The problems of success in the new urban era

Cities face challenges associated with rising values, an influx of more educated residents, and gentrification. Here's what cities can do.

Blog post by Robert Steuteville on 17 Sep 2015

affordability building codes development market trends

Robert Steuteville, Better! Cities & Towns

 

In the mid-1990s, downtown Philadelphia had zero outdoor cafe tables. Today, more than 4,400 tables are available to enjoy the mid-Atlantic weather with a meal or a drink immersed in the City of Brotherly Love. Abundant cafe tables indicate how this city, and many others, are transforming.

 

In the latter half of the 20th Century, historic cities and towns in the US were dying. That brought disinvestment, declining values, rising poverty, and crime. The one silver lining was cheap land and low housing costs.

 

Since about 2000, the demand for living and working in cities built prior to World War II has skyrocketed. Investment and values are rising and crime is down. But cities now face the problems of success.

 

In a recent public meeting, a woman asked how Ithaca, New York--my small city—can remain affordable to long-time residents. Ithaca is not Brooklyn or San Francisco, but it has many of the qualities in demand today: Walkability, mixed-use, historic architecture, and abundant culture. Values are rising. The same question is being asked again and again in cities across America.

 

MORE:

http://bettercities.net/news-opinion/blogs/robert-steuteville/21764/problems-success-new-urban-era

"Gentrification presents serious problems, but it also offers benefits. For example: African-American children growing up in neighborhoods that transition from high to low poverty have incomes that are 30 to 40 percent higher than otherwise similar African-American children who grow up in neighborhoods that remain in concentrated poverty (Sharkey, 2013).

Displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods is no higher than in non-gentrifying neighborhoods (Freeman, 2009; McKinnish & White, 2011), in part because existing residents are motivated to stick around when neighborhoods improve. Absent gentrification, residents are displaced when buildings become uninhabitable and burn down due to lack of investment and arson. Look at Detroit, where miles upon miles of blocks have only a few houses left standing. One thing worse than gentrification is no gentrification."

 

Honestly, then, what's the problem? In this light, gentrification should be a goal to work towards.

 

This article has excellent suggestions but it is framed around something with negative connotations- gentrification. It does a good job of putting gentrification, and the articles being written about gentrification, in perspective. One could easily take the suggestions and write the same article with a positive framework on how to revitalize our neglected cities.

 

Urbanism is embraceable from the right and left sides of the political spectrum, but I think people on the left have more anxiety and guilt about experiencing success. I think this hinders their ability to argue unabashedly for their points, which is a shame because the general public needs to hear a clear message about urbanism and not the hemmed in nuance of Atlantic Cities articles.

I'd have to agree with billshark.

 

Gentrification is a win-win-win if done properly and the buildings and neighborhoods to which is comes are preserved.

 

Property values go up, crime goes down, more job opportunities arise right by the people who need jobs and investment in their communities the most.

Best of all, our heritage and environment is saved through restoring the buildings and cities which supported generations prior, cutting into the demand of chopping up our farm fields and forests into more cookie cutter, car reliant developments.

 

 

What will be key is keeping this momentum going, and ensuring that Urbanism doesn't become a "Millennial fad". This can be achieved with smart growth policies and constantly innovating the urban product.

oh no...does this mean millennials are no longer the 'it" generation? Say it ain't so

Peak Millennial? Cities Can’t Assume a Continued Boost From the Young

Conor Dougherty JAN. 23, 2017

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/upshot/peak-millennial-cities-cant-assume-a-continued-boost-from-the-young.html?_r=0

"Over the past decade, many American cities have been transformed by young professionals of the millennial generation, with downtowns turning into bustling neighborhoods full of new apartments and pricey coffee bars.

 

But soon, cities may start running out of millennials.

 

A number of demographers, along with economists and real estate consultants, are starting to contemplate what urban cores will look like now that the generation — America’s largest — is cresting.

 

Millennials are generally considered to be those born between the early 1980s and late 1990s or early 2000s, and many in this generation are aging from their 20s into the more traditionally suburban child-raising years. There are already some signs that the inflow of young professionals into cities has reached its peak, and that the outflow of mid-30s couples to the suburbs has resumed after stalling during the Great Recession."

 

 

 

oh no...does this mean millennials are no longer the 'it" generation? Say it ain't so

Ya it's so annoying that people were born in that 20 year period.

So are we to assume millennials are the only ones that enjoy living in cities? That the next generation won't take advantage of the ground set by the previous generation or two? It seems to me that this current influx of people has made it easier for the immediately following generations to keep the "trend" moving forward. The hard work, in many ways, has already been done.

The counterpoint to the above article from Citylab... http://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/01/flood-tide-not-ebb-tide-for-young-adults-in-cities/514283/

 

Every time I hear the claim that cities are going to atrophy again as soon as Millennials have families and move to the suburbs for school districts or space or whatever other reason, I feel like the people making that claim are forgetting the fact that these new parents are all ok with the concept of cities- it isn't the same boogeyman that it was in generations before the Millennials, and I'll bet that even when families move further out, they'll still be more in-tune with the culture of the city, expose their children to the city at younger ages, and be more open to the idea of their children moving to the city after they grow up. It'll take many cycles, but each generation there's going to be a few more families that stick around, which will eventually (hopefully) lead to that critical mass of urban families that can pull urban school districts back into health and keep families from leaving the city in the first place.

oh no...does this mean millennials are no longer the 'it" generation? Say it ain't so

Peak Millennial? Cities Can’t Assume a Continued Boost From the Young

Conor Dougherty JAN. 23, 2017

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/upshot/peak-millennial-cities-cant-assume-a-continued-boost-from-the-young.html?_r=0

"Over the past decade, many American cities have been transformed by young professionals of the millennial generation, with downtowns turning into bustling neighborhoods full of new apartments and pricey coffee bars.

