I kinda take issue with this whole premise. Urbanism, at least for me, isn't coffee shops and brunch - it's libraries, grocers, schools, karate, baseball and swim class all being a short walk away. Driving 15 minutes to a Walgreens isn't a convenient lifestyle. This line, "If you have a family with kids aged 2, 5, and 7, then mass transit is not terribly useful to you" feels incredibly patronizing. It actually IS useful to me to come to work. Taking the bus and the train ARE useful and you DO see kids on them regularly. The issue is frequent service. But it's true, I don't want that to be the main way my kids get around - i prefer if they walked.
I think advocates who push back on the idea that families can be urbanist also lack empathy. The idea that kids have to be shuttled everywhere as the only reality is also not how suburbs were originally designed, and not how most suburbanites grew up. What they are advocating for - essentially raising a kid who is trapped in a car between manicured activities - is both a response to the dangers of fast cars bounding neighborhoods devoid of stimulation and also an elitist change to the way they themselves were raised. Kids should be able to walk and bike safely and independent of their parents. Three kids used to comfortably fit in a station wagon, but cars are too dangerous so even inside that's not enough now. But necessitating purchase of an expensive minivan to have a large family is elitist. Just like housing is expensive, anti urbanists are unintentionally making it even more pricey to raise a family. Why is family becoming less universal to Americans? Because we are making it so expensive and exclusive.
I have to take my 6-year-old to get two teeth pulled on Wed. I'm *so glad* that I can just walk to the dentist, as trying to get him into the carseat afterward while he's cranky and sore and numb would be an utter nightmare....
EXACTLY! Like, I get why they but hospitals off of highways - based on the way most people live, it makes more sense than having them downtown. Not every important task can or should be within a half mile walk - but so many day to day needs, yes I'd absolutely like them to be lose by! "Fine grain" may be an aesthetic - but it also means somebody can open up a small hardware store on my street, just to sell and assist with projects out of their garage. It also means someone can open a batting cage in their front yard, just so neighborhood kids have something to do instead of drugs or getting online. The professionalization of childhood is absolutely a symptom of it not being exciting OR safe for kids to play outside - and what's not safe is that to get anywhere, you have to cross treacherously fast roads, and what's not exciting is that while backyards and front yards are great, it means to get anywhere you have to go much farther, necessitating those treacherous roads.
I truly find cars to be a marvel, but the premise that urbanism is hostile to parenting and that cars are the ONLY way to raise a child - this isn't even how anybody born in the early 1990s grew up. Soccer moms were a thing, but their kids still had independent time. "Urbanism" makes parenting easier. It's ok to not want to go that route - I really don't chagrin any parent their choices. But it is increasingly annoying hearing that wanting to raise an independent kid without spending a fortune is somehow out of line or out of touch with the basics of parenting. It truly is elitism.
I think suburbs and cars /might/ be the easiest way to wrangle a couple of infants/toddlers around. But as soon as those kids are approaching adolescence and gain any degree of independence, car-dependency makes them dependent on being driven around town by parents, while walkability and transit allows them to take care of their own transportation needs.
I can personally attest that it is much easier to take an infant on transit than in the car. My daughter is three months old. Taking her anywhere in a car comes with having to put her in a car seat - an inconvenience at home, a logistical nightmare when traveling - and she usually cries the whole time. Taking her on the train is easy because I can put her in a wrap and have basically the same experience as if I was riding by myself.
Yep. I live in an inner-ring suburb of Boston and it is very nice that when my high school child has to go to their bi-weekly practice in downtown Boston they can just go there and back on their own via bus and subway. But I definitely would not want to live in Boston proper.
There is a middle way -- a life that's not EITHER living in the city center or downtown OR living in the city's suburbs.
I live in Cincinnati. We have a downtown core and 50+ other neighborhoods within the city's limits. Many, like mine, have their own business district. Nearly all are located somewhere along a series of major arteries that run from the river to the city's limits. We can walk (and increasingly bike) to many nearby locations, and an improving transit system offers alternatives to getting in your car and going downtown or to area universities and hospitals.
My neighborhood is situated along two major road arteries. There are three schools, three churches, restaurants, bars, salons, craft stores and gas stations -- everything but a grocery store. It's possible for me to bike, bus or walk to pretty much anywhere I want to go.
The biggest danger are the speeding cars on these "walkable" streets. They're the reason communities like mine are clamoring for engineered traffic calming. We've tried the cute signs, pedestrian flags and other measures and they don't work.
I don't care how big the vehicles are. I just want everyone to realize that no matter what they're driving, they're strapping themselves into something that weighs anywhere from 1-5 tons that can do incredible damage to people and property when driven recklessly.
No matter what kind of neighborhood we live in, there's a huge cultural shift we need to make -- one that stops prioritizing cars over people. I won't live long enough to see it happen but I'm committed to pushing the needle in that direction where I live.
Yeah. When *I* say "city" or "urban" I mean the whole gamut from big-city downtown core down to probably an old-school inner-ring suburb. Including legacy small towns and modern New Urbanism. But you're right, a lot of people think somehow that we're either talking about Manhattan or we're talking exurban Atlanta or Charlotte. We're mostly talking about everything in between those!
Totally agree, we live in a similar kind of neighborhood in Milwaukee.
