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.
A few weeks ago the WSJ published an article about Toronto's growing tech talent pool, arguing that its base now rivals the top US cities, but that it may not be an entirely good thing for the city's ecosystem. I wrote about it here.
This morning venture capitalist Fred Wilson published a post on his blog talking about the necessity of scaling tech companies in lower cost locations. It's a good follow-up to the above article/post.
Here's an excerpt from Fred:
Last week I heard some shocking numbers about salary levels for certain kinds of engineers in the bay area. I checked them out with a few of our bay area portfolio companies and they were more or less corroborated.
The tight technical labor markets in the bay area, NYC, and a number of other regions in the US are making it hard to scale software businesses without burning massive amounts of cash.
He goes on to argue that (startup) companies now need to think about scaling in other/remote locations sooner than they ever have before -- basically as soon as the company hits about 50 engineers (or 100-200 employees).
Many companies are now working with a distributed workforce. Supposedly 2/3 of the global workforce now spends at least one day of the week working remotely. I almost never work from home, but I do get how this is possible.
So what is happening is that engineering talent is spilling over into secondary markets out of necessity. There's an economic imperative to colonize. But I would imagine that, at least initially, most of the economic benefits accrue to the colonizer.
This September 25, 2019, the Bronx Museum of the Arts will be opening up a new exhibition called, Henry Chalfant: Art vs. Transit, 1977-1987. Henry is a renowned photographer who is most known for his work on graffiti, breakdance, and overall street culture. This exhibition is about all of this, but there's a particular focus on the subway car art that was once ubiquitous in New York City.
There's also a Kickstarter campaign if you'd like to support this exhibition. What struck me as I watched the campaign video, was that the "urban street culture" of this era doesn't seem to exist in quite the same way today (or maybe I'm missing it). In the video, Henry talks about things like the birth of hip hop, which he documented outside, on the street.
We shouldn't forget that New York was also a scary place at this time. Removing the subway art that Henry fastidiously documented was one of the ways in which the city is thought to have broken its patterns of crime. But at the same time, there's something really special about new ideas forming out in the public realm.
It's also a uniquely urban phenomenon.