 

But soon, cities may start running out of millennials.

 

A number of demographers, along with economists and real estate consultants, are starting to contemplate what urban cores will look like now that the generation — America’s largest — is cresting.

 

Millennials are generally considered to be those born between the early 1980s and late 1990s or early 2000s, and many in this generation are aging from their 20s into the more traditionally suburban child-raising years. There are already some signs that the inflow of young professionals into cities has reached its peak, and that the outflow of mid-30s couples to the suburbs has resumed after stalling during the Great Recession."

 

 

I think this trend is 100% about schools, and your link backs that up. That should be one of the primary concerns for urbanists. I'm years away from having kids but schools are probably the only factor that would make me consider moving away from the urban core. I'm not going to send my future kids to crappy schools, and I'm not going to pay thousands of tax dollars to said schools and, in addition, pay tuition to a private school on top of that. I could afford to, but on principle I won't do it.

^The Catholic schools in Cincinnati are in big trouble because tuition has spiraled out-of-control over the past fifteen years.  Many who are products of the Catholic school system cannot afford to send their kids to the schools they graduated from, and so proximity to the many suburban Catholic schools is no longer a priority for some.  The high tuition + the demographic shifts are causing a rapid drop in enrollment throughout Hamilton County and in 20 years we'll probably see LaSalle & McAuley and Elder & Seton consolidate into one school like how Roger Bacon and Purcell did decades ago. 

 

 

In Columbus, young parents are staying in the city -- and in the public schools. They are organizing and improving the schools. It started with Clintonville Go Public, an organization of parents that promotes the public primary, middle and high schools in the neighborhood and has special events that raise thousands of dollars. Then there was South Side Stay, which is doing similar things in German Village, Merion Village, etc. Now we also have Short North Parents in Italian and Victorian villages. The challenge is that these are largely white groups in largely gentrifying areas of the city. But Weinland Park -- which, while it is seeing a lot of gentrification, is and will continue to be a mixed-race, mixed income neighborhood -- has a growing number of well-to-do millennials sending their kids to a struggling-but-improving neighborhood public school and working closely with single mothers in Section 8 housing. The University Area Commission is planning a forum late this winter or early spring to talk about changing demographics and evolving school preferences in the city.

On the whole, isn't Cincinnati Public Schools doing better recently, increasing enrollment, etc.?

 

My girlfriend is from here and insists our future kids go to private high schools.  We've actually gotten into some heated arguments about it.  I went to public schools in Iowa, and they are better off there than in Ohio from everything I can gather, where the private schools are small and about 2 in every larger metro area (2 high schools).  Most all kids go to public school no matter the socioeconomic background. 

 

I would at least want my kids to be able to go to public school up through 8th grade, because I think the amount paid towards private schools is ridiculous, it is more per year than I paid for college.  Schools like Ursuline and St. Ursula have tuition at around $13,000 per year, insane!!!  Same with Moeller and St. X, etc.  I paid a total of around $35k for my college education for a Bachelors degree.  To send a child 4 years at St. Ursula would be $52k at least the next 4 years, who knows what it will be 15 years from now...

I would at least want my kids to be able to go to public school up through 8th grade, because I think the amount paid towards private schools is ridiculous, it is more per year than I paid for college.  Schools like Ursuline and St. Ursula have tuition at around $13,000 per year, insane!!!  Same with Moeller and St. X, etc.  I paid a total of around $35k for my college education for a Bachelors degree.  To send a child 4 years at St. Ursula would be $52k at least the next 4 years, who knows what it will be 15 years from now...

 

One of my uncles has raised his four kids in the neighborhood directly across the street from Loveland High School (a public school) but has sent all of them to Catholic schools 1-12 (Moeller and Ursuline were the high schools).  I did the math on it a few years ago and the total tuition for the four kids was something like $450,000.  So that money instead invested in the stock market would be at least $2 million by the time he dies.  Plus, his kids who are out of college now have student loan debt.  They could have graduated debt-free if he had sent them to public schools and set more money aside for college. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honestly, if you get into a decent public high school you can go as far as you want to.

 

I made the argument that yes, everyone is going on to do great things, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that the parents are also well managed enough to afford the tuition somehow, so then they pass that organizational management onto their child.

 

From my experience in public high school, there were a lot of kids that didn't do so well because they came from broken families, their mom worked all the time, they weren't organized, etc.  That was the backdrop of a lot of kids who either dropped out of high school or finished high school but never got into any trade or college.

 

On the other hand, there were also kids in that mold who went on to do great things, and also kids who came from more middle class backgrounds who went on to do good things. 

 

My theory is that the kids at Ursuline do so well because their parents for 1.) Have the money to send them there which means 2.) They have done well in life which boils down to organizational management for the most part which to me means it passes down to the student in the form of: 2 hours of homework per night, etc.

 

This then gets them ahead of the curve which allows them to get into good colleges etc.