I agree with Last that transit is a pain with kids, and we have two cars and drive the kids plenty of places.
But walking and biking is great for kids! We can walk a block to the playground, or 4 blocks to church, or bike 6 blocks to the bike trail. In a few years my daughter and a friend will be able to walk to the pizza place by themselves. Our yard is very small, but the houses being close together means my kids have more potential friends within a short distance in the neighborhood.
My biggest concern, as in your neighborhood, is the fast-moving cars on nearby arterial streets.
Beautiful, old churches tend to be downtown in cities. Presumably, they used to be attended by young families who lived nearby and it would be nice if young families could once again afford to live in the area and walk to church. Instead, some close or are repurposed and oftentimes much uglier churches only accessible by driving are built in the suburbs. It would be so much easier to build community around a parish if people lived nearby. And if we think of the elderly, a core clientèle of churches, many really shouldn't be driving to church and would be better served by being able to walk there. Thank you for writing about how urbanism should be for everyone!
I've often joked that when Pope Francis says the Church should be on the periphery, we Americans took it too literally. The church I attend used to be located a block away from where my house is now (this was long before I moved here). That building is now a community center, and the church's new location is way on the edge of the other side of town, across a stroad.
Needless to say, if it was still in it's old (beautiful) location, I would probably be there every day. Now, it's just for attending weekly Mass (who's trip I also use to get groceries that I can't get at the nearby market).
Thanks for the article. It reminded me of a statement I heard once, that we should design our cities so that they are safe enough for a child or elderly person to walk around in. It was something my wife and I liked when we visited NYC, we regularly saw teenagers able to travel around the city (we were there in the summer) in ways we would not see in Atlanta. The drivers there were much less erratic (not to mention the infrastructure was designed more for pedestrians) and it made sense that parents would be more comfortable letting the kids walk or ride the train out to a park on there own. I understand why parents drive their children here to the parks here especially after I've nearly been hit by drivers as a pedestrian on multiple occasions.
Yes. That's a great point to emphasize. Conservatives don't tend to see that as "cars make cities dangerous for people" but if you sense you live in the crowded, noisy city and yet you can't safely and easily get around without a car, then you don't really see much upside.
I always think how ironic and *so close* it is when I see a real estate listing for a house out in totally car-dependent suburbia and it says "Quiet, traffic-free cul-de-sac location." Similar to how a suburban mall or big-box store is car-free on the inside - unlike walking city blocks - but utterly dependent on the car to work as a business.
My interest in urbanism as a movement began through trying to open and run Montessori preschools in New York and San Francisco. I don't have kids, so it was an education for me in how difficult life is for urban families, particularly if they're not rich. And that seems wrong, as you point out, given the experience and history of humans living in cities.
So I think a lot of it comes down to bad policy. Public safety matters (both perception and reality), of course, but land use policy also takes lot of family-friendly housing off the table, which was the topic of my article last week, "Cities Aren't for Families": https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/cities-arent-for-families
Neighborhood of single family homes with easy car access is not ideal for families. It's not bad but where I grew up was better. I lived on an urban/inner suburb neighborhood with a grid street network and sidewalks on both sides. Every 4- 5 streets was an arterial street And at crossroads between them was commercial districts. Kids could buy stuff on their own without having to be driven. My folks never drove me anywhere, I got around on footm on bike, or on bus.
Nobody had SUVs or vans and yet families had 4-11 kids (Catholic neighborhood). Our neighborhood was a mix of single family houses, duplexes, and an apartment building here or there.
The reason why this ideal is it encouraged kids to be independent. High density meant jr high kids could earn money as paperboys and baby sitters on their own without parents helping them. By the time you were 18 you had earned money on your own and spent it and begun to learn how that worked. Moving out was much easier and largely complete by age 21.
We raised our kids in a similar neighborhood. The worked as teens and both moved out at 18. But growing up for them was not the same. Parents moved to all newer suburbs when their kids were in the middle grades. These places are all well spaced single family homes on side roads. Nothing within reach by foot or bike and no transit. Kids must structure their lives around school or church and have to be driven everywhere.
This makes life more structured, less free wheeling. It makes video games and phones more appealing in their early stages of adoption
I read everything you write and want to thank you for how you think out loud with us. This is another fine essay!
I wonder, though, if you are sidestepping one of the main issues here: when we talk about parental discomfort with cities, we are usually talking about white middle and upper-class parents. How many Black, brown, and low-income parents can freely choose options other than cities for raising their kids?
An important source, not the sole source but one that's hard to discuss, of white parental aversion to cities is the fact that, as you described, in cities you cannot shield your children from difference. Whereas in the suburbs, you can curate difference pretty effectively: a little decorative ethnic diversity here and there but little or no exposure to people who are mentally ill, disfigured, homeless, or desperate in one way or another. (Drug consumption & abuse being just as common in suburban as urban areas.)
Personally, I don't think exposure to difference, and suffering, is bad for kids, But then, my white middle-class parents rejected white flight in the 1960s & 70s, raised us in the city, and sent us to public schools. It is one of the most important things they did and I will always be grateful for it.
