Children and downtown
A front-page feature in a recent edition of The New York Times (registration required) wonders whether urban renaissances in the nation's center cities are missing a key ingredient: children.
After all, the story notes, most downtown revitalization is built on two key demographics ... empty nesters and young professionals.
In neither case are children a major part of the equation (there are more dogs than children in Seattle, the story notes).
The Times reports: "Officials say that the very things that attract people who revitalize a city -- dense vertical housing, fashionable restaurants and shops and mass transit that makes a car unnecessary --are driving out children by making the neighborhoods too expensive for young families."
The Times cites San Francisco as leading the nation among cities with populations of 300,000-plus that contain the lowest percentages of children under 18 (14.5 percent), followed by Seattle, Honolulu, Boston, Pittsburgh and Washington.
Now, Greensboro is light years from being a Seattle or a San Francisco -- we should be so lucky. But it would be worth taking a good, hard look at the seeds we're planting today in our downtown for the future.
The good news: There are already amenities that make the center city more family friendly, among them the Main Public Library, the Children's Museum, the planned center-city park and First Horizon Park, which is arguably a playground and picnic area disguised as a baseball stadium.
There are also vibrant neighborhoods on the fringes of downtown that are extremely family friendly, most notably Westerwood, Aycock and Fisher Park.
The not-so-good news: Affordable housing still remains in short supply downtown.
Why this all should matter is that, for every child a city loses, it tends to lose support for amenities such as parks and education. The Times even attaches a price tag of $5,000 per child lost for a local school district.
Is now a good time to revisit the idea of a new school downtown? Remember, Action Greensboro's original master plan in 2001 for the center city envisioned a new public elementary school for Bellemeade Village.
Comments (3)
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Its "a chicken and egg" situation.
In downtown Chicago, the typical public school is terrible. Even if your child tests into one of the charter schools (some of which are VERY good) they still have to go through a lottery system to be accepted. That leaves private schools. There is a private school near me that costs "only" 6,000 a year (the Latin School, and Chicago Lab school are closer to $16,000!) But 6,000 is a lot of money!
So, people with children leave the downtown. And the money that might have gone into making schools better goes with them.
Posted on March 30, 2005 10:16 AM
In downtown Seattle, they do not make it very children-friendly at all. In fact, they try to "scare" parents with children away by doing things such as hire security people that will walk up to cars in parking garages with children, and frighten them by standing next to their car and staring at them, or actually talking to very small children directly without their parent's permission. The employees inside the downtown stores are not friendly to parent's with children either. This spells disaster for Seattle's downtown area.
Posted on April 6, 2006 3:17 PM
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Posted on October 19, 2006 4:41 AM