 

A lot of kids in public high schools simply don't have that backbone of solid home life and organizational management in the high school age.  I certainly didn't have that which makes our arguments heated, but I was lucky to get into college because of football scholarships and then realized it was important to finish off college since I was already there anyways and went as far as I did.  I was also lucky to have a borderline genius dad who never went to college but I got a 27 on my ACT when I was hungover after a Friday night football game with no studying whatsoever.  That claim is also proven about my dad because my older brother got straight C's his junior and senior year of high school but got a 31 on his ACT with no studying whatsoever and never even attempted to go to college.  He's been living a nomad life since he got out of high school which I attribute to the way we grew up.... end rant.

Yeah schools and standardized test scores, no matter how good or bad or high or low, are no match for the hands we are dealt by our family circumstances.  We are taught in America that anyone can rise to high levels of success, and that is possible in a country where the upper classes aren't formally walled off as they are in England, but at least half of "successful" Americans came from families where some measure of intergenerational wealth prevents anyone from hitting rock bottom. 

 

The fuss over school districts is unbelievably petty and fires me up every time.  It's pretty obvious that actually having kids triggers the release of chemicals that cause formerly cool and rational people to become comically irrational.  I've seen people who used to preach inclusion have kids and move to get their kids in "good" (that means mostly white kids) schools.  In a flash they turn into what they hated as teenagers. 

^ Good points. People want to move somewhere to put their kids in a "good school," rather than take the time to work in the community an make their neighborhood school good. We talk about kids from tough family situations. Unfortunately, too many of those situations are concentrated in particular areas, and so those schools have lots of kids with tough situations. But if more-stable families stay in the city and get involved in the schools, it can affect the whole community.

The fuss over school districts is unbelievably petty and fires me up every time.  It's pretty obvious that actually having kids triggers the release of chemicals that cause formerly cool and rational people to become comically irrational.  I've seen people who used to preach inclusion have kids and move to get their kids in "good" (that means mostly white kids) schools.  In a flash they turn into what they hated as teenagers. 

 

Cincinnati has magnet schools like Clifton Fairview that seem to provide an option that is a bit of a balance between fleeing to an all-white suburban school and sticking around to make urban schools better. But so many of the neighborhood elementary schools seem hopeless. I don't think people want to risk their kid's education to try an improve them. There's no way I'd send a hypothetical kid of mine to our local school, Taft. Granted I'm not a person that's ever been accused of preaching about inclusion, but for those that do, I think it's just a classic case of talking the talk and not walking the walk.

^in New York, which always boasts of how diverse it is, has some of the most segregated public schools in the nation. There are a couple of districts, notably one on the Upper West Side and one in Brooklyn, where big fights are breaking out by white yuppie parents who are being asked--because of overcrowding in their regularly assigned school--to send their kids to schools that are "underperforming" (i.e. schools that really aren't that bad but consist mostly black and Latino students). Part of this is also being done to increase integration in those schools. I have to laugh because 99% of those parents are "good" card-carrying liberals :roll: who would go ballistic if someone suggested they had even an ounce of racial prejudice.

Yeah schools and standardized test scores, no matter how good or bad or high or low, are no match for the hands we are dealt by our family circumstances.

 

Unfortunately, that's only true in one direction.  It's true that a child from a broken home with one poor role model parent and one completely absent parent is going to be challenged even if some program (nonprofit, voucher, whatever) got them into St. Ignatius.  But it's not as true the other way around.  Maybe the children of the CEO of Goodyear would be fine even if somehow they were forced to go to Buchtel, but they really would miss out on a lot of opportunities.

 

That doesn't mean that they necessarily need to go to Old Trail or Hawken or whatever to get the most out of their childhood.  But there are definitely urban public schools (and rural ones, too) that really cannot offer enough to their most advantaged students.

 

The fuss over school districts is unbelievably petty and fires me up every time.  It's pretty obvious that actually having kids triggers the release of chemicals that cause formerly cool and rational people to become comically irrational.  I've seen people who used to preach inclusion have kids and move to get their kids in "good" (that means mostly white kids) schools.  In a flash they turn into what they hated as teenagers.

 

Well, it fires those of us who are parents up every time, too.  I have a child who is not school age yet and I live in Akron Public.  Our options are winning the magnet school lottery for the STEM school, Catholic school (which could be awkward given that my wife is Hindu), or moving, even though we really like our West Akron home and hate moving with the heat of a thousand suns (and that was true even when we were moving two small apartments into our home, and we have a lot more stuff and one more human now).  Even Firestone High School, which is probably the best non-magnet public school in the Akron system, isn't what it used to be and we can't reasonably see ourselves sending our son there.

^^I'm sure you nailed the reason. So they should be perfectly content where the district throws their kid?

^^I'm sure you nailed the reason. So they should be perfectly content where the district throws their kid?

While I hate to take the side of the NYC Board of Education, I don't think this is a situation where they're "throwing their kids" into a particular school. The alternative school is well-functioning, maybe not quite at the level of their regular neighborhood school, but hardly the kind of dumping ground for "loser" kids as some of these parents seem to suggest. It's really about prejudice.

I'd expect that in 10 years Rothenberg, Vine Hill, and Taft will become something other than all-poor kid schools.  Also, many of the old Catholic grade schools in Cincinnati accept vouchers and so have hardly any Catholic students.  Without the voucher program Corryville Catholic and the rest would have disappeared by now. 

 

 

^^^^that's interesting. I had a friend in college (100 years ago) who went to Firestone. He said it was the school to go to in Akron.

^^^^that's interesting. I had a friend in college (100 years ago) who went to Firestone. He said it was the school to go to in Akron.