Fair point. I think it's probably the case that my suburbs are not typical in America, although increasingly that may not be the case. The D.C. suburbs aren't diverse in a token sense, they really are ethnically and even in parts socioeconomically diverse, are a starting point for a lot of immigrants, etc. I can absolutely see that as a benefit raising kids here. Sure, everyone sort of defaults to praising ethnic restaurants, but you really do run into and live near folks of all different background/cultures/beliefs and that's possibly even *more* true of our suburbs than of D.C. itself.
I'm not sure what I make of your bit about homeless/desperate/etc. folks. I'm not one of those law-and-order types despite maybe emphasizing crime more than most urbanists. But I also think American progressives make a mistake when they appear to almost view this stuff as inherent in urban life itself. I think European and Asian cities disprove that. Stipulating that I want policy that will help these folks in whatever way is best, I don't see their presence in cities as some kind of way for me to grow my empathy or as I sometimes say "eat your vegetables."
You may see me saying that as a demand that cities be sanitized for middle-class tastes. I think I see (some, largely online) progressives' resistance to making cities broadly appealing as suspicious.
Thanks for the comment and the substantive engagement!
Congratulations on three years, Addison! I'm a grateful subscriber, and I hope this medium is working for you. I will say that the things I appreciate most are detailed, thoughtful posts like this one, and that deep analysis is much more important to me than one-off pieces. If you're ever questioning whether posting consistency or deeper work is more important, here's my vote for deeper work. I would always prefer one or two days of in-depth reporting in a week than six days of drive-by musings.
I don't think Last is making a "what if my kids see something uncomfortable on the subway" argument re: kids and public transit but more a "schlepping a stroller with a kid in it plus another one or two small kids on and off subways, buses, etc. is a giant pain in the ass, not to mention keeping track of everyone in crowd while we're waiting 10 minutes for the next train and for many errands/journeys it is much easier and takes far less time and stress to live outside the city core and just put the kids in a car and drive the 15-20 minutes to our destination".
You're right, I was just adding a common thing I hear from conservatives. But I think it's a mistake to think you can't hop in your car to run an errand in an urban area. I guess maybe I don't have consistent language about this from piece to piece but (as I said in another reply) when *I* say "city" or "urban" I mean the whole gamut from big-city downtown core down to probably an old-school inner-ring suburb. Including legacy small towns and modern New Urbanism.
I get the "big cars feel safe" thing. On the other hand, Israel has way more kids per family than America, basically no SUVs or pickup trucks, and a quarter the vehicular homicide rate. So without getting into exactly where the argument for "families need SUVs for safety" part, it just doesn't really track.
(I could give all the other European or east Asian transit city examples, but those are mostly low fertility societies where you could argue the culture is set by childless yuppies. But Israel *isn't* - it has an average of three children per woman - and still has, if not European levels of transit, way lower car and SUV ownership rates than America).
Just try and get a Chevy Yukon into Old Jerusalem… it ain’t happening. You buy the car that fits the city infrastructure first. A car that can’t get around is worse than useless.
Just to add another anecdote, as someone who lives in a major metro very car-lite (I get the car out of the garage about once ever 10 days or so, slightly more often now since we do have to drive to the suburbs for swimming lessons because that's the one major thing we haven't been able to find provided close enough to use public transit):
I'm involved in housing advocacy and easily half the active members are parents, most of young children and a few of adult children *who cannot afford to live locally anymore.* Several of us are completely car-free, and I know one family with 3 kids who do all local travel via bike and transit. It's notable that most of Last's complaints about transit are true only insofar as they indicate a massive funding disparity, but I digress...
More broadly, and to the point you make, I think it's true that there are numerous barriers to raising kids in a city, but it's important to note that many of them are imposed or at least significantly exacerbated by policies that are *suburban* in origin. These are all the usual suspects, but take for example: parking minimums in my city are nonlinear and increase *per bedroom* which means a 3 or 4 bedroom unit actually requires more parking than 3 or 4 studios, which directly translates to fewer family-sized units available. The setback requirements mean that at least 85% of each lot much be open, despite ample parks within walking distance, but notably this open space can (and often is!) paved over or graveled for parking cars. But you can't double your house footprint to get twice as many people on the same lot...
Finally, I completely agree with the Strong Towns approach: trying to make this into a drivers-vs-urbanist war is doomed to fail, even when the underlying arguments (cars really do *by design* work to benefit their operators at the intentional expense of every one else, in a negative-sum arms race), but I'll just note that the most dedicated "suburbanists" I know *strongly* resent Marohn's advocacy and consider it equally indicative of a "war on cars" as all others, so I think it's fair to say that their position is *not* defensive or responding to actual aggression.
That last bit is really important. I often get the sense that conservative urbanists think it's somehow possible to sweet-talk the anti-urbanists into submission--if we just prove that we don't hate kids/God/whatever, surely they'll come around. And I've never seen any evidence that this is actually true.
I think it's true to the extent that had I not ended up discovering urbanism and becoming convinced, I would have likely been one of those conservatives who thought it was a stupid boutique lefty thing. I'm not talking about people with strong views on these issues, I mean the large number of conservatives who basically have no views on this stuff and have absorbed by osmosis/adopted by default the "anti" view. For every actual right-wing anti-urbanist there are 1,000 conservatives who've never even seen an unfiltered argument for any urbanist priorities.
I've had people tell me I've changed their mind, actually. Strong Towns initially did that for me. It allowed me to see that there were valid ideas underneath the prevailing lefty framings that back then I dismissed.
