wife is starting to consider catholic schools now - not because she thinks they are better in any way, but because they can kick out any problem kids, and we live in one of the best school districts in the nation
Love my new 3300 sq. ft. home on a half acre. I live 45 minutes from Chicago so if I want a night at a museum or the theater, etc it is easily handled.
My kids love their schools and they rank in the top 10% of the state. I think the high school is in the top ten of the state. We can bike or walk to parks or even the stores. The stores are about 1.5 miles away so we usually take the car. The shopping mall is also very close. Plenty of restaurants including Mexican, indian, Chinese, Korean, mediteranian etc. Neighbors all seem real nice too.
I will never live city life. If it is your thing, good on you. I am sticking with the burbs though.
Volunteer, those are some astoundingly broad-brush stereotypical accusations you're making of public school teachers. Kinda like when a school teacher says "All architects are just FLW-clone ego-driven primadonnas who want to inflict their Howard Roarkian vision on the world with no regard for the humans who will use the building." Yes, those architects exist, but they're a tiny minority.
(I say this as someone who just delivered a cake to her son's big-city district public school for Teacher Appreciation Week. Our teachers ROCK and I respect the hell out of them for their dedication and ability.)
Yesterday there was a News Alert, 2 men walking around the near Downtown randomly shooting people in cars, and they can’t catch them (?). Is anyone keeping a list of why not to move into town? If so, please add this one to the list.
Better schools need active and engaged parents. Let us figure out how to eliminate obstacles for parents to be better parents.
Despite the long list of things chipping away at the ability of parents to do their best at parenting, design has a lot of impact, especially urban planing.
a 3000+ sf house on a half acre is not the bogey man we should be chasing, the zoning ordinances that keep 1000 near the large houses and shops and good schools is what we need to be fighting against and good design is the best tool to change the zoning and perceptions of smaller housing being associated with crime and other problems.
Good design is essential in starting the conversation that will lead to change and greater equity.
As a former school board member From a district with $65k per student cost, all I can say if the entire system is fucked. Maybe in some places it's better that others, and there are lots of teachers who care about their students almost as much as they care about their jobs but (here at least) revolving door administrators in top heavy bureaucracies have a tendency to pack their owns accounts, union teachers get step (an automatic raise every year based on longevity) plus additional negotiated contract raises that often bring them to 10% salary increases per year which wouldn't be so bad if you could get rid of bad ones except you can't because even when they are caught changing regents scores to maintain their perfect passing record it takes years and hundreds of thousands in legal fees to axe them, state mandated curriculum and testing of memorization, required multiple bidding for everything but only from a list of preapproved state vendors, etc. In the end we could send every student to the best private schools and cut the budget 40% or just send every one of them to an Ivy League school all expenses paid but instead we end up with a graduating class that ranks off the wrong end of the chart. It's partly cultural, firecly maintaining a small school for a collapsing neighborhood in an ethnic community who's largest sense of pride and worth is the HS basketball team and largely economic because nobody wants to lose their fat cushy and exceedingly well protected jobs.
Chicagoland is sort of a quintessential spread as far as urban-suburban sprawl. No, its not a utopia, but what I mean is that its suburbs are surely more legitimate and idealistic than suburbs of most other major cities in the US. Visiting Wilmette, Northfield, or Evanston, or Oak Park, to me, still feels urban enough to not be considered a suburb in the traditional sense of the suburb I grew up in, which was 25 minues away from the third-tier major city I'm used to. But maybe you're referring to Schaumburg or Skokie or Naperville.
In other words, living in the suburbs of Chicago actually works, so good for you.
But what are the chances of getting shot at school? Higher than they should be. Not surpassing the frequency of gang rival shootings.. yet.
At $65k per student cost, you could give each student a personal educational mentor and academic coach with an integrated curriculum instead of a spot in a crowded classroom with a frustrated teacher lecturing from a textbook in "math" or "science". Schools are broken.
There was a killing by gunshot a few blocks from my house last week, it was gang related. It was right next to the school actually. Still not as freaked out by thatmurder as I am by the school shootings whether they are urban, suburban, exurban it doesn't matter to me. Aren't the schools pretty much the unsafest places in the suburbs? At least in my urban neighborhood the murder victims are resultants of deeply personal vendettas between rival gang members, not against kiddos at school.
