Family Friendly
- Posted by ryan on July 10th, 2008 filed in Cities
Commenter Mike thinks Imhoff’s rant has real underlying concerns I should address:
DC’s city environment strikes me like google or San Francisco in that it is a place for college-educated young people with disposable cash and no kids who have no problem working 70 hour weeks and have no interest in owning a home in the near future. And given the number of muggings I’ve read about from bloggers, people who are more comfortable being around crime than the median person raising a child in the country.
How will the New Urbanism handle these anxieties, which show up with the awkward epithets Gary throws out (”adolescent”, “childless”)
I think one thing we should remember is that tastes differ. There are going to be a lot of households out there who feel that it is a physical impossibility to raise children in a setting that doesn’t involve a big house and a big yard. With the exception the very rich, the District is simply not going to be able to accommodate such families, nor should we try to do so.
For other families that are open to raising children in the District, the main concerns are going to be affordability and quality services. Affordability is best achieved by building as much new housing as we can (ironic, since many of these pro-car old timers double as anti-development nimbys), and the District is certainly aware of its needs vis a vis schools, crime, and transportation.
I think it’s important for us to think about our unique attributes as positives to be embraced rather than barriers. There are nice things for families about being in the city. Sure, it’s not easy to drive everywhere, but on the plus side, you don’t have to drive everywhere. Sure, you may not have a huge back yard, but you do have huge parks and some of the nation’s best museums. Sure, crime is high, but your teenager can get around without piling in a car driven by adolescents hellbent on breaking 140 mph. Lots of people successfully raise children in urban settings; it’s not for everyone, but that’s the point–not everyone wants to raise a kid in a stifling, auto-dependent suburb.
July 10th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
As a parent raising two kids in DC is challenging but rewarding.
Challenges: Schools, lack of open space, and kids yelling at them to “this isn’t your neighborhood”
Pros: parks, museums, friends, cultural activities, and not living from a minivan driving everywhere
July 10th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Thanks for the thoughtful response. Moving from Chicago to San Francisco recently, it strikes me as very odd the lack of children in SF (which can have a yuppie playground feel to it a lot of the time), where Chicago was able to manage middle-class neighborhoods relatively well.
I just read that SF has lost people between $100-$150K (and everyone below $100K) over the past 5 years - an urban future where people making $125K have a tough time making ends meet sounds difficult for families. Granted SF is at the high end of this, but I’ve always wonder how DC does in this regard.
July 10th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Since crime has been brought up, I will point out that statistically you are far more likely to be hurt of killed in a car accident in the suburbs than by crime in the city.
Factor in auto accidents and suburbs are not safer.
July 10th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I still don’t understand Imhoff’s rant.
At one point he says this:
City planners hate suburbs, and want people to live in more congested urban neighborhoods instead. As Washington residents, that’s what most of us like; but most people want detached houses with two-car garages on quarter-acre lots, at a minimum.
So is he saying that Washington residents want “congested” neighborhoods? (And what sort of congestion is he even talking about? Housing? Road? Upper-respiratory?). But then the next sentence he says:
Instead of planning Washington to accommodate the actual preferences and real lives of both DC residents and suburbanites, our city’s planners want to force us to accommodate their preferences and their theoretical ideals.
Why should DC plan itself in a way to appeal to city-dweller and suburbanites? What the hell would that look like anyway? A quarter acre, two-car garage, with a Starbucks and small-sized music venue at the end of each driveway?
Making it even more difficult and expensive to own cars may influence one, two, or three percent of car owners to use bicycles or the subway instead; more likely, it will influence a larger percentage of people not to live, work, or locate their businesses in Washington
So some number larger than 3% will decide to decamp to the suburbs because the big bad city planner wants to make it somewhat more of a pain in the ass to have a car in the city. And what is it: residents, workers or business owners? Which group is going to be so angry over changes to lane-management on 16th st. that they say “that’s it, we’re moving to Burke!” And even if it were true that some percentage was put-off by the changes, what about those that are attracted by them? You know, the type that actually want to live in a city?