"But I don’t see how the broader, more abstract point that sometimes lurks underneath this kind of commentary—that human settlements as they have been built for nearly all of human history, even for most of American history, are inherently incompatible with the family—can possibly be right."
You are correct here and Last is simply wrong. Partly because the car-sprawl American mode of living is largely unique around the world, but he's not even correct when it comes to 2024 Americans not wanting to hang out at cafes or whatever. Go to Georgetown on a nice weekend and count the strollers.
Of course it's a common trope that former committed urbanites move to the suburbs once they have kids. The reasons they do so are schools and space, but neither of these requires or even implies that the destination be a car-sprawl suburb rather than a human-scale town. London, UK for instance is ringed by "suburban" commuter towns that people move to for the same reasons as over here, but they are in general built to a reasonably compact human scale - albeit somewhat lower-rise and less dense than the urban core.
"Former committed urbanites move to the suburbs once they have kids. The reasons they do so are schools and space, but neither of these requires or even implies that the destination be a car-sprawl suburb rather than a human-scale town."
This. I think the issue is that for a lot of Americans of an older age, in particular, the idea of "the city" is so tied up with American urban problems that they have trouble separating the idea of urban form from urban problems. That's one reason I write so much about classic small towns, because they obviously in some ways are that, but we miss that because we view them as suburban amenities and not real tiny, low-intensity cities.
I would also add that a large fraction of Americans who today reside in car-sprawl suburbs/exurbs *already do* live in apartment buildings or rowhouses identical in floor space and design to those found in cities. Not everyone has the detached McMansion. It's just that rather than opening to a pedestrian street a five-minute walk from the commercial strip, these "dense suburban" dwellings are islands surrounded by parking lots and "green space", connected to the rest of the world exclusively via a six-lane highway.
This in particular is in my opinion way overbuilt because of bad zoning/land use. You get the crowding but not the vitality of the city, and you don't get the space and privacy of the suburbs traditionally understood.
There’s also the issue of a LARGE family. It’s cheaper to own and drive and park a full-sized van than take public transportation almost every time. If you have more than four kids, that or a Suburban are about the only practical options for normal life. Same with trips and airfare. When you have a large family, some vacations or trips just aren’t possible, and you learn to adjust. Trying to fit into an urban environment when you’re a trad-Catholic family is well-nigh impossible. And turning it into a culture war battle only increases the hostility. Not everyone has more than 2.5 children. And vilifying those that do serves nobody. (This isn’t directed at the author. It’s a general statement of what life is like in this situation. Ask me how I know.)
We're raising in kid in DC. The metro is fantastic, gets us to so many things, and our kiddo loves it - much more than being strapped down in her car seat. The only issue we run into is people not sharing the elevator when we have the stroller.
Plus, when we walk top-side, she gets a chance to ask tons of questions. Yes, some of those are uncomfortable - i.e. the protests happening outside the Israeli embassy - but that just means she's learning about the world. Discomfort is a part of that.
I have definitely seen uncomfortable things while riding the bus, and sometimes even while walking with my toddler. If you're wrangling multiple children, I can definitely see it being a nerve wracking experience....The big "but" is, however, that while some social situations can feel uncomfortable when walking, you are statistically far more likely to experience a traffic accident every time you drive than you are to experience crime every time you walk and/or take a bus or train. You pointed out as much in your article - we all know someone who's life has been greatly affected by an accident.
The vibes we all have - myself included - are off. I've seen uncomfortable things, but the times I've had good reason to expect or fear violence happened exactly once. I've had far more close calls in traffic, more fender benders, and been in one accident where my car was totaled. All of that compared to uncomfortable situations and one "close call?"
Rationally, we should all prefer learning about the world via discomfort rather than traffic accidents.
I struggle with whether to take the greater fear of crime over traffic accidents as a basic fact of human psychology that we need to work around, or as a distortion of it. It *feels* self-evident to me that interpersonal crime is somehow worse or scarier than a traffic crash. I mean, I know I *could* be injured or killed in a car crash, but that feels intellectual. The fear of something happening at night on a dark street, or on an empty subway car, is far more visceral and relatable to me. Even if that isn't "true," it's hard to fight that feeling without sounding like you're downplaying crime. I think about this and find it very tricky.
I definitely think our brains aren't wired to properly assess the risk of traveling faster than humans could ever have evolved traveling in close proximity to others. I love skiing and biking and while your mind works faster in those activities, you still find yourself shocked when you fall at how fast you were going. Cars are dramatically faster.
I think also because in traffic on the freeway the relative velocity of other cars to yourself is zero, we perceive it as nearly stationary (because, according to Newton we technically are with respect to other cars) and therefore are encouraged to take risks far different than if you're driving near, say parked cars
I can be just as discomforting to me as it is to her . Hard to answer a 4-year old's "why?" sometimes. I'm mostly just glad she's curious enough to ask.
I kinda take issue with this whole premise. Urbanism, at least for me, isn't coffee shops and brunch - it's libraries, grocers, schools, karate, baseball and swim class all being a short walk away. Driving 15 minutes to a Walgreens isn't a convenient lifestyle. This line, "If you have a family with kids aged 2, 5, and 7, then mass transit is not terribly useful to you" feels incredibly patronizing. It actually IS useful to me to come to work. Taking the bus and the train ARE useful and you DO see kids on them regularly. The issue is frequent service. But it's true, I don't want that to be the main way my kids get around - i prefer if they walked.
