, as always, mesmerized by the relatively high amount of income possessed by the people they choose to interview.  The researchers they quote admit they may be observing a demographic blip, not a trend.

However …

There are a lot of reasons why the city is a great place to raise a family, even for those who can afford to live in the suburbs.  Let me use my own family as an example.

• It’s true that my son couldn’t play unsupervised in a back yard when he was in elementary school, and, perhaps, that limited his sense of independence.  A few years later, though, he could take the subway by himself, without waiting for a parent to drive him.

• He could walk to school that included rich kids and poor kids, kids who lived in shelters and kids whose parents owned more than one house.   Some kids spoke Spanish at home, and some kids spoke Russian.  Some kids were Jewish and Christian and Muslim and Hindu and Buddhist and atheist.

• My job was accessible by mass transit, so that I could be home 15 minutes after I left my office.  Colleagues who didn’t live in the city had commutes of an hour or more.  That meant they had less time to spend with their children.

• On rainy days, there were a multitude of museums, toy stores (which we treated like museums), movie theaters and bowling alleys easily accessible by subway.

•  As you can tell by the previous items, I consider mass transit to be a wonderful thing.  As a teenager in the suburbs, I craved driving a car for the time to myself.  As an adult, I enjoy not having to pay for a car, for parking and for insurance.

Cities can be wonderful places for families, at least in my experience.  They are also good for the country as a whole.  They are energy efficient.  Compared to suburban and rural areas, they cost the state and federal governments much less money per capita.  They are fabulous places for seniors, who can socialize much more easily (and safely) when they don’t require cars.

Most important, cities encourage empathy.  It’s hard to hate “them” when they are people one encounters every day, at the office, the schoolyard, and on the sidewalk.

Sidewalks are the mark of a good neighborhood.  And if there are chalk drawings, so much the better.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases is even older.