4 ms·

I live in a small semi-detached house that's walkable to the downtown of our city. I can bike to dozens different places to get take-out, we have a small privat

I live in a small semi-detached house that's walkable to the downtown of our city. I can bike to dozens different places to get take-out, we have a small private back garden where we can host guests, and we have enough space for two of us to work from home in privacy. We also actually see our neighbors outside every evening when we walk around. There's definitely an in-between, medium density option that this article seems to ignore in favor of focusing on car-focused, isolated suburbs where everyone had 5 bedrooms and a pool.

mason55 6y ago
That’s exactly what I want except where I am the schools are all awful for any area with houses like that. So either move to car-centric suburbs or add another $20k+ per year to send two kids to decent private schools.
- kgermino 6y ago
  I obviously can’t speak for the country as a whole, but at least in Milwaukee the schools in those areas are often fine to great, it’s the “school report cards” that are terrible. The number one predictor of a school’s rating is the average income of its parents. Broadly speaking a rich kid at a mid-tier school will do just as well as a rich kid in a “good” school. City schools have poor kids and lower average test scores, but I don’t know anyone who chose the city schools by me and has regretted it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bradlys 6y ago
    > Broadly speaking a rich kid at a mid-tier school will do just as well as a rich kid in a “good” school. This is somewhat true but it's missing a component I didn't realize was as important - you're getting relationships/networking even at these "good" schools. I know that sounds stupid but being around people of high socioeconomic status helps you learn unspoken signals and norms. On top of that - your peers will likely be going into high paying professions and will be able to help you make your way into that profession as well. Some people I know who went to these rich kid schools are happy that they did because it helped them. I rarely meet people who were like, "Yeah, going to that rich kid school was pointless. It had literally no effect on my life." I used to think I could just parent/teach my way out of any shit school and then I've watched my friends have kids. There's too much social stuff that can't be made up for by parents. I'd be especially wary of putting a kid in a poor school. If you go to a poor school (rated or, especially, funded) then you will have to put in a lot more effort as a parent to get satisfactory results - and likely your kid will lose all childhood friendships as they age. People in poor schools frequently don't break out. If you're putting in the effort or your child is just generally exceptional then they'll break out... Which means they're leaving everyone behind and forging a path that none of their peers have done. It makes for an isolated experience and a really difficult one. If you've done it - great, you can help your kid but is that enjoyable? The programs for children who would be average or above average at a good school frequently don't exist at poor schools. Think AP courses, college credit, computer classes, advanced math and english, foreign language options, etc. I know because I had to go to a school that could only afford 4 days a week and that had to cut almost every elective. I've stayed in contact with no one from that region because... well, there's not much of a point. I haven't spoken to anyone from that school in close to 10 or so years and I'm not even 30. That said - if you or your kid has no large ambitions or only ones that /somehow/ don't rely on any social components at all then it doesn't matter.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      People find Brave New World's Betas and Gammas[1] to be evidence of dystopia, but my observation of the US school system is that by moving[2] to a specific ZIP+4, one attempts to influence one's viviparous children's lot in life by picking their friends' parents. On the russian side, I'll make the preposterous claim that Crimea had to be "liberated", because otherwise how else were non-Moscow parents supposed to be able to send their kids to Artek[3] for the summer? [1] undoubtedly thought of as an expansion on the 1966 system: https://twitter.com/johncleese/status/1254130854462455813 https://twitter.com/johncleese/status/1254130854462455813 [2] what are current premiums for houses with "good schools?" [3] https://artek.org https://artek.org
- war1025 6y ago