I think advocates who push back on the idea that families can be urbanist also lack empathy. The idea that kids have to be shuttled everywhere as the only reality is also not how suburbs were originally designed, and not how most suburbanites grew up. What they are advocating for - essentially raising a kid who is trapped in a car between manicured activities - is both a response to the dangers of fast cars bounding neighborhoods devoid of stimulation and also an elitist change to the way they themselves were raised. Kids should be able to walk and bike safely and independent of their parents. Three kids used to comfortably fit in a station wagon, but cars are too dangerous so even inside that's not enough now. But necessitating purchase of an expensive minivan to have a large family is elitist. Just like housing is expensive, anti urbanists are unintentionally making it even more pricey to raise a family. Why is family becoming less universal to Americans? Because we are making it so expensive and exclusive.
Thanks! You summed up my reactions to this piece much more eloquently than I could have.
I have to take my 6-year-old to get two teeth pulled on Wed. I'm *so glad* that I can just walk to the dentist, as trying to get him into the carseat afterward while he's cranky and sore and numb would be an utter nightmare....
EXACTLY! Like, I get why they but hospitals off of highways - based on the way most people live, it makes more sense than having them downtown. Not every important task can or should be within a half mile walk - but so many day to day needs, yes I'd absolutely like them to be lose by! "Fine grain" may be an aesthetic - but it also means somebody can open up a small hardware store on my street, just to sell and assist with projects out of their garage. It also means someone can open a batting cage in their front yard, just so neighborhood kids have something to do instead of drugs or getting online. The professionalization of childhood is absolutely a symptom of it not being exciting OR safe for kids to play outside - and what's not safe is that to get anywhere, you have to cross treacherously fast roads, and what's not exciting is that while backyards and front yards are great, it means to get anywhere you have to go much farther, necessitating those treacherous roads.
I truly find cars to be a marvel, but the premise that urbanism is hostile to parenting and that cars are the ONLY way to raise a child - this isn't even how anybody born in the early 1990s grew up. Soccer moms were a thing, but their kids still had independent time. "Urbanism" makes parenting easier. It's ok to not want to go that route - I really don't chagrin any parent their choices. But it is increasingly annoying hearing that wanting to raise an independent kid without spending a fortune is somehow out of line or out of touch with the basics of parenting. It truly is elitism.
I think suburbs and cars /might/ be the easiest way to wrangle a couple of infants/toddlers around. But as soon as those kids are approaching adolescence and gain any degree of independence, car-dependency makes them dependent on being driven around town by parents, while walkability and transit allows them to take care of their own transportation needs.
I can personally attest that it is much easier to take an infant on transit than in the car. My daughter is three months old. Taking her anywhere in a car comes with having to put her in a car seat - an inconvenience at home, a logistical nightmare when traveling - and she usually cries the whole time. Taking her on the train is easy because I can put her in a wrap and have basically the same experience as if I was riding by myself.
Good point
Yep. I live in an inner-ring suburb of Boston and it is very nice that when my high school child has to go to their bi-weekly practice in downtown Boston they can just go there and back on their own via bus and subway. But I definitely would not want to live in Boston proper.
I'm fairly certain that my 6 year old could make his way home from any T stop at this point ;)
There is a middle way -- a life that's not EITHER living in the city center or downtown OR living in the city's suburbs.
I live in Cincinnati. We have a downtown core and 50+ other neighborhoods within the city's limits. Many, like mine, have their own business district. Nearly all are located somewhere along a series of major arteries that run from the river to the city's limits. We can walk (and increasingly bike) to many nearby locations, and an improving transit system offers alternatives to getting in your car and going downtown or to area universities and hospitals.
My neighborhood is situated along two major road arteries. There are three schools, three churches, restaurants, bars, salons, craft stores and gas stations -- everything but a grocery store. It's possible for me to bike, bus or walk to pretty much anywhere I want to go.
The biggest danger are the speeding cars on these "walkable" streets. They're the reason communities like mine are clamoring for engineered traffic calming. We've tried the cute signs, pedestrian flags and other measures and they don't work.
I don't care how big the vehicles are. I just want everyone to realize that no matter what they're driving, they're strapping themselves into something that weighs anywhere from 1-5 tons that can do incredible damage to people and property when driven recklessly.
No matter what kind of neighborhood we live in, there's a huge cultural shift we need to make -- one that stops prioritizing cars over people. I won't live long enough to see it happen but I'm committed to pushing the needle in that direction where I live.
Yeah. When *I* say "city" or "urban" I mean the whole gamut from big-city downtown core down to probably an old-school inner-ring suburb. Including legacy small towns and modern New Urbanism. But you're right, a lot of people think somehow that we're either talking about Manhattan or we're talking exurban Atlanta or Charlotte. We're mostly talking about everything in between those!
I've said this before, but so many Americans are so scared of turning their cities into NYC that they accidentally turn their cities into LA
Totally agree, we live in a similar kind of neighborhood in Milwaukee.
I agree with Last that transit is a pain with kids, and we have two cars and drive the kids plenty of places.
