Middle ages folks hate it because they are most likely to have kids and cities (in the US) tend to be kid hostile. What I'm calling city below is probably better described as downtown - most cities extend out farther and have areas that are nothing like what follows - but are also nothing like what you described as what people move to the city for.
Parks in the city tend to be focused on art. They often lack kid basics like swings and sand. They tend to be too small for a ball game. Often the people who are there will yell at kids for running off the path, yelling and the other ways kids play.
Bars and clubs are not kid friendly places. Middle age folks are much less interested. If you are middle aged and hang out in a bar you are an alcoholic. Clubs often have an minimum age, so going means an expensive babysitter. (bars might allow kids to eat there).
Theater is similar to bars - kids might not be banned, but they are not really welcome either. Both because the shows are not what kids would be interested in, and because they will kick out the kids if they are noisy (which they will be - not kid friendly shows).
Restaurants will allow kids, but often you get dirty looks for bring kids. Many of the others do not like kids and will let you know if your kids are misbehaving - what they define as misbehaving is normal for kids.
Then we add in costs - all of the above is affordable when it is just 1 or two adults, but with kids it is either a lot more expensive to bring this with or you hire a babysitter. You also need larger apartments - most are 1 or 2 bedrooms, but a family wants at least 3 and likely more. You can buy a house in the suburbs with 4 bedrooms and other extra rooms for less than the month payment on a city apartment.
Last there are schools which tend to be bad quality. I've concluded that this because of the other factors above - few families live there and so not enough people care to make them good. It does however stop many families that might want to try living in the city.
> what they define as misbehaving is normal for kids.
Right, sprinting back-and forth, ear-piercing screams at the top of their lungs, kicking chairs - all things we should just accept at a restaurant, for the sake of the parents. What terrible people we are for wanting a decent dining experience.
When I was a kid, going to a restaurant was a treat and a privilege. If my sister or I misbehaved, we were taken out to the car, and might not get to go to a restaurant again for a while.
I see kids in restaurants these days and mostly find their behavior appalling. And it's sad the best-behaved kids are only quiet because they have an iPad in front of them. (No headphones, of course, so that's another annoyance the rest of us have to put up with.)
When I was a kid the only restaurant I was allowed to go to was Friendly's, and only on my/my siblings birthdays. It was a HUGE treat and I knew to be on my very best behavior because if there was any acting up, even a little, I wouldn't be allowed out to eat out ever again.
Nowadays kids aren't expected to behave in a restaurant, so they don't. It's about expectations.
> "Restaurants will allow kids, but often you get dirty looks for bring kids. Many of the others do not like kids and will let you know if your kids are misbehaving - what they define as misbehaving is normal for kids."
Any child older than a toddler should be able to sit quietly and respectfully eat a meal. If they can't, that's bad parenting.
Sitting still for long periods is naturally difficult for little kids. Of course they shouldn’t be allowed to go nuts, but a kid who just sits quietly for long periods with no signs of antsiness might be having their spirit crushed by authoritarian parents (or might just be unusually calm). Good parenting is a give and take.
The restaurant isn't going to complain about the kids chatting or pushing peas around on their plate. If the wait staff are willing to risk the ire of pissed off parents to say something, the kids must be going nuts.
Cities are far more kid-friendly than suburbs, especially for kids from age ~9–18. Everything is walkable or can be reached by transit, many more amenities and activities are accessible, kids are dramatically less dependent on parents or other caretakers to constantly chaperone them, and there are a wider variety of other kids around with many niche interests.
Some kids' parents irrationally believe cities will be bad for their kids for one reason or another or consider the suburbs to be more personally convenient for the parents. For the kids themselves, cities are wonderful while suburbs are often boring and repressive.
> For the kids themselves, cities are wonderful and suburbs are often a kind of prison
I grew up in a mega city and I agree that cities are wonderful for kids, at least they were wonderful for me and my friends. I'd venture to guess that kids don't care. Cities or not, the world is just so much fun and exciting.
I don't know if suburbs are prisons for kids, though. My kids love suburbs, and they also love cities when they spend days and nights there.
It's not that parents falsely think that cities are bad for kids (it may be a factor for some people, of course), but that parents themselves do not want to live in a busy city. For instance, I have zero interest in bars or clubs. In fact, they are way noisy for my social needs. Instead, I just want to have walking distance to woods and shaded trails. And I want to have access to those large club houses that have full gyms and swimming pools and cozy libraries and all kinds of activity rooms, instead of those smallish ones in SF (probably because I'm not wealthy enough, but that's also my point). Or take Asian supermarket for another example. There are really not that many choices in SF or NYC. Even for the available ones, let's say H Mart in NYC, I really don't like the cramped space. I want to have those spacious walkways and shelving and big food court and etc.