 

I live less than a mile from it.  But the one person I know who went there (who's about my age, early 30s) when I asked him how it was and whether he'd send his kids there, he got that "I don't want to say anything bad but I'm not going to say anything good" face on.  His kids will be going to Kent Roosevelt.  Or at least that's the district he's in; his daughter at least might be going to Hathaway Brown because his wife is a teacher there, but I don't even know if staff children get free tuition there.

Well, it fires those of us who are parents up every time, too.  I have a child who is not school age yet and I live in Akron Public.  Our options are winning the magnet school lottery for the STEM school, Catholic school (which could be awkward given that my wife is Hindu), or moving, even though we really like our West Akron home and hate moving with the heat of a thousand suns (and that was true even when we were moving two small apartments into our home, and we have a lot more stuff and one more human now).  Even Firestone High School, which is probably the best non-magnet public school in the Akron system, isn't what it used to be and we can't reasonably see ourselves sending our son there.

 

I would argue that you have more than those two options. What is your West Akron neighborhood like? Are there other young parents who like their homes and hate moving? Is your neighborhood school really as bad as some think it is? Are other parents willing to stick around if they can form the nucleus of a community movement to strengthen the school and the neighborhood?

 

These are not just idealistic questions I'm throwing around because they make me feel good. They are the questions my wife and I asked ourselves not too long ago when we decided to send all three of our sons through Columbus public schools. It's not an easy decision. At least implicitly, we had to ask ourselves if we wanted our kids to be guinea pigs for our social ideals. But in the end, we found our urban neighborhood was filled with parents who had the same struggles and decided to stay -- and the elementary school now outperforms most of the suburban schools.

Well, it fires those of us who are parents up every time, too.  I have a child who is not school age yet and I live in Akron Public.  Our options are winning the magnet school lottery for the STEM school, Catholic school (which could be awkward given that my wife is Hindu), or moving, even though we really like our West Akron home and hate moving with the heat of a thousand suns (and that was true even when we were moving two small apartments into our home, and we have a lot more stuff and one more human now).  Even Firestone High School, which is probably the best non-magnet public school in the Akron system, isn't what it used to be and we can't reasonably see ourselves sending our son there.

 

I would argue that you have more than those two options. What is your West Akron neighborhood like? Are there other young parents who like their homes and hate moving? Is your neighborhood school really as bad as some think it is? Are other parents willing to stick around if they can form the nucleus of a community movement to strengthen the school and the neighborhood?

 

These are not just idealistic questions I'm throwing around because they make me feel good. They are the questions my wife and I asked ourselves not too long ago when we decided to send all three of our sons through Columbus public schools. It's not an easy decision. At least implicitly, we had to ask ourselves if we wanted our kids to be guinea pigs for our social ideals. But in the end, we found our urban neighborhood was filled with parents who had the same struggles and decided to stay -- and the elementary school now outperforms most of the suburban schools.

 

Trust me, I don't relish the thought of either moving out into a soulless HOA somewhere, or paying private school tuition.  But I didn't just write Firestone off, I really did look into it.

 

My West Akron neighborhood is actually a well-kept neighborhood largely composed of single-family homes with few foreclosures or vacancies, plus a modest number of small multifamilies (2-, 3-, and 4-unit buildings).  I joke about it as the neighborhood for the people who got too grownup for Highland Square.  It's one of the better neighborhoods in Akron, and I live in one of the better parts of that neighborhood, right against Sand Run Park.  Of course, that often means that the high school spirit signs I see in the yards along the streets near mine proudly proclaim that their children are students at St. Vincent-St. Mary or Archbishop Hoban.

 

But while there are a fair number of high school kids in the neighborhood, the neighborhood is not young.  Several other people on my street have lived here for 20+ years.  I know almost no one else with kids younger than first grade.  The notion of forming a nucleus of children here that would voluntarily send their kids through the public school in an effort to raise its rankings, at the expense of possible opportunities for their own students, is definitely a stretch.  I do know a number of younger couples in the area--veterans of some young professional groups that we were all members of--that may have children at some point, but my kid is already almost 2.  Even if those other couples do start popping out kids, they won't be in the same year as mine, and might well be 3-4 years or more behind him.  That won't give him a peer group with stable, professional parents to form that nucleus.  Also, many of those groups are more progressive Millennials that are somewhat leery of children in general, sad as that makes me because even though we have political (and cultural) differences, I think they'd be good parents.  But at least two of those couples (and there are about five I'm thinking of that moved into this neighborhood) have said that they really don't see themselves having kids at all.

^Oh dear lord those high school yard signs appeared some time after I left high school and Ohio.  Such a joke!  They're for parents who never got out of the high school mindset. 

^Oh dear lord those high school yard signs appeared some time after I left high school and Ohio.  Such a joke!  They're for parents who never got out of the high school mindset. 

 

Eh, I'd do it. :-P  And then take it down and replace it all with giant scarlet and gray Block O flags once my kid graduates and goes to OSU, too. 8-)

Those signs started popping up when I was in high school. I got them for playing football, and immediately ran home and put it in the most prominent spot in the yard. That was all on me, I don't think my parents cared at all about it, they were the type that couldn't stand the "super fan" parents that were boosters and what not. I still remember, after scoring my first touchdown in high school, my mom asked me after the game if I had scored because someone told her I did. It was like a 70 yard screen pass, so she was obviously paying no attention at all and reading whatever book she had brought. So those signs aren't always about the parents egos - maybe only 75% of the time.

In Columbus, young parents are staying in the city -- and in the public schools.