But walking and biking is great for kids! We can walk a block to the playground, or 4 blocks to church, or bike 6 blocks to the bike trail. In a few years my daughter and a friend will be able to walk to the pizza place by themselves. Our yard is very small, but the houses being close together means my kids have more potential friends within a short distance in the neighborhood.
My biggest concern, as in your neighborhood, is the fast-moving cars on nearby arterial streets.
Beautiful, old churches tend to be downtown in cities. Presumably, they used to be attended by young families who lived nearby and it would be nice if young families could once again afford to live in the area and walk to church. Instead, some close or are repurposed and oftentimes much uglier churches only accessible by driving are built in the suburbs. It would be so much easier to build community around a parish if people lived nearby. And if we think of the elderly, a core clientèle of churches, many really shouldn't be driving to church and would be better served by being able to walk there. Thank you for writing about how urbanism should be for everyone!
I've often joked that when Pope Francis says the Church should be on the periphery, we Americans took it too literally. The church I attend used to be located a block away from where my house is now (this was long before I moved here). That building is now a community center, and the church's new location is way on the edge of the other side of town, across a stroad.
Needless to say, if it was still in it's old (beautiful) location, I would probably be there every day. Now, it's just for attending weekly Mass (who's trip I also use to get groceries that I can't get at the nearby market).
Thanks for the article. It reminded me of a statement I heard once, that we should design our cities so that they are safe enough for a child or elderly person to walk around in. It was something my wife and I liked when we visited NYC, we regularly saw teenagers able to travel around the city (we were there in the summer) in ways we would not see in Atlanta. The drivers there were much less erratic (not to mention the infrastructure was designed more for pedestrians) and it made sense that parents would be more comfortable letting the kids walk or ride the train out to a park on there own. I understand why parents drive their children here to the parks here especially after I've nearly been hit by drivers as a pedestrian on multiple occasions.
Yes. That's a great point to emphasize. Conservatives don't tend to see that as "cars make cities dangerous for people" but if you sense you live in the crowded, noisy city and yet you can't safely and easily get around without a car, then you don't really see much upside.
I always think how ironic and *so close* it is when I see a real estate listing for a house out in totally car-dependent suburbia and it says "Quiet, traffic-free cul-de-sac location." Similar to how a suburban mall or big-box store is car-free on the inside - unlike walking city blocks - but utterly dependent on the car to work as a business.
My interest in urbanism as a movement began through trying to open and run Montessori preschools in New York and San Francisco. I don't have kids, so it was an education for me in how difficult life is for urban families, particularly if they're not rich. And that seems wrong, as you point out, given the experience and history of humans living in cities.
So I think a lot of it comes down to bad policy. Public safety matters (both perception and reality), of course, but land use policy also takes lot of family-friendly housing off the table, which was the topic of my article last week, "Cities Aren't for Families": https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/cities-arent-for-families
Neighborhood of single family homes with easy car access is not ideal for families. It's not bad but where I grew up was better. I lived on an urban/inner suburb neighborhood with a grid street network and sidewalks on both sides. Every 4- 5 streets was an arterial street And at crossroads between them was commercial districts. Kids could buy stuff on their own without having to be driven. My folks never drove me anywhere, I got around on footm on bike, or on bus.
Nobody had SUVs or vans and yet families had 4-11 kids (Catholic neighborhood). Our neighborhood was a mix of single family houses, duplexes, and an apartment building here or there.
The reason why this ideal is it encouraged kids to be independent. High density meant jr high kids could earn money as paperboys and baby sitters on their own without parents helping them. By the time you were 18 you had earned money on your own and spent it and begun to learn how that worked. Moving out was much easier and largely complete by age 21.
We raised our kids in a similar neighborhood. The worked as teens and both moved out at 18. But growing up for them was not the same. Parents moved to all newer suburbs when their kids were in the middle grades. These places are all well spaced single family homes on side roads. Nothing within reach by foot or bike and no transit. Kids must structure their lives around school or church and have to be driven everywhere.
This makes life more structured, less free wheeling. It makes video games and phones more appealing in their early stages of adoption
American conservatives: Suburbs are the ideal place to raise a family.
Also American conservatives: Why are kids today so messed up?????
I think you hit the nail right on the head.
I read everything you write and want to thank you for how you think out loud with us. This is another fine essay!
I wonder, though, if you are sidestepping one of the main issues here: when we talk about parental discomfort with cities, we are usually talking about white middle and upper-class parents. How many Black, brown, and low-income parents can freely choose options other than cities for raising their kids?
An important source, not the sole source but one that's hard to discuss, of white parental aversion to cities is the fact that, as you described, in cities you cannot shield your children from difference. Whereas in the suburbs, you can curate difference pretty effectively: a little decorative ethnic diversity here and there but little or no exposure to people who are mentally ill, disfigured, homeless, or desperate in one way or another. (Drug consumption & abuse being just as common in suburban as urban areas.)
Personally, I don't think exposure to difference, and suffering, is bad for kids, But then, my white middle-class parents rejected white flight in the 1960s & 70s, raised us in the city, and sent us to public schools. It is one of the most important things they did and I will always be grateful for it.
Thanks for hearing me out.