Had a hell of a good conversation with the most successful land (subdivision) developer in our community (Midwest), and I asked him point blank if subdivisions will ever come back from the recession (in our community)….he said “no”, and rattled off the current and escalating cost of land (the best land) and infrastructure and said after you add it all up your lot cost gets near $100,000 for just 60-70’ of frontage…then people with that kind of money want big houses that require lots close to 100’, pushing the cost beyond feasibility because there are not enough of those people to justify a full development….I smell victory.
the burb you live in might have a lower crime rate, but it also has a lower prevalence of numerous benefactors of cities such as Chicago, NY, and LA. You allude that you have the best of both worlds where you're able to drive into the city and enjoy the resources there while being able to fully commit to the suburb. But I've also lived in a suburb, and in one of those big cities, (although I don't have children and I'm still under 30).
For instance, the average IQ is higher in a urban environment; people who live in a bigger city are literally more intelligent on average compared to a person living in a smaller city. And because of the characteristic compactness of an urban environment, not only is energy consumption most efficient, but specialized and necessary resources are closer in proximity to their citizens (such as heart transplant hospitals, high-rise fire departments, etc.). Plus, if you're single and sociable, the city transforms into a playground every weekend, which accounts to a healthier happiness rating.
If you have a family, its common to relocate to the suburbs, sure. But then you run the risk of raising children who are vanilla-paste,white-priviliged, MTV-fanatic, frat-lax-bro young adults, who suck. But maybe you prefer that over the mid-20s record-store employee who occasionally does heroine.
does anyone want their kid to become a "mid-20s record-store employee who occasionally does heroine?" (perhaps it depends on the heroine)
Carrera makes an interesting point, I had always thought that most new home sales were +3,000 sq. ft. because that was where the demand was, not because of land costs. I don't disagree I just never put a lot of thought into it.
Not sure how much stock I'd put in IQ scores - highly variable, does anyone really want to argue that country folk? no winners there
the big city's stock on IQ, to me, is incredibly important - the level of intellectual and technological innovation in a big city is expontential in comparison to a smaller community. The inventions that will thwart world hunger/thirst, cure cancer, and solve the global energy crisis will be produced in cities.
I bet there are many people who live in Cambridge, MA and are genius-level IQ holders at Harvard and MIT (who will go on to produce these aforementioned inventions) that would prefer to live in a rural town, smaller community, or otherwise "easier-way-of-life", but the fact that the very institution they dedicate their lives toward is headquartered in an urban area (for means of efficiency), means that the urban area in general will always be more intelligent, on average, and also more efficient, like a heartwarming catch-22.
*caveat to my law of averages: there are more unintelligent people in a big city than there are in smaller cities, but if you navigate yourself away from them, you and your children are good.
Back to that - getting killed in urban environments odds statistic…seems getting killed isn’t exclusive to urban living, took this picture today in a suburban school parking lot....in a moving van, of a woman rushing home to put a helmet on their kid before a bike ride….regardless how all this turns out, “You can’t fix stupid”, no matter where it thrives.
Yesterday there was a News Alert, 2 men walking around the near Downtown randomly shooting people in cars
This may have been true in 1978, but nowadays I would say that most high crime areas are actually poor Suburban areas...If you don't believe me go take a drive through suburban Flint, Compton, Oakland, Jamaica Queens...
If you put a gun-wielder on Michigan Avenue in Chicago or Park Ave in Manhattan, they're gonna get tackled from behind within seconds. Crime is extremely detered by any presence of onlookers so places with an abundance of eyewitnesses in a public place are going to have very little crime (especially in the USA).
Vigilantes like Batman and Spiderman never existed in the suburbs. In fact, no superheroes do. Instead of vigiliantes you get soccer moms who shield their daughter's eyes from the afterschool fight behind the community center's baseball field backstop, speeding up their minivan because its fight-or-flight and they gotta get home as quick as possible so they can monitor their television's ChildLock settings on the remote control.
jla-x, it’s a BIG country, but we better define “suburban”, just because it’s not in the CBD doesn’t make it “suburban”….while those shootings were a 15 minute walk from the CBD, I would say “just 15 minutes”, would take them 2 hours to get to me….which defines the reason for sprawl. Stuff like that just kills people’s perception of “safe”.