> Suburbs can be prisons if there’s not enough people your age around you. I lived in semi-suburbs and had friends I’d walk to after school. Makes it more fun than having to organize car dates until someone gets a car. But nowadays kids are so supervised I don’t know if they hang outside anymore
Totally. There seem fewer kids in the neighborhood than before too. Play-date is such a suburb concept for the US kids. As a kid, I used to hang out with neighbor kids, sometimes more than a dozen, every day. Not any more for my kids in the suburb. To that end, I admire my Indian friends. Even during the most panicking days of Covid, they would organize weekly meetups of multiple families, so kids got to play together.
That seems like both a generational and cultural thing, vs a urban/sub-urban consideration. Prior generations in the US had kids just hangout with whomever in the neighborhood be it urban or sub-urban too. Playdates are probably just as common in urban areas now, the cultural change wasn't specific to the built-environment.
> And I want to have access to those large club houses that have full gyms and swimming pools and cozy libraries and all kinds of activity rooms, instead of those smallish ones in SF (probably because I'm not wealthy enough, but that's also my point).
Club houses? What are we talking about here? Country clubs? Our society is largely devoid of the fraternal organizations that colored 18th and 19th century social life, and the social isolation of not having any 'third places' to go is in fact one of principal complaints about suburbia.
>> Club houses? What are we talking about here? Country clubs? Our society is largely devoid of the fraternal organizations that colored 18th and 19th century social life, and the social isolation of not having any 'third places' to go is in fact one of principal complaints about suburbia.
I think they literally mean "Club house" -- the shared services center for the housing development. High-rises often have them, large developments have them.
In NYC, our high-rise had a reading room, yoga room, gym, entertainment center, as well as a paved playing area for building residents inside building premises. People met each other regularly at these places and socialized. This is very common (minus the paved playing area, which is rare.)
In the burbs we also have most of these, and also tennis courts and a pool.
Many of these served as a "Third Place" for residents, especially once you have kids because it isnt as easy to hang out elsewhere. Unlike previous centuries, I'm constantly on my phone or on call explicitly or implicitly, at least in my profession, so social clubs seem unrealistic, though I know the wealthy folks go there regularly.
Even cheap/mid tier apartment complexes around me have a clubhouse with a pool, a small gym, maybe a billiard table and what not. It is not very expensive to do when land is cheap.
My last apartment wasn't super high-end and it even had a golf simulator in it along with a billiard room kind of a theater room with a giant TV and some big couches.
> I don't know if suburbs are prisons for kids, though.
Personally, I grew up in a suburb that didn't have transit and it was miserable. I barely saw my friends until I got a car. Every time I go back with my lady it's miserable for both of us because, besides family, there's just nothing there but some cookie cutter parks. There was one historical park that's still nice but its also a mile away from my mom's house and there's inconsistent sidewalks (it's either take a much longer route or risk walking alongside a 1 ft wide shoulder with a 35mph speed limit and curves.
> Instead, I just want to have walking distance to woods and shaded trails.
Most places that have woods at all also have this.
Golden gate park+presidio in SF, discovery+arboretum+Seward+ a bunch more in seattle, central park in NYC, fairmont park in Philly are all places I've loved walking/biking around (and to).
Suburbs can be prisons if there’s not enough people your age around you. I lived in semi-suburbs and had friends I’d walk to after school. Makes it more fun than having to organize car dates until someone gets a car. But nowadays kids are so supervised I don’t know if they hang outside anymore
This assumes that the parents consider the city safe enough for the kids to wander around unsupervised. The perceptions may be bullshit, but people still act on them. Statistically speaking the schools in the city are going to score lower on pretty much every test than the suburban ones, sometimes by large margins.
By far the biggest danger for children wandering around (in rural area, suburb, or city) is big cars moving quickly. But none of the suburbanites worried about cities seem to mind that there are SUVs whizzing around their residential neighborhoods at 40+ miles per hour. (Or more realistically, plenty do worry, and keep the kids indoors or drive them everywhere instead of letting them wander around independently.)
> Statistically speaking the schools in the city are going to score lower
This has more to do with the more diverse mix of children in the class than it does to do with school or teacher quality per se.
But I'm happy to grant you that some upper middle class parents are also inordinately worried that their children might spend too much time near poorer children who get worse test scores because their families have fewer resources and they were not as academically prepared.
> But none of the suburbanites worried about cities seem to mind that there are SUVs whizzing around their residential neighborhoods at 40+ miles per hour.
The pavements are often much wider in suburbs, and/or separated from the road by trees. That's the difference. You're not in a high rise apartment building that opens directly on to pavement, which is 4ft from a road.
Empirically the most dangerous cities for pedestrians are sprawling ones with large high-speed-limit pedestrian-hostile roads, not denser ones with walkable streets.
But that most places in the USA are pretty unsafe for pedestrians nowadays, especially children. We would do well to introduce traffic calming, improve pedestrian/bike infrastructure, and cut speed limits in all areas where people commonly walk down to a max of about 20 miles/hour.
It would also make streets much safer to reduce the proportion of SUVs and large pickup trucks. Disincentivizing these vehicles should be an explicit government policy goal.