Fair point. I think it's probably the case that my suburbs are not typical in America, although increasingly that may not be the case. The D.C. suburbs aren't diverse in a token sense, they really are ethnically and even in parts socioeconomically diverse, are a starting point for a lot of immigrants, etc. I can absolutely see that as a benefit raising kids here. Sure, everyone sort of defaults to praising ethnic restaurants, but you really do run into and live near folks of all different background/cultures/beliefs and that's possibly even *more* true of our suburbs than of D.C. itself.
I'm not sure what I make of your bit about homeless/desperate/etc. folks. I'm not one of those law-and-order types despite maybe emphasizing crime more than most urbanists. But I also think American progressives make a mistake when they appear to almost view this stuff as inherent in urban life itself. I think European and Asian cities disprove that. Stipulating that I want policy that will help these folks in whatever way is best, I don't see their presence in cities as some kind of way for me to grow my empathy or as I sometimes say "eat your vegetables."
You may see me saying that as a demand that cities be sanitized for middle-class tastes. I think I see (some, largely online) progressives' resistance to making cities broadly appealing as suspicious.
Thanks for the comment and the substantive engagement!
Congratulations on three years, Addison! I'm a grateful subscriber, and I hope this medium is working for you. I will say that the things I appreciate most are detailed, thoughtful posts like this one, and that deep analysis is much more important to me than one-off pieces. If you're ever questioning whether posting consistency or deeper work is more important, here's my vote for deeper work. I would always prefer one or two days of in-depth reporting in a week than six days of drive-by musings.
Thank you!
I don't think Last is making a "what if my kids see something uncomfortable on the subway" argument re: kids and public transit but more a "schlepping a stroller with a kid in it plus another one or two small kids on and off subways, buses, etc. is a giant pain in the ass, not to mention keeping track of everyone in crowd while we're waiting 10 minutes for the next train and for many errands/journeys it is much easier and takes far less time and stress to live outside the city core and just put the kids in a car and drive the 15-20 minutes to our destination".
You're right, I was just adding a common thing I hear from conservatives. But I think it's a mistake to think you can't hop in your car to run an errand in an urban area. I guess maybe I don't have consistent language about this from piece to piece but (as I said in another reply) when *I* say "city" or "urban" I mean the whole gamut from big-city downtown core down to probably an old-school inner-ring suburb. Including legacy small towns and modern New Urbanism.
Congrats on three years! Most people can't commit to anything through a single weekend.
Haha, thank you!
I get the "big cars feel safe" thing. On the other hand, Israel has way more kids per family than America, basically no SUVs or pickup trucks, and a quarter the vehicular homicide rate. So without getting into exactly where the argument for "families need SUVs for safety" part, it just doesn't really track.
(I could give all the other European or east Asian transit city examples, but those are mostly low fertility societies where you could argue the culture is set by childless yuppies. But Israel *isn't* - it has an average of three children per woman - and still has, if not European levels of transit, way lower car and SUV ownership rates than America).
Just try and get a Chevy Yukon into Old Jerusalem… it ain’t happening. You buy the car that fits the city infrastructure first. A car that can’t get around is worse than useless.
Just to add another anecdote, as someone who lives in a major metro very car-lite (I get the car out of the garage about once ever 10 days or so, slightly more often now since we do have to drive to the suburbs for swimming lessons because that's the one major thing we haven't been able to find provided close enough to use public transit):
I'm involved in housing advocacy and easily half the active members are parents, most of young children and a few of adult children *who cannot afford to live locally anymore.* Several of us are completely car-free, and I know one family with 3 kids who do all local travel via bike and transit. It's notable that most of Last's complaints about transit are true only insofar as they indicate a massive funding disparity, but I digress...
More broadly, and to the point you make, I think it's true that there are numerous barriers to raising kids in a city, but it's important to note that many of them are imposed or at least significantly exacerbated by policies that are *suburban* in origin. These are all the usual suspects, but take for example: parking minimums in my city are nonlinear and increase *per bedroom* which means a 3 or 4 bedroom unit actually requires more parking than 3 or 4 studios, which directly translates to fewer family-sized units available. The setback requirements mean that at least 85% of each lot much be open, despite ample parks within walking distance, but notably this open space can (and often is!) paved over or graveled for parking cars. But you can't double your house footprint to get twice as many people on the same lot...
Finally, I completely agree with the Strong Towns approach: trying to make this into a drivers-vs-urbanist war is doomed to fail, even when the underlying arguments (cars really do *by design* work to benefit their operators at the intentional expense of every one else, in a negative-sum arms race), but I'll just note that the most dedicated "suburbanists" I know *strongly* resent Marohn's advocacy and consider it equally indicative of a "war on cars" as all others, so I think it's fair to say that their position is *not* defensive or responding to actual aggression.
That last bit is really important. I often get the sense that conservative urbanists think it's somehow possible to sweet-talk the anti-urbanists into submission--if we just prove that we don't hate kids/God/whatever, surely they'll come around. And I've never seen any evidence that this is actually true.
I think it's true to the extent that had I not ended up discovering urbanism and becoming convinced, I would have likely been one of those conservatives who thought it was a stupid boutique lefty thing. I'm not talking about people with strong views on these issues, I mean the large number of conservatives who basically have no views on this stuff and have absorbed by osmosis/adopted by default the "anti" view. For every actual right-wing anti-urbanist there are 1,000 conservatives who've never even seen an unfiltered argument for any urbanist priorities.