 

In 2004 I remember in either the Other Paper or Columbus Alive there was an article on "the resident kids of downtown Columbus." There was perhaps less than a two dozen of them, and their ages spanned several years. But they all hung out together, riding their bikes and seeking out adventures in a city that they basically had all to themselves. I actually cannot remember if they were public or private schooled, my guess is private, but it seemed rather surreal to see pictures of them hanging out at night on vacant downtown streets.

I remember getting a mailer when I lived in Oakley (2007-2009) that listed the demographics of the area. There were less than 20 teenagers living in the entire neighborhood. It was almost all ages 0-6, 24-34 and 60+.

^Oh dear lord those high school yard signs appeared some time after I left high school and Ohio.  Such a joke!  They're for parents who never got out of the high school mindset. 

 

 

Those things are a gold mine for child predators. Yard sign+auditor's website+Facebook=ugh

Well, it fires those of us who are parents up every time, too.  I have a child who is not school age yet and I live in Akron Public.  Our options are winning the magnet school lottery for the STEM school, Catholic school (which could be awkward given that my wife is Hindu), or moving, even though we really like our West Akron home and hate moving with the heat of a thousand suns (and that was true even when we were moving two small apartments into our home, and we have a lot more stuff and one more human now).  Even Firestone High School, which is probably the best non-magnet public school in the Akron system, isn't what it used to be and we can't reasonably see ourselves sending our son there.

 

I would argue that you have more than those two options. What is your West Akron neighborhood like? Are there other young parents who like their homes and hate moving? Is your neighborhood school really as bad as some think it is? Are other parents willing to stick around if they can form the nucleus of a community movement to strengthen the school and the neighborhood?

 

These are not just idealistic questions I'm throwing around because they make me feel good. They are the questions my wife and I asked ourselves not too long ago when we decided to send all three of our sons through Columbus public schools. It's not an easy decision. At least implicitly, we had to ask ourselves if we wanted our kids to be guinea pigs for our social ideals. But in the end, we found our urban neighborhood was filled with parents who had the same struggles and decided to stay -- and the elementary school now outperforms most of the suburban schools.

 

Trust me, I don't relish the thought of either moving out into a soulless HOA somewhere, or paying private school tuition.  But I didn't just write Firestone off, I really did look into it.

 

My West Akron neighborhood is actually a well-kept neighborhood largely composed of single-family homes with few foreclosures or vacancies, plus a modest number of small multifamilies (2-, 3-, and 4-unit buildings).  I joke about it as the neighborhood for the people who got too grownup for Highland Square.  It's one of the better neighborhoods in Akron, and I live in one of the better parts of that neighborhood, right against Sand Run Park.  Of course, that often means that the high school spirit signs I see in the yards along the streets near mine proudly proclaim that their children are students at St. Vincent-St. Mary or Archbishop Hoban.

 

But while there are a fair number of high school kids in the neighborhood, the neighborhood is not young.  Several other people on my street have lived here for 20+ years.  I know almost no one else with kids younger than first grade.  The notion of forming a nucleus of children here that would voluntarily send their kids through the public school in an effort to raise its rankings, at the expense of possible opportunities for their own students, is definitely a stretch.  I do know a number of younger couples in the area--veterans of some young professional groups that we were all members of--that may have children at some point, but my kid is already almost 2.  Even if those other couples do start popping out kids, they won't be in the same year as mine, and might well be 3-4 years or more behind him.  That won't give him a peer group with stable, professional parents to form that nucleus.  Also, many of those groups are more progressive Millennials that are somewhat leery of children in general, sad as that makes me because even though we have political (and cultural) differences, I think they'd be good parents.  But at least two of those couples (and there are about five I'm thinking of that moved into this neighborhood) have said that they really don't see themselves having kids at all.

 

I would go further.  I can see, and understand, grownups trying to revitalize an urban neighborhood in the face of apathy and worse.  But when kids and their education are involved, no.  The parents I know, I cannot imagine doing that.  I don't like to be judgemental, but any parents who would compromise their kids' success for a semi-abstract principle are, in my view, simply not good parents.

 

My daughter is six, and in kindergarten.  She likes coming up to Beulah and play, especially since they don't have sidewalks in Sagamore.  But if I had custody (if she were mine by blood, I would) I would have to live down there in Brecksville or Nordonia, or send her to Northfield Baptist (both more diverse and more structured than Barnabas) where she did pre-K.  Even a HS classmate who is an admistrator at Maple lives in the Nordonia district.

"Gentrification presents serious problems, but it also offers benefits. For example: African-American children growing up in neighborhoods that transition from high to low poverty have incomes that are 30 to 40 percent higher than otherwise similar African-American children who grow up in neighborhoods that remain in concentrated poverty (Sharkey, 2013).

Displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods is no higher than in non-gentrifying neighborhoods (Freeman, 2009; McKinnish & White, 2011), in part because existing residents are motivated to stick around when neighborhoods improve. Absent gentrification, residents are displaced when buildings become uninhabitable and burn down due to lack of investment and arson. Look at Detroit, where miles upon miles of blocks have only a few houses left standing. One thing worse than gentrification is no gentrification."

 

Honestly, then, what's the problem? In this light, gentrification should be a goal to work towards.

 

This article has excellent suggestions but it is framed around something with negative connotations- gentrification. It does a good job of putting gentrification, and the articles being written about gentrification, in perspective. One could easily take the suggestions and write the same article with a positive framework on how to revitalize our neglected cities.