On the fence, most people involved in a shooting know the shooter; the chances of being "randomly" shot are much lower than what you cite.
But that really wasn't the point of my post. The point was that you are far more likely to die or be injured in a car accident than in a random shooting, but that doesn't stop people from moving to the suburbs where you are going to spend far more of your time in a car with a much higher chance of being "randomly" killed.
People move to the suburbs because it's cheaper and the schools are better-unless you can afford day care and private schools in a city. But they are boring and more resource demanding.
Why are so many cities planned without consideration of children and families?
Why are so many cities planned without consideration of children and families?
I assume by "cities" you are referring to older cores of metropolitan areas. They aren't planned for children and families because they weren't planned at all. They are simply the current physical manifestation of the market forces, economies, technologies and cultures of the time in which they were built. It isn't because people are somehow more socially conscious in one era or another. The Gilded Age a kinder and gentler time? Get serious.
Won and don, I don't think you have the stats to back that ascertain up. Large Cities and the streets are overcrowded with pedestrians and choked with cars with very little visibility around corners. That is just common sense look at it. Id like to see where you got that info.
Big cities see far more accidental shootings than suburbs. Generally gun fights don't break out around here between rival gangs like in densely populated cities where anyone can end up with a hole in their stomach.
Back to the exburbs
Don't get me started about schools....somebody hold me down!
wife is starting to consider catholic schools now - not because she thinks they are better in any way, but because they can kick out any problem kids, and we live in one of the best school districts in the nation
Shu, they can also "kick out any problem" teachers.
I am a big no city, urban sprawl kind of person.
Love my new 3300 sq. ft. home on a half acre. I live 45 minutes from Chicago so if I want a night at a museum or the theater, etc it is easily handled.
My kids love their schools and they rank in the top 10% of the state. I think the high school is in the top ten of the state. We can bike or walk to parks or even the stores. The stores are about 1.5 miles away so we usually take the car. The shopping mall is also very close. Plenty of restaurants including Mexican, indian, Chinese, Korean, mediteranian etc. Neighbors all seem real nice too.
I will never live city life. If it is your thing, good on you. I am sticking with the burbs though.
Volunteer, those are some astoundingly broad-brush stereotypical accusations you're making of public school teachers. Kinda like when a school teacher says "All architects are just FLW-clone ego-driven primadonnas who want to inflict their Howard Roarkian vision on the world with no regard for the humans who will use the building." Yes, those architects exist, but they're a tiny minority.
(I say this as someone who just delivered a cake to her son's big-city district public school for Teacher Appreciation Week. Our teachers ROCK and I respect the hell out of them for their dedication and ability.)
Yesterday there was a News Alert, 2 men walking around the near Downtown randomly shooting people in cars, and they can’t catch them (?). Is anyone keeping a list of why not to move into town? If so, please add this one to the list.
Better schools need active and engaged parents. Let us figure out how to eliminate obstacles for parents to be better parents.
Despite the long list of things chipping away at the ability of parents to do their best at parenting, design has a lot of impact, especially urban planing.
a 3000+ sf house on a half acre is not the bogey man we should be chasing, the zoning ordinances that keep 1000 near the large houses and shops and good schools is what we need to be fighting against and good design is the best tool to change the zoning and perceptions of smaller housing being associated with crime and other problems.
Good design is essential in starting the conversation that will lead to change and greater equity.