I've had people tell me I've changed their mind, actually. Strong Towns initially did that for me. It allowed me to see that there were valid ideas underneath the prevailing lefty framings that back then I dismissed.
"But I don’t see how the broader, more abstract point that sometimes lurks underneath this kind of commentary—that human settlements as they have been built for nearly all of human history, even for most of American history, are inherently incompatible with the family—can possibly be right."
You are correct here and Last is simply wrong. Partly because the car-sprawl American mode of living is largely unique around the world, but he's not even correct when it comes to 2024 Americans not wanting to hang out at cafes or whatever. Go to Georgetown on a nice weekend and count the strollers.
Of course it's a common trope that former committed urbanites move to the suburbs once they have kids. The reasons they do so are schools and space, but neither of these requires or even implies that the destination be a car-sprawl suburb rather than a human-scale town. London, UK for instance is ringed by "suburban" commuter towns that people move to for the same reasons as over here, but they are in general built to a reasonably compact human scale - albeit somewhat lower-rise and less dense than the urban core.
"Former committed urbanites move to the suburbs once they have kids. The reasons they do so are schools and space, but neither of these requires or even implies that the destination be a car-sprawl suburb rather than a human-scale town."
This. I think the issue is that for a lot of Americans of an older age, in particular, the idea of "the city" is so tied up with American urban problems that they have trouble separating the idea of urban form from urban problems. That's one reason I write so much about classic small towns, because they obviously in some ways are that, but we miss that because we view them as suburban amenities and not real tiny, low-intensity cities.
I would also add that a large fraction of Americans who today reside in car-sprawl suburbs/exurbs *already do* live in apartment buildings or rowhouses identical in floor space and design to those found in cities. Not everyone has the detached McMansion. It's just that rather than opening to a pedestrian street a five-minute walk from the commercial strip, these "dense suburban" dwellings are islands surrounded by parking lots and "green space", connected to the rest of the world exclusively via a six-lane highway.
This in particular is in my opinion way overbuilt because of bad zoning/land use. You get the crowding but not the vitality of the city, and you don't get the space and privacy of the suburbs traditionally understood.
There’s also the issue of a LARGE family. It’s cheaper to own and drive and park a full-sized van than take public transportation almost every time. If you have more than four kids, that or a Suburban are about the only practical options for normal life. Same with trips and airfare. When you have a large family, some vacations or trips just aren’t possible, and you learn to adjust. Trying to fit into an urban environment when you’re a trad-Catholic family is well-nigh impossible. And turning it into a culture war battle only increases the hostility. Not everyone has more than 2.5 children. And vilifying those that do serves nobody. (This isn’t directed at the author. It’s a general statement of what life is like in this situation. Ask me how I know.)
We're raising in kid in DC. The metro is fantastic, gets us to so many things, and our kiddo loves it - much more than being strapped down in her car seat. The only issue we run into is people not sharing the elevator when we have the stroller.
Plus, when we walk top-side, she gets a chance to ask tons of questions. Yes, some of those are uncomfortable - i.e. the protests happening outside the Israeli embassy - but that just means she's learning about the world. Discomfort is a part of that.
"That just means she's learning about the world. Discomfort is a part of that." That's a little iffy to me, I think. But it's also probably true.
I have definitely seen uncomfortable things while riding the bus, and sometimes even while walking with my toddler. If you're wrangling multiple children, I can definitely see it being a nerve wracking experience....The big "but" is, however, that while some social situations can feel uncomfortable when walking, you are statistically far more likely to experience a traffic accident every time you drive than you are to experience crime every time you walk and/or take a bus or train. You pointed out as much in your article - we all know someone who's life has been greatly affected by an accident.
The vibes we all have - myself included - are off. I've seen uncomfortable things, but the times I've had good reason to expect or fear violence happened exactly once. I've had far more close calls in traffic, more fender benders, and been in one accident where my car was totaled. All of that compared to uncomfortable situations and one "close call?"
Rationally, we should all prefer learning about the world via discomfort rather than traffic accidents.
I struggle with whether to take the greater fear of crime over traffic accidents as a basic fact of human psychology that we need to work around, or as a distortion of it. It *feels* self-evident to me that interpersonal crime is somehow worse or scarier than a traffic crash. I mean, I know I *could* be injured or killed in a car crash, but that feels intellectual. The fear of something happening at night on a dark street, or on an empty subway car, is far more visceral and relatable to me. Even if that isn't "true," it's hard to fight that feeling without sounding like you're downplaying crime. I think about this and find it very tricky.
I definitely think our brains aren't wired to properly assess the risk of traveling faster than humans could ever have evolved traveling in close proximity to others. I love skiing and biking and while your mind works faster in those activities, you still find yourself shocked when you fall at how fast you were going. Cars are dramatically faster.
I think also because in traffic on the freeway the relative velocity of other cars to yourself is zero, we perceive it as nearly stationary (because, according to Newton we technically are with respect to other cars) and therefore are encouraged to take risks far different than if you're driving near, say parked cars
I can be just as discomforting to me as it is to her . Hard to answer a 4-year old's "why?" sometimes. I'm mostly just glad she's curious enough to ask.