The thing is, he does nothing to connect the initial inspiration for his rant (traffic management) with the real target of his rant. That real target is, more specifically, dense transit-oriented development, and, more generally, a perceived sense of elitism on the part of those that want to improve the city’s urban plan.
This is a man who lives in a mansion in Columbia Heights. It’s like he thinks some hipster brigade is going to come and force him into an efficiency.
But really, perhaps his bitterness stems from his run-ins with the Board for the Condemnation of Insanitary Buildings:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=35586
Frankly I appreciate some of the work of Brizill and Imhoff, but a lot of the times I think they’ve got their collective head’s up their ass trying to protect some out-dated sense of what this city should be.
July 10th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
I’ve lived in the DC area, off and on, since 1970. The city is as safe now as when I was growing up, although of course it would be great to get violent crime rates down to pre-1960s levels.
That being said, studies show there’s a greater risk of violent death if you live in the suburbs. In the suburbs, your risk of dying in a car crash is higher than than the risk city dwellers have of dying by homicide.
One of the greatest things I prized as a kid was the ability to walk and bike all over town. DC has plenty of quiet side streets and sidewalks going through interesting, pleasant neighborhoods. You can walk or bike for miles without running into freeways, 8-lane arterials, pedestrian-hostile berm & buffer zones, giant parking lots 5-10 acres and bigger, and all the other accouterments of the happy motoring utopia.
How rare it is in America to have such an extensive, fine-grained street grid serving neighborhoods that are generally prosperous (i.e. not reduced to rubble).
One other comment about schools: The problems of DC schools have been intractable for my entire lifetime and beyond. Imagine, however, if Chancellor Rhee’s reforms are actually successful in improving the schools to the level of, say, Montgomery County’s. I think that would set off a land rush on a scale unprecedented in DC since World War II.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
What he said. ^^^
If the Mayor and Chancellor are successful in transforming the schools into something remotely viable, it will remove the one barrier that exists for many younger urban dwellers who are starting families.
How many people do “we” know who, once little baby comes, high tail to MoCo because of schools?
Look at SF and the great European cities, where the trends are two the urban core. That is where we are going as a society, and the sooner our planners and leadership adjust our schools, modes of transportation etc to accomodate this, the better.
The NIMBY fights we see in Brookland and Tenleytown are simply a manifestation of the frustration expressed by Imhoff.
However Fenty, Tregoning, Tangherlini, Rhee etc represent our future and there is clearly anxiety and frustration on the part of certain older residents about these changes.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Gary lives in Columbia Heights. Gary also dealt with debacle over DCUSA from 1997. At the same time he is committed to driving.
At the same time, we must recognize that all parts of the city are not the same. I just moved to Manor Park. It’s bucolic if not suburban like. It would be an amazing place to raise children. And I live three blocks from Coolidge High School, two different elementary schools, and the Takoma Recreation Center. And .9 mile to Takoma Metro, and a couple blocks from two different bus lines.
But if you want to have big yards and you live in the core of the city in rowhouse neighborhoods you’ll be disappointed. OTOH, plenty of children grow up in Brooklyn and Manhattan and other dense places. The city provides totlots and school playground recreation facilities are not locked up at night til later, and they are open to residents (this mostly isn’t the case in DC). OTOH/2, you see plenty of children in Lincoln Park which is a rowhouse area of Capitol Hill.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Lots of people successfully raise children in urban settings; it’s not for everyone, but that’s the point–not everyone wants to raise a kid in a stifling, auto-dependent suburb.
Exactly. Besides, today’s kid-free urban hiptards are tomorrow’s bitter parents trying to choose between MD and VA. And just as kids get sick of the boring suburbs and flock downtown, their older equivalent gets sick of the downtown equivalent: homogenized streetscapes that seem cut from the dough of suburbia. Why do some governments and developers insist on remaking cities in the suburbs’ image? Stop pushing parking and chain businesses and emphasize small local businesses and effective transit options.
Another issue is childcare affordability and location. Sometimes it’s convenient to mass transit, sometimes it isn’t. And sometimes it’s way the hell away from where you work. My kids are near Eisenhower Avenue Metro, but the daycare parking lot is evenly split with VA and MD tags. Hence the need for some folks to have a car.