 

Urbanism is embraceable from the right and left sides of the political spectrum, but I think people on the left have more anxiety and guilt about experiencing success. I think this hinders their ability to argue unabashedly for their points, which is a shame because the general public needs to hear a clear message about urbanism and not the hemmed in nuance of Atlantic Cities articles.

 

In most urban areas these days, the options are gentrification, or sprawl. 

 

Period.

^I don't understand what you mean by "options." If you mean different manifestations of increased demand, you're missing maybe the most obvious alternative: increased density in currently desirable areas, through infill and new, larger buildings. The reason we don't see more of that is purely regulatory. The Obama administration trotted out some very weak stuff to reduce the regulatory burden, but the current GOP House has zero interest.

 

Unfortunately, that's only true in one direction.  It's true that a child from a broken home with one poor role model parent and one completely absent parent is going to be challenged even if some program (nonprofit, voucher, whatever) got them into St. Ignatius.  But it's not as true the other way around.  Maybe the children of the CEO of Goodyear would be fine even if somehow they were forced to go to Buchtel, but they really would miss out on a lot of opportunities.

 

Interestingly, some of the limited high quality empirical lit on this topic somewhat contradicts your assumption. The bright line entry standards of the elite exam schools in some cites (especially Boston and NYC) provide the closest thing to a natural experiment we can practically study, because there's no reason to think there are any real differences in the aptitude of students separated by just a few points. And the two studies that have compared these two groups of kids have found no difference in college admissions or academic success, even though the types of high schools they attended were very different. The implication is that the effects of home environment and innate traits swamp peer affects and school quality.

 

Here are the two cites I know of:

http://seii.mit.edu/research/study/do-elite-exam-schools-add-value/

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aea/aejae/2014/00000006/00000003/art00003

 

All to say, it is still very unclear just how much "school quality" matters to life outcomes.

 

Another tricky issue is what "school quality means." There's ample evidence that parents are horrible at doing meaningful research and instead rely on very basic heuristics, like racial composition and average test scores, or social networks, even though these are demonstrably stupid metrics, and social networks are extremely prone to racial bias. Most people shop based on something more akin to comfort level than school quality per se, though there is certainly a fair amount of overlap.

I think people simply don't understand that family environment matters 100% more than whatever school a child attends.  I didn't become captain of my grade school's academic team and get into the city's best high school because of what was going on in those classrooms -- I was sitting in the same classrooms as the other 100+ kids in the grade.  When we went to the school library and most of the other kids checked out old books on football and baseball I looked at old books on civil engineering, nuclear power, etc.  I remember having the conscious thought at age 11 or 12 that I didn't like picking up books and not knowing words and not understanding parts the subject.  I didn't like that there were people out there who knew about stuff I didn't know about.  That motivated me to look at stuff that only half-interested me, not just the things I was intensely interested in. 

 

Kids from poor families have parents and other people around their house who make fun of them for reading.  They make fun of them for asking questions and stamp out a child's innate curiosity about the world.  A school can't do anything about that.  And a "bad" school won't extinguish those things in a child who goes home to a house where the parents give a damn about that stuff. 

Just about everything goes back to personal networks in the end. Actual "good schools" have better personal networking opportunities. Fact is my high school was considered a "good school" by many, but the networking opportunities were 100% blue-collar. That just wasn't what I was into. I'm scared of heights, so there goes at 50% of blue-collar jobs right there.

Kids from poor families have parents and other people around their house who make fun of them for reading.  They make fun of them for asking questions and stamp out a child's innate curiosity about the world.  A school can't do anything about that.  And a "bad" school won't extinguish those things in a child who goes home to a house where the parents give a damn about that stuff. 

 

The only thing I would take issue with is that fellow "bad" students can greatly impede learning through bullying and teasing in the same way family can.  Yes, having a family that embraces learning and moving up is key to getting a good education, no matter the school, but peer groups are also just as important.  It's hard to keep your head down and do well, especially if you have any social ambitions, and if you don't they're usually foisted on you in some way whether you like it or not.  Heck, even in good schools fellow students are much more interested in non-academic achievements.  I got way more kudos from peers for hitting a home run in gym class than I ever got for acing a test. 

Tying sports to schools and making sports such a large part of the public sector in unusual in the rest of the world.

I think people simply don't understand that family environment matters 100% more than whatever school a child attends. .... Kids from poor families have parents and other people around their house who make fun of them for reading.  They make fun of them for asking questions and stamp out a child's innate curiosity about the world.  A school can't do anything about that.  And a "bad" school won't extinguish those things in a child who goes home to a house where the parents give a damn about that stuff. 

 

I agree about family environment mattering more, of course, but school environment still matters greatly because even if you have a supportive home environment in which the family does not make fun of the child for reading (and in fact actively encourages it, as we do with our son), you can also deal with a peer group that makes fun of a child for reading and working hard in school.  In a very real sense, when you choose a school, you're choosing your child's classmates far more than you're choosing his teachers (or shiny gadgets like classroom equipment, which are the least important things of all).  I'm sure the vast majority of Firestone teachers are perfectly capable and supportive, but that isn't the most decisive factor in forming the social and academic environment of the school.

 

I can see why Columbus has a couple of schools in which they can actually pull off a critical mass of parents in gentrified neighborhoods to populate public schools with critical masses of students in each grade.  Unfortunately, Akron doesn't have quite that mass yet.  Maybe that group of Millennials beginning to populate this neighborhood will be able to do that if they all have kids over the next 5 years, but my kid will already be through.

