This week, Matthew Yglesias of Vox makes the case for raising kids in the city. Spoiler: Driving sucks. Cities have lots to do. And parks can be better than lawns. However, he also talks about why this proposition is becoming increasingly difficult for many families. Here are a couple of excerpts:
Now the father of a 4-year-old son, I live in Washington, DC, a city that is, mercifully, marginally more affordable than New York, and I wouldn’t want to raise a family any place other than the city.
But unfortunately, families are disappearing from American cities even as city living in general has become fashionable again for those who can afford it.
Children cost money. And they take up space. And urban space has become much more expensive — repelling growing families. This suits the proclivities of smug suburbanites just fine, but as someone who grew up in a big city in the 1980s and 1990s when city living was both less fashionable and more affordable, it seems like a tragedy to me.
I didn't grow up in the city. Though, I spent time in apartments and other higher density housing. And I don't have kids. But I find this topic interesting. It's also an important one. I don't believe that the childless city is a good thing.
For the full article, click here.
This evening, when I was reading the internet, I came across this New York Times article from 2017 talking about how San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children of any of the largest cities in the U.S. It’s around 13% of the population. (Supposedly it was the second lowest in 2015. Pittsburgh was first.)
The article goes on to claim that the city has approximately the same number of dogs as it does children. That number is somewhere around 120,000. Not surprisingly, many blame the city’s prohibitive housing costs as the main culprit for the lack of kids. Families simply cannot afford to live in the city.
This got me searching for more information. Richard Florida looked at similar data back in 2015, but it’s important to note that he looked at metro areas and not the city propers. So the data doesn’t speak to whether families were forced to move out from the urban core to the suburbs in search of more affordable housing or for more space.
Nevertheless, he finds no statistical association between the share of children in a city and things like urban density, economic output per capita, or median home prices. He instead finds that the share of children is positively correlated with two main factors: immigration and with ethnicity – specifically people of Latin origin.
Click here if you’d like to read the rest of Florida’s analysis. And if any of you have additional data on this topic, please do share it below. I think I’m going to continue digging into this question of kids and cities.
Image: Photo by William Bout on Unsplash
In a knowledge and innovation economy, new ideas matter a great deal. But it seems to be a lot easier for existing companies to come up with sustaining, incremental innovations, than it is for them to come up with new, disruptive innovations.
New can be hard.
That’s why I was interested in a recent New York Times article by Wharton professor Adam Grant called, How to Raise a Creative Child. Step One: Back Off.
The article starts by arguing that many “child prodigies” rarely become adult creators who go on to the change the world:
The gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies, but rarely compose their own original scores. They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights. They conform to codified rules, rather than inventing their own. Research suggests that the most creative children are the least likely to become the teacher’s pet, and in response, many learn to keep their original ideas to themselves. In the language of the critic William Deresiewicz, they become the excellent sheep.
To become creators Adam argues that children need to be given the freedom and independence to develop their own sense of self:
When psychologists compared America’s most creative architects with a group of highly skilled but unoriginal peers, there was something unique about the parents of the creative architects: “Emphasis was placed on the development of one’s own ethical code.”
Yes, parents encouraged their children to pursue excellence and success — but they also encouraged them to find “joy in work.” Their children had freedom to sort out their own values and discover their own interests. And that set them up to flourish as creative adults.
I firmly believe in this approach. But of course, this doesn’t just apply to children; though that is certainly an important takeaway. I also think that if you want the best work out of people in the workplace, you also need to: back off.
Creativity needs freedom.