Cities Losing People After '90s Influx

[dazzleman]

Why did you capitalize 'Minneapolis'

Because *someone* who constantly extols the virtues of that city is, in fact, demonstrating the major reason why families w/ kids are leaving the place.

Bingo.

[dazzleman]

only slightly related, but interesting.

http://nytimes.com/2005/06/30/national/30census.html

and click on the multimedia graphic for a look at Manifest Destiny. 

I suppose families are back "in" nowadays.  I know when I was single, and extending my adolescence far into my 30s, I was drawn like a moth to the bright lights.  Like a moron to shiny objects.  I enjoyed the noise, pollution, ease of connection, and veritable buffet of flesh and booze and what-have-you to be found in the downtown cores of most cities, and generally tended to find a spot very near downtown everywhere I lived till recently.  Nowadays, I'm a tad fonder of the 'burbs.  I still feel a bit choked when I stare out on mile after mile of white-washed, 2-car, 1.9-offspring, cookie-cutter bourgeoisie, but the mind-numbing ennui makes me feel warm and safe.  Well, that, and the city doesn't seem to agree with my wife.  The boy seems to like it though.  Just at home on the subway as in the living room.  And given that families, and "family values" are back in this decade, it's not surprising that cookie-cutter bourgoisie is back in vogue as well.

Your characterization of suburbs make you sound like BRTD, man.  Don't you realize that what you describe is no more true of all suburbs than it would be to describe every neighborhood of every city as a crime-ridden slum.

What IS largely true is that cities have bad school systems.  That, more than anything, is what drives families out.  Even many good neighborhoods in cities do not offer decent schooling options, and that is a killer for people with kids.

[dazzleman]

Why did you capitalize 'Minneapolis'

Because *someone* who constantly extols the virtues of that city is, in fact, demonstrating the major reason why families w/ kids are leaving the place.

Bingo.

So families leave cities because of people like me in them? That's fine, it just means that the cities are full of people like me instead, which makes them much better, less Republicans and less people who whine about strip clubs.

No, it makes them s**tholes....

[dazzleman]

I am interested to know if there are any suburbs losing people

Yes. 2005 numbers released by the Washington State goverment show that Seattle suburbs such as Bellevue, Kirkland, and Mercer Island are losing population, but the county still grew by 20,000 people over the last year.

However, it's not that families are leaving, it's that kids are graduating and leaving while their parents stay there and have no more kids. Those cities have no more land left to annex and therefore will have to wait for elderly couples to leave or die so a  new family can replace them.

That's often true. In my city we had a lot of housing built in the 50's through 70's. The original owners became empty nest households. Then, in the early 1990's they gave way to the next generation of families. The result was the sudden need for a new school building in an area that apparently had no new housing.

This is happening in the suburbs too. 

What you are saying obscures the reality that middle class families generally don't like to raise kids in cities because of the poor quality of public education.  For the previous generation, the public schools either were not as bad, or the parents sent their kids to (in the past) relatively inexpensive Catholic schools.  Today, the public schools have deteriorated further in cities, and Catholic schools or other private schools have become prohibitively expensive, so today's generation of parents generally opts to get out of the cities when it comes time for their kids to go to school.

[dazzleman]

The whole purpose of the census is to get a real count of people, rather than rely on estimates that can be politicized. 

To use estimates rather than actual census results would be like using polling data rather than actual votes to elect government officials to office.  Polls, like estimates, can be manipulated, and the purpose of the census is to avoid this.

If the cities are getting screwed, all they need do is get their residents to answer the census.  If an area loses political clout because many of its residents are too lazy and dysfunctional to turn in a single form, then so be it.  Filling out a census form is hardly an onerous requirement, especially if there's supposedly such a great benefit for doing so, and such terrible consequences for not doing so.

I don't believe the cities are getting "screwed" in any case.  Their worst problems are self-inflicted, and can't be solved by outsiders, so in that sense, their supposed inability to force through programs that they support makes little difference, since they won't work anyway.