^You obviously need to move out of the ghetto then.

I think people simply don't understand that family environment matters 100% more than whatever school a child attends. .... Kids from poor families have parents and other people around their house who make fun of them for reading.  They make fun of them for asking questions and stamp out a child's innate curiosity about the world.  A school can't do anything about that.  And a "bad" school won't extinguish those things in a child who goes home to a house where the parents give a damn about that stuff. 

 

I agree about family environment mattering more, of course, but school environment still matters greatly because even if you have a supportive home environment in which the family does not make fun of the child for reading (and in fact actively encourages it, as we do with our son), you can also deal with a peer group that makes fun of a child for reading and working hard in school.  In a very real sense, when you choose a school, you're choosing your child's classmates far more than you're choosing his teachers (or shiny gadgets like classroom equipment, which are the least important things of all).  I'm sure the vast majority of Firestone teachers are perfectly capable and supportive, but that isn't the most decisive factor in forming the social and academic environment of the school.

 

I can see why Columbus has a couple of schools in which they can actually pull off a critical mass of parents in gentrified neighborhoods to populate public schools with critical masses of students in each grade.  Unfortunately, Akron doesn't have quite that mass yet.  Maybe that group of Millennials beginning to populate this neighborhood will be able to do that if they all have kids over the next 5 years, but my kid will already be through.

 

The problem there is the "pioneers" are being asked to potentially impede their child's progress and few if any parents are willing to do that.

 

This has been going on for a long time, though it's had more to do with new parents moving out than moving in.

The problem there is the "pioneers" are being asked to potentially impede their child's progress and few if any parents are willing to do that.

 

In DC, the real "pioneers" in reviving neighborhoods were mostly childless gays.  The young families came later and then left again when kiddies reached school age. Only lately are they hanging around for the school years, which is why we now have so many charter schools.

 

I can see why Columbus has a couple of schools in which they can actually pull off a critical mass of parents in gentrified neighborhoods to populate public schools with critical masses of students in each grade.  Unfortunately, Akron doesn't have quite that mass yet.  Maybe that group of Millennials beginning to populate this neighborhood will be able to do that if they all have kids over the next 5 years, but my kid will already be through.

 

The problem there is the "pioneers" are being asked to potentially impede their child's progress and few if any parents are willing to do that.

 

This has been going on for a long time, though it's had more to do with new parents moving out than moving in.

 

All right. You're leaping to false conclusions and don't know what you're talking about. Those "pioneers" aren't being asked to do anything of the sort. They are doing what pioneers throughout American history have done: Boldly going in new directions and making things habitable for less-hardy people to follow. They are NOT impeding their cjhild's progress. In fact they are enhancing it by doing what's right for the community and not just themselves. If I were to paint with the same broad brush you use, I could say that parents who move out of the city to a suburban subdivision are impeding their child's progress by restricting them to a ghetto of white, upper-middle-class professionals who think and talk and act alike and don't understand anything other than their immediate sphere.  That statement is not really true -- but neither is your unfounded accusation that I impeded my three sons' progress by sending them to -- and helping to improve -- their public schools.

I agree about family environment mattering more, of course, but school environment still matters greatly because even if you have a supportive home environment in which the family does not make fun of the child for reading (and in fact actively encourages it, as we do with our son), you can also deal with a peer group that makes fun of a child for reading and working hard in school.  In a very real sense, when you choose a school, you're choosing your child's classmates far more than you're choosing his teachers (or shiny gadgets like classroom equipment, which are the least important things of all).  I'm sure the vast majority of Firestone teachers are perfectly capable and supportive, but that isn't the most decisive factor in forming the social and academic environment of the school.

 

I can see why Columbus has a couple of schools in which they can actually pull off a critical mass of parents in gentrified neighborhoods to populate public schools with critical masses of students in each grade.  Unfortunately, Akron doesn't have quite that mass yet.  Maybe that group of Millennials beginning to populate this neighborhood will be able to do that if they all have kids over the next 5 years, but my kid will already be through.

 

Glad to hear you delved into things. When you talked earlier about high school kids in the neighborhood, and the millennials who weren't planning to start families -- Was that in your immediate neighborhood, or throughout the catchment for your local school? When my wife and I were wrestling with this, there were very few elementary-age kids on our immediate three-block stretch, but we found many like-minded couples in the broader neighborhood. Funny how blocks and neighborhoods change. My old street now has  dozens of kids attending the public school down the street. Young kids are in every other house and duplex.

I agree about family environment mattering more, of course, but school environment still matters greatly because even if you have a supportive home environment in which the family does not make fun of the child for reading (and in fact actively encourages it, as we do with our son), you can also deal with a peer group that makes fun of a child for reading and working hard in school.  In a very real sense, when you choose a school, you're choosing your child's classmates far more than you're choosing his teachers (or shiny gadgets like classroom equipment, which are the least important things of all).  I'm sure the vast majority of Firestone teachers are perfectly capable and supportive, but that isn't the most decisive factor in forming the social and academic environment of the school.

 

I can see why Columbus has a couple of schools in which they can actually pull off a critical mass of parents in gentrified neighborhoods to populate public schools with critical masses of students in each grade.  Unfortunately, Akron doesn't have quite that mass yet.  Maybe that group of Millennials beginning to populate this neighborhood will be able to do that if they all have kids over the next 5 years, but my kid will already be through.

