Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
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
On the cover of the July 2018 issue of Harper’s Magazine is a picture of New York City – with Rafael Viñoly’s 432 Park Avenue as the focal point – and the title: Death of a Great American City. New York and the Urban Crisis of Affluence.
The long-form article is by Kevin Baker and it is an account of how New York City has transformed itself over the past few decades from a place of culture and character (and of cockroaches and discarded crack vials) into a place for the ultra-wealthy to buy ultra-luxury real estate that may or may not sit empty for more often than it is occupied.
“As New York enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. It is approaching a state where it is no longer a significant cultural entity but the world’s largest gated community, with a few cupcake shops here and there. For the first time in its history, New York is, well, boring.”
This narrative and/or phenomenon is of course not unique to New York City, though it is surely more pronounced when you are one of, if not the, preeminent global city. In fact, I was sent this article by a reader who was wondering about the possible parallels here in Toronto. Thank you Natasha.
The desire, which is how Baker ends his article, is that New York City should be a city of “workers and eccentrics” as well as “visionaries and billionaires.” It should be a place for “street photographers” and “hedge fund operators.” That sounds like a pretty cool place to me.
But we all know how challenging this has proven to be for cities.
The National Center of Health Statistics just released this update on births and birth rates for the United States in 2017. The provisional number of births last year was 3,853,472, which represents a 2% reduction from 2016 and the lowest number in 30 years. The general fertility rate was 60.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44, which represents a 3% reduction from 2016. Also a record low.
Here is a chart from the report showing birth rates for selected age ranges from 1990 to 2016 (the 2017 numbers are provisional):
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
On the cover of the July 2018 issue of Harper’s Magazine is a picture of New York City – with Rafael Viñoly’s 432 Park Avenue as the focal point – and the title: Death of a Great American City. New York and the Urban Crisis of Affluence.
The long-form article is by Kevin Baker and it is an account of how New York City has transformed itself over the past few decades from a place of culture and character (and of cockroaches and discarded crack vials) into a place for the ultra-wealthy to buy ultra-luxury real estate that may or may not sit empty for more often than it is occupied.
“As New York enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. It is approaching a state where it is no longer a significant cultural entity but the world’s largest gated community, with a few cupcake shops here and there. For the first time in its history, New York is, well, boring.”
This narrative and/or phenomenon is of course not unique to New York City, though it is surely more pronounced when you are one of, if not the, preeminent global city. In fact, I was sent this article by a reader who was wondering about the possible parallels here in Toronto. Thank you Natasha.
The desire, which is how Baker ends his article, is that New York City should be a city of “workers and eccentrics” as well as “visionaries and billionaires.” It should be a place for “street photographers” and “hedge fund operators.” That sounds like a pretty cool place to me.
But we all know how challenging this has proven to be for cities.
The National Center of Health Statistics just released this update on births and birth rates for the United States in 2017. The provisional number of births last year was 3,853,472, which represents a 2% reduction from 2016 and the lowest number in 30 years. The general fertility rate was 60.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44, which represents a 3% reduction from 2016. Also a record low.
Here is a chart from the report showing birth rates for selected age ranges from 1990 to 2016 (the 2017 numbers are provisional):
Many of the age ranges have remained stable. Notable are the decline in the teenage (15-19) birth rate and the increase in births to women aged 40-44. The teenage birth rate declined 7% from 2016 and has averaged a decline of nearly 8% a year since 2007. And the birth rate for women aged 40-44 has generally been rising since 1982.
I am sure that you can all think of many explanations for the above phenomena without even diving into the report. I find all of this relevant because demographics obviously impact the real estate business and how we build cities.
Many of the age ranges have remained stable. Notable are the decline in the teenage (15-19) birth rate and the increase in births to women aged 40-44. The teenage birth rate declined 7% from 2016 and has averaged a decline of nearly 8% a year since 2007. And the birth rate for women aged 40-44 has generally been rising since 1982.
I am sure that you can all think of many explanations for the above phenomena without even diving into the report. I find all of this relevant because demographics obviously impact the real estate business and how we build cities.
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