Those are all great ideas, but to the average voter you might as well be saying we should outlaw apple pie. Political will behind reforms like this is very hard to find and always in danger of being voted out by angry drivers.
> Empirically the most dangerous cities for pedestrians are sprawling ones with large high-speed-limit pedestrian-hostile roads, not denser ones with walkable streets.
That's true. Housing is expensive because the city is great and people want to live here, but the direct results of expensive housing are harmful to the society (and high rent is a kind of giant tax on all economic activity, raising prices in shops, restaurants, etc.).
It would be a significant benefit to the people of SF if the western half of the city were significantly upzoned with a lot of new housing construction here and throughout the Bay Area, and ideally rent and house prices cut by something like half (gradually rather than in a market crash), so that more of the people necessary to run the city could afford to live here.
> (and high rent is a kind of giant tax on all economic activity, raising prices in shops, restaurants, etc.)
I’ve long pointed out to conversation mates IRL that for a technological civilization like ours, shelter costs are a straight deadweight, Tsiolkovsky rocket equation cost upon the innovation throughput that is the civilization’s lifeblood. In the U.S., healthcare pricing policies are as well, but that’s a different conversation. Both are stranded capital that need unlocking towards increasing the technological development pace.
But most people with mortgages are trapped like a monkey’s fist around a fruit in a jar, by the siren song of house appreciation.
I’d rather have fusion, life extension, solar system colonization, mind uploads and AGI sooner than be “rich” in real estate.
The purpose of capitalism is not technological advancement, innovation, or efficient deployment of resources. The purpose of capitalism is that rich people get paid for being rich.
If you believe otherwise, you will learn the hard way when you seek your reforms and find that none of the people spouting the high-minded capitalist rhetoric support the actions that would bring it closer to reality. In short, the monkey's hand isn't trapped. The monkey is masturbating into the jar. It knows exactly what it is doing and you will not be thanked for interrupting.
There are? I see the opposite trend (at least in US East Coast) - cities only have generic amenities, while all the unusual stuff is in the suburbs, where the the land is cheap.
For example, let's take a relatively common hobby of sewing. The two stores in downtown closed tens of years ago, and the only ones left are in the suburbs, unreachable without the car.
I think at this stage, the only advantage of city is bars, restaurants, and expensive clothing/jewelry. If you like something else, you are better off in suburbs with a car.
The jobs are in the city because the people are there, and the people are there because the jobs and other people are there. Empirically, both residents and employers prefer to relocate to the city.
The city is convenient and fun: it provides easier transportation, more amenities, more other people to engage with, more companies of all types to do business with, etc.
You ignore the fact that many European cities are much smaller than the North American mega city landscape and still have lots of jobs in those cities. But it's also easier to have safer yet walkable and publicly transportabel neighborhoods in a city of 150k or 300k than 3 or 10 million.
There's plenty of American cities from 50k-300k, that's not a uniquely European thing.
None of the jobs where I grew up were in the city (Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton, largest employers were all suburban campuses save for the electric company and some colleges. Even the hospitals were off the highway.).
All the fun stuff was in the city though, so that's where we'd go once you got a friend of driving age.
> Parks in the city tend to be focused on art. They often lack kid basics like swings and sand. They tend to be too small for a ball game. Often the people who are there will yell at kids for running off the path, yelling and the other ways kids play.
This doesn’t describe Seattle or any other city I’ve lived in. We literally have 3 huge ball fields within walking distance of my town home, all full up on weekends and even most weekday nights with soccer, baseball, etc…
> Parks in the city tend to be focused on art. They often lack kid basics like swings and sand.
Leaving NYC my son was disappointed in almost any park we'd go to. Most smaller cities and towns have a few decent playgrounds but in the city we had 3-4 in walking distance that were amazing and another 10 within a single subway stop.
Parks in the city tend to be focused on art. They often lack kid basics like swings and sand. They tend to be too small for a ball game. Often the people who are there will yell at kids for running off the path, yelling and the other ways kids play.
Bars and clubs are not kid friendly places. Middle age folks are much less interested. If you are middle aged and hang out in a bar you are an alcoholic. Clubs often have an minimum age, so going means an expensive babysitter. (bars might allow kids to eat there).
Theater is similar to bars - kids might not be banned, but they are not really welcome either. Both because the shows are not what kids would be interested in, and because they will kick out the kids if they are noisy (which they will be - not kid friendly shows).
Restaurants will allow kids, but often you get dirty looks for bring kids. Many of the others do not like kids and will let you know if your kids are misbehaving - what they define as misbehaving is normal for kids.
Then we add in costs - all of the above is affordable when it is just 1 or two adults, but with kids it is either a lot more expensive to bring this with or you hire a babysitter. You also need larger apartments - most are 1 or 2 bedrooms, but a family wants at least 3 and likely more. You can buy a house in the suburbs with 4 bedrooms and other extra rooms for less than the month payment on a city apartment.
Last there are schools which tend to be bad quality. I've concluded that this because of the other factors above - few families live there and so not enough people care to make them good. It does however stop many families that might want to try living in the city.