  I wonder what would happen if well-off folks worked at improving public schools rather than fleeing to private institutions. Granted, I live in the midwest where public schools are, as a general rule, pretty good. One of the reasons we moved to the town we did though is that they have a unified school system. I heard too many of my more well-off acquaintances making offhand comments amounting to "oh, you don't want to move there. They go to the poor people school." If you think good schools are a public good, put your family where your mouth is.
  - radomysisky 6y ago
    Private schooling in inherently exclusive. This is the prime motivator. It ensures their children will only have peers of a similar socioeconomic background.
  - greggman3 6y ago
    Unfortunately there is no incentive to wait. I would expect most people would like public schools to be better but have no expectation they can influence them to be better in time for their kids to benefit so they'd separate the two issues. (1) send your kids to private school so you're not sacrificing them on principle (2) push for better public schools. I wish I knew how to fix public schools. It certainly not with more money. IIRC the USA is in the top 10 on money spent per student. Arguably a bigger issue is all the other problems in areas with bad public schools like poverty and all the problems that come with it.
    - eyerony 6y ago
      > I wish I knew how to fix public schools. It certainly not with more money. IIRC "busing" is the most effective thing we've tried—wildly more successful than anything else—but approximately everyone (including a lot of people who weren't rich whites) hated it so we don't do it anymore. Given that selection bias is a big part of what makes a typical "good" school good it's a hard problem to solve without some kind of social-engineering thing like that that mixes everyone up, though that comes with its own problems, especially if it's still possible to escape the system (moving even farther from the city to areas that aren't doing busing; private schools). Very early (like... kindergarten or 1st grade) tracking or something like it would probably make mediocre schools more appealing for somewhat-well-off parents and counter the tendency of the rich-enough-to-leave but not-rich-enough-for-private-school set to flee the city when they have kids, since it'd isolate the good students from the bad to replicate some of what the suburban schools benefit from to let the "middle" and "high" cohorts do fairly well even at so-so schools, but there's pretty much zero chance the optics on that would be acceptable.
- darksaints 6y ago
  I have some experience with both sides of this picture. I grew up in a suburb with highly rated schools, and I'm raising my kid in a dense city with poorly rated schools. School ratings are (mostly) complete bullshit. My school left me completely unprepared for facing the real world. I literally had history teachers that taught me that the civil war wasn't about slavery. Every teacher I had taught to the test, and this was decades before NCLB. Meanwhile, my child who is in a medium rated school in a poorly rated school district is learning critical thinking skills that I didn't even know were necessary until I started flunking out of college. As a second grader, he not only can keep up with math and science and writing standards for his age group, but he can actually apply it: I'm constantly seeing him take real world problems and figure out how to use something he learned in school to solve that problem, whether by building a mental mathematical model or designing an experiment, or using a resource like a dictionary to help him understand a word he doesn't know. My world was never like that...I thought of school as an intake of knowledge that had to be memorized, not as a way of learning. I'm not putting these motivations into your mouth, but I get the feeling like school ratings are merely a subconscious correlation with whiteness, and as long as you aren't completely checked out from your child's life, you can ignore them completely.
swimfar 6y ago
I agree that having a house downtown is a nice way to live. And there are plenty of great cities in the US where houses close to downtown are affordable to the middle class. But a small, semi-detached house doesn't sound like medium density to me. That's only an option in a city where not everyone wants to live downtown (areas where people prefer the suburbs), or if you have enough money to outbid everyone else who wants that house.
- darksaints 6y ago
  You don't have to have houses stacked on top of each other to achieve density. There are plenty of turn of the century streetcar suburbs in the US that are chock full of detached single family homes but still have densities in the 10k/sqmi territory. It's only when you throw in minimum lot sizes, setbacks, wide streets, and minimum parking requirements that you take those single family homes and turn them into sprawl.
finolex1 6y ago
There are a lot of small cities that are like this - Ann Arbor, New Haven, Providence, etc. Though the downside is that career opportunities are correspondingly more limited.