Over and OUT
Peter N
As a former school board member From a district with $65k per student cost, all I can say if the entire system is fucked. Maybe in some places it's better that others, and there are lots of teachers who care about their students almost as much as they care about their jobs but (here at least) revolving door administrators in top heavy bureaucracies have a tendency to pack their owns accounts, union teachers get step (an automatic raise every year based on longevity) plus additional negotiated contract raises that often bring them to 10% salary increases per year which wouldn't be so bad if you could get rid of bad ones except you can't because even when they are caught changing regents scores to maintain their perfect passing record it takes years and hundreds of thousands in legal fees to axe them, state mandated curriculum and testing of memorization, required multiple bidding for everything but only from a list of preapproved state vendors, etc. In the end we could send every student to the best private schools and cut the budget 40% or just send every one of them to an Ivy League school all expenses paid but instead we end up with a graduating class that ranks off the wrong end of the chart. It's partly cultural, firecly maintaining a small school for a collapsing neighborhood in an ethnic community who's largest sense of pride and worth is the HS basketball team and largely economic because nobody wants to lose their fat cushy and exceedingly well protected jobs.
On the fence,
Chicagoland is sort of a quintessential spread as far as urban-suburban sprawl. No, its not a utopia, but what I mean is that its suburbs are surely more legitimate and idealistic than suburbs of most other major cities in the US. Visiting Wilmette, Northfield, or Evanston, or Oak Park, to me, still feels urban enough to not be considered a suburb in the traditional sense of the suburb I grew up in, which was 25 minues away from the third-tier major city I'm used to. But maybe you're referring to Schaumburg or Skokie or Naperville.
In other words, living in the suburbs of Chicago actually works, so good for you.
Chances of getting into a car accident commuting to work, soccer practice or the mall = much much higher than being randomly shot
+++d[-_-]b
Won, it's that .000000000000001% chance of everything, that stops everything.
Not against anything, just pointing out everything.
But what are the chances of getting shot at school? Higher than they should be. Not surpassing the frequency of gang rival shootings.. yet.
At $65k per student cost, you could give each student a personal educational mentor and academic coach with an integrated curriculum instead of a spot in a crowded classroom with a frustrated teacher lecturing from a textbook in "math" or "science". Schools are broken.
I cross paths with the syringe clean-up crews every morning when I walk to the office. I'm still not moving outside the city.
Actually in a large city, such as Chicago, NY, LA, etc your odds of dying by gun shot is around .00027%
About 25-27 per 100,000
Those are just the victims that died of gunshot wounds.
The rate of being shot is much higher than that.
Much much lower in the burb I live in.
Much lower
There was a killing by gunshot a few blocks from my house last week, it was gang related. It was right next to the school actually. Still not as freaked out by thatmurder as I am by the school shootings whether they are urban, suburban, exurban it doesn't matter to me. Aren't the schools pretty much the unsafest places in the suburbs? At least in my urban neighborhood the murder victims are resultants of deeply personal vendettas between rival gang members, not against kiddos at school.
^Try zero in the burbs here.
Had a hell of a good conversation with the most successful land (subdivision) developer in our community (Midwest), and I asked him point blank if subdivisions will ever come back from the recession (in our community)….he said “no”, and rattled off the current and escalating cost of land (the best land) and infrastructure and said after you add it all up your lot cost gets near $100,000 for just 60-70’ of frontage…then people with that kind of money want big houses that require lots close to 100’, pushing the cost beyond feasibility because there are not enough of those people to justify a full development….I smell victory.
On the fence,
the burb you live in might have a lower crime rate, but it also has a lower prevalence of numerous benefactors of cities such as Chicago, NY, and LA. You allude that you have the best of both worlds where you're able to drive into the city and enjoy the resources there while being able to fully commit to the suburb. But I've also lived in a suburb, and in one of those big cities, (although I don't have children and I'm still under 30).
For instance, the average IQ is higher in a urban environment; people who live in a bigger city are literally more intelligent on average compared to a person living in a smaller city. And because of the characteristic compactness of an urban environment, not only is energy consumption most efficient, but specialized and necessary resources are closer in proximity to their citizens (such as heart transplant hospitals, high-rise fire departments, etc.). Plus, if you're single and sociable, the city transforms into a playground every weekend, which accounts to a healthier happiness rating.
If you have a family, its common to relocate to the suburbs, sure. But then you run the risk of raising children who are vanilla-paste,white-priviliged, MTV-fanatic, frat-lax-bro young adults, who suck. But maybe you prefer that over the mid-20s record-store employee who occasionally does heroine.
