Children and Cities

Photo Credit: Chucky Franky, CC BY-SA 2.0

For those who didn’t hear, my wife just had a baby. So I’m a first time father. I’m not planning to write much about it, but when you get solicited to write a piece, it’s hard for a writer to say No. So here’s are some brief thoughts on children in cities at New Geography. An excerpt:

The values and priorities of people without children are different from those with children. One example is the value people put on space. In our central cities populated with largely people who have no children, a big obsession is changing zoning regulations to allow smaller units, including so-called “micro-apartments.” These kinds of developments would enable more upscale young adult singles to live in cities. That’s good in itself. Yet it is not paired with equal concern about creating more housing for families. What’s more, urbanists are often hostile to changes in the city that would increase child friendliness. For example, central cities often have smaller apartments. One way to create the space families require is to combine units. But people doing just that in Chicago – converting or deconverting multi-flat buildings into single family homes – are opposed by urbanists, who see this as destroying housing supply and reducing density.

Click through to read the whole thing.

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2017/08/19/children-and-cities/