 

Glad to hear you delved into things. When you talked earlier about high school kids in the neighborhood, and the millennials who weren't planning to start families -- Was that in your immediate neighborhood, or throughout the catchment for your local school? When my wife and I were wrestling with this, there were very few elementary-age kids on our immediate three-block stretch, but we found many like-minded couples in the broader neighborhood. Funny how blocks and neighborhoods change. My old street now has  dozens of kids attending the public school down the street. Young kids are in every other house and duplex.

 

It is perhaps a quarter to a third of the catchment for the local school.  The wealthiest and most stable neighborhoods of Akron proper are Fairlawn Heights (Fairlawn is a separate town, Fairlawn Heights is not) and Merriman Hills.  These aren't gentrified neighborhoods so much as they're old money neighborhoods--emphasis on old, not money, but not because they're lacking in money, more because they have a surfeit of old.  I wouldn't call them gentrified in any meaningful sense, because they never really had lower-income populations at any point.  They were "gentry" neighborhoods from the outset.  That said, they have some things in common with gentrifying neighborhoods, particularly in terms of offering outstanding returns to DIY types that have an eye for places with good bones but in need of lots of other TLC.  Many houses in those neigborhoods are north of 5000sf, but many also date to the 1920s, and--like I said, emphasis on old--a decent number hit the market either via estate sales or because the occupant has to go into assisted living, giving up the home they've lived in (and haven't renovated) since 1970.

 

My neighborhood is larger in terms of population than either of those neighborhoods, even though it doesn't really have a name (there is a reference in the deed to my house of a "Sand Run Village" neighborhood, but it never took off, and my area is just generically referred to now as West Akron ... the closest neighborhood with a distinct name is Wallhaven).  My area has more population simply because the homes and lots are smaller, and there are at least some apartments.

 

Those three areas ... Fairlawn Heights, Merriman Hills, and my "Sand Run Village" area of West Akron ... I've explored pretty thoroughly, and in each area, I know at least one other couple with primary-school-age children.  Every single one sends their children to St. Sebastian.  Of course, I'm sure there's selection bias in the people that I know, unconscious though it might be.  But that doesn't change the bare fact of the peer group--my own peer group in terms of the parents, but also kids who are likely to be my son's peer group (in fact, several of them have been over to our house for my son's birthday and so on).

 

With Akron's open enrollment policy, I might send my son to King Elementary at least for K-5.  The problems in the district don't really seem to manifest until middle school (or at least, they manifest elsewhere and King appears to be in some sense isolated from it).  That's a hot topic of conversation in my household right now.  As I think I mentioned upthread, my Hindu wife is obviously not 100% sold on Catholic school.  But that doesn't mean she's really sold on Akron Public.  It means that she's the primary lobbyist for moving to the suburbs.

The area with old, good-bones, DIY houses -- is that where the writer David Giffels bought a house and wrote about it?

 

These are not easy decisions to make.You're right: The bigger challenges start in middle school.  If you've got the critical mass of parent/community involvement in grade school, it can translate into improved middle and high schools. But the initial critical mass can be tough to reach. I would say Akron really needs people like your family, but I sympathize with the direction you seem to be leaning. I'm not sure what municipal governments can do to keep families in the city, but but some kind of city/school strategic plan is needed in Akron and so many other places.

My friend's daughter will be starting at King elementary next year if she hasn't started already. They live a block away from the school, so there was no handwringing.  I'm sure they'll see how it goes to figure out which middle school to go to. Its an amazing amount of choices to consider with Our Lady of the Elms, Hoban, St. Vincent-St. Mary, Firestone with school of the arts With Miller South, and the STEM school.

  I would expect that they will get input from her as they move along.

The area with old, good-bones, DIY houses -- is that where the writer David Giffels bought a house and wrote about it?

 

I actually haven't read that book.  I just Googled and found the house in question.  It's big, but many of the ones north of there in the heart of Merriman Hills are much larger, even twice that size.

 

These are not easy decisions to make.You're right: The bigger challenges start in middle school.  If you've got the critical mass of parent/community involvement in grade school, it can translate into improved middle and high schools. But the initial critical mass can be tough to reach. I would say Akron really needs people like your family, but I sympathize with the direction you seem to be leaning. I'm not sure what municipal governments can do to keep families in the city, but but some kind of city/school strategic plan is needed in Akron and so many other places.

 

Well, I already mentioned earlier that one major option that we'll look at is the STEM school (National Inventors Hall of Fame), which is a public magnet school that IIRC goes grades 6-12.  Admissions are lottery, so it's a toss of the dice.  But the more seats they successfully open in that school, the less threatening the lottery becomes.  If King works out and the lottery works out, our kids could go King K-5 and NIHF 6-12, and be in Akron Public Schools the whole time.

 

Ultimately, I would be OK with an entire large public school system being organized by ability at least as much as neighborhood.  The logistics would understandably get complex and expensive for parents who can't drive, but in many denser cities, in the US and the world, children take municipal transportation to school.  But that's a much deeper-future concept, especially vis-a-vis Akron 2017.

Tying sports to schools and making sports such a large part of the public sector in unusual in the rest of the world.

 

Sports is life -- especially the part where the coach's son always gets to start. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tying sports to schools and making sports such a large part of the public sector in unusual in the rest of the world.

 

Sports is life -- especially the part where the coach's son always gets to start. 

 

Or the alumni kids.....ask Jeff Rotsky about that at Chanel.

 

Seriously, sports sublimates the natural tendency towards group identification and rivalries into something more indirect and less harmful.