^Another conundrum.
does anyone want their kid to become a "mid-20s record-store employee who occasionally does heroine?" (perhaps it depends on the heroine)
Carrera makes an interesting point, I had always thought that most new home sales were +3,000 sq. ft. because that was where the demand was, not because of land costs. I don't disagree I just never put a lot of thought into it.
Not sure how much stock I'd put in IQ scores - highly variable, does anyone really want to argue that country folk? no winners there
shuellmi,
the big city's stock on IQ, to me, is incredibly important - the level of intellectual and technological innovation in a big city is expontential in comparison to a smaller community. The inventions that will thwart world hunger/thirst, cure cancer, and solve the global energy crisis will be produced in cities.
I bet there are many people who live in Cambridge, MA and are genius-level IQ holders at Harvard and MIT (who will go on to produce these aforementioned inventions) that would prefer to live in a rural town, smaller community, or otherwise "easier-way-of-life", but the fact that the very institution they dedicate their lives toward is headquartered in an urban area (for means of efficiency), means that the urban area in general will always be more intelligent, on average, and also more efficient, like a heartwarming catch-22.
*caveat to my law of averages: there are more unintelligent people in a big city than there are in smaller cities, but if you navigate yourself away from them, you and your children are good.
Back to that - getting killed in urban environments odds statistic…seems getting killed isn’t exclusive to urban living, took this picture today in a suburban school parking lot....in a moving van, of a woman rushing home to put a helmet on their kid before a bike ride….regardless how all this turns out, “You can’t fix stupid”, no matter where it thrives.
Yesterday there was a News Alert, 2 men walking around the near Downtown randomly shooting people in cars
This may have been true in 1978, but nowadays I would say that most high crime areas are actually poor Suburban areas...If you don't believe me go take a drive through suburban Flint, Compton, Oakland, Jamaica Queens...
Suburban crime is also much harder to police, and suburban poverty is much more isolating due to the lack of public resources and community...
Right on, jla-x,
If you put a gun-wielder on Michigan Avenue in Chicago or Park Ave in Manhattan, they're gonna get tackled from behind within seconds. Crime is extremely detered by any presence of onlookers so places with an abundance of eyewitnesses in a public place are going to have very little crime (especially in the USA).
Vigilantes like Batman and Spiderman never existed in the suburbs. In fact, no superheroes do. Instead of vigiliantes you get soccer moms who shield their daughter's eyes from the afterschool fight behind the community center's baseball field backstop, speeding up their minivan because its fight-or-flight and they gotta get home as quick as possible so they can monitor their television's ChildLock settings on the remote control.
jla-x, it’s a BIG country, but we better define “suburban”, just because it’s not in the CBD doesn’t make it “suburban”….while those shootings were a 15 minute walk from the CBD, I would say “just 15 minutes”, would take them 2 hours to get to me….which defines the reason for sprawl. Stuff like that just kills people’s perception of “safe”.
But that really wasn't the point of my post. The point was that you are far more likely to die or be injured in a car accident than in a random shooting, but that doesn't stop people from moving to the suburbs where you are going to spend far more of your time in a car with a much higher chance of being "randomly" killed.
Why are so many cities planned without consideration of children and families?
Why are so many cities planned without consideration of children and families?
I assume by "cities" you are referring to older cores of metropolitan areas. They aren't planned for children and families because they weren't planned at all. They are simply the current physical manifestation of the market forces, economies, technologies and cultures of the time in which they were built. It isn't because people are somehow more socially conscious in one era or another. The Gilded Age a kinder and gentler time? Get serious.
"Vigilantes like Batman and Spiderman never existed in the suburbs. In fact, no superheroes do."
The Coon does! (Southpark)
Won and don, I don't think you have the stats to back that ascertain up. Large Cities and the streets are overcrowded with pedestrians and choked with cars with very little visibility around corners. That is just common sense look at it. Id like to see where you got that info.
Big cities see far more accidental shootings than suburbs. Generally gun fights don't break out around here between rival gangs like in densely populated cities where anyone can end up with a hole in their stomach.
^ "Peoples likes & dislikes"
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