mason55 6y ago

That’s exactly what I want except where I am the schools are all awful for any area with houses like that. So either move to car-centric suburbs or add another $20k+ per year to send two kids to decent private schools.

kgermino 6y ago
I obviously can’t speak for the country as a whole, but at least in Milwaukee the schools in those areas are often fine to great, it’s the “school report cards” that are terrible. The number one predictor of a school’s rating is the average income of its parents. Broadly speaking a rich kid at a mid-tier school will do just as well as a rich kid in a “good” school. City schools have poor kids and lower average test scores, but I don’t know anyone who chose the city schools by me and has regretted it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bradlys 6y ago
  > Broadly speaking a rich kid at a mid-tier school will do just as well as a rich kid in a “good” school. This is somewhat true but it's missing a component I didn't realize was as important - you're getting relationships/networking even at these "good" schools. I know that sounds stupid but being around people of high socioeconomic status helps you learn unspoken signals and norms. On top of that - your peers will likely be going into high paying professions and will be able to help you make your way into that profession as well. Some people I know who went to these rich kid schools are happy that they did because it helped them. I rarely meet people who were like, "Yeah, going to that rich kid school was pointless. It had literally no effect on my life." I used to think I could just parent/teach my way out of any shit school and then I've watched my friends have kids. There's too much social stuff that can't be made up for by parents. I'd be especially wary of putting a kid in a poor school. If you go to a poor school (rated or, especially, funded) then you will have to put in a lot more effort as a parent to get satisfactory results - and likely your kid will lose all childhood friendships as they age. People in poor schools frequently don't break out. If you're putting in the effort or your child is just generally exceptional then they'll break out... Which means they're leaving everyone behind and forging a path that none of their peers have done. It makes for an isolated experience and a really difficult one. If you've done it - great, you can help your kid but is that enjoyable? The programs for children who would be average or above average at a good school frequently don't exist at poor schools. Think AP courses, college credit, computer classes, advanced math and english, foreign language options, etc. I know because I had to go to a school that could only afford 4 days a week and that had to cut almost every elective. I've stayed in contact with no one from that region because... well, there's not much of a point. I haven't spoken to anyone from that school in close to 10 or so years and I'm not even 30. That said - if you or your kid has no large ambitions or only ones that /somehow/ don't rely on any social components at all then it doesn't matter.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    People find Brave New World's Betas and Gammas[1] to be evidence of dystopia, but my observation of the US school system is that by moving[2] to a specific ZIP+4, one attempts to influence one's viviparous children's lot in life by picking their friends' parents. On the russian side, I'll make the preposterous claim that Crimea had to be "liberated", because otherwise how else were non-Moscow parents supposed to be able to send their kids to Artek[3] for the summer? [1] undoubtedly thought of as an expansion on the 1966 system: https://twitter.com/johncleese/status/1254130854462455813 https://twitter.com/johncleese/status/1254130854462455813 [2] what are current premiums for houses with "good schools?" [3] https://artek.org https://artek.org
war1025 6y ago
I wonder what would happen if well-off folks worked at improving public schools rather than fleeing to private institutions. Granted, I live in the midwest where public schools are, as a general rule, pretty good. One of the reasons we moved to the town we did though is that they have a unified school system. I heard too many of my more well-off acquaintances making offhand comments amounting to "oh, you don't want to move there. They go to the poor people school." If you think good schools are a public good, put your family where your mouth is.
- radomysisky 6y ago
  Private schooling in inherently exclusive. This is the prime motivator. It ensures their children will only have peers of a similar socioeconomic background.
- greggman3 6y ago
  Unfortunately there is no incentive to wait. I would expect most people would like public schools to be better but have no expectation they can influence them to be better in time for their kids to benefit so they'd separate the two issues. (1) send your kids to private school so you're not sacrificing them on principle (2) push for better public schools. I wish I knew how to fix public schools. It certainly not with more money. IIRC the USA is in the top 10 on money spent per student. Arguably a bigger issue is all the other problems in areas with bad public schools like poverty and all the problems that come with it.
  - eyerony 6y ago
    > I wish I knew how to fix public schools. It certainly not with more money. IIRC "busing" is the most effective thing we've tried—wildly more successful than anything else—but approximately everyone (including a lot of people who weren't rich whites) hated it so we don't do it anymore. Given that selection bias is a big part of what makes a typical "good" school good it's a hard problem to solve without some kind of social-engineering thing like that that mixes everyone up, though that comes with its own problems, especially if it's still possible to escape the system (moving even farther from the city to areas that aren't doing busing; private schools). Very early (like... kindergarten or 1st grade) tracking or something like it would probably make mediocre schools more appealing for somewhat-well-off parents and counter the tendency of the rich-enough-to-leave but not-rich-enough-for-private-school set to flee the city when they have kids, since it'd isolate the good students from the bad to replicate some of what the suburban schools benefit from to let the "middle" and "high" cohorts do fairly well even at so-so schools, but there's pretty much zero chance the optics on that would be acceptable.
darksaints 6y ago
I have some experience with both sides of this picture. I grew up in a suburb with highly rated schools, and I'm raising my kid in a dense city with poorly rated schools. School ratings are (mostly) complete bullshit. My school left me completely unprepared for facing the real world. I literally had history teachers that taught me that the civil war wasn't about slavery. Every teacher I had taught to the test, and this was decades before NCLB. Meanwhile, my child who is in a medium rated school in a poorly rated school district is learning critical thinking skills that I didn't even know were necessary until I started flunking out of college. As a second grader, he not only can keep up with math and science and writing standards for his age group, but he can actually apply it: I'm constantly seeing him take real world problems and figure out how to use something he learned in school to solve that problem, whether by building a mental mathematical model or designing an experiment, or using a resource like a dictionary to help him understand a word he doesn't know. My world was never like that...I thought of school as an intake of knowledge that had to be memorized, not as a way of learning. I'm not putting these motivations into your mouth, but I get the feeling like school ratings are merely a subconscious correlation with whiteness, and as long as you aren't completely checked out from your child's life, you can ignore them completely.

swimfar 6y ago

I agree that having a house downtown is a nice way to live. And there are plenty of great cities in the US where houses close to downtown are affordable to the middle class. But a small, semi-detached house doesn't sound like medium density to me. That's only an option in a city where not everyone wants to live downtown (areas where people prefer the suburbs), or if you have enough money to outbid everyone else who wants that house.

darksaints 6y ago
You don't have to have houses stacked on top of each other to achieve density. There are plenty of turn of the century streetcar suburbs in the US that are chock full of detached single family homes but still have densities in the 10k/sqmi territory. It's only when you throw in minimum lot sizes, setbacks, wide streets, and minimum parking requirements that you take those single family homes and turn them into sprawl.

finolex1 6y ago

There are a lot of small cities that are like this - Ann Arbor, New Haven, Providence, etc. Though the downside is that career opportunities are correspondingly more limited.