What in the world will David Brooks say when he finds out those fashionable moms are taking over Manhattan as well as Brooklyn. According to this story in the New York Times:
Manhattan, which once epitomized the
glamorous and largely childless locale for “Sex and the City,” has
begun to look more like the set for a decidedly upscale and even more
vanilla version of 1960s suburbia in “The Wonder Years.” Since 2000, according to census figures released last year, the
number of children under age 5 living in Manhattan mushroomed by more
than 32 percent. And though their ranks have been growing for several
years, a new analysis for The New York Times makes clear for the first
time who has been driving that growth: wealthy white families. …The analysis shows that Manhattan’s 35,000 or so white non-Hispanic
toddlers are being raised by parents whose median income was $284,208 a
year in 2005, which means they are growing up in wealthier households
than similar youngsters in any other large county in the country. Among white families with toddlers, San Francisco ranked second,
with a median income of $150,763, followed by Somerset, N.J.
($136,807); San Jose, Calif. ($134,668); Fairfield, Conn. ($132,427);
and Westchester ($122,240). In comparison, the median income of other Manhattan households with
toddlers was $66,213 for Asians, $31,171 for blacks and $25,467 for
Hispanic families.David Bernard, 42, and Joanna Bers, 38, run a management and
marketing consulting business and live with their 17-month-old twin
sons on Fifth Avenue. Both grew up in suburbia. “I like the idea of raising them in the city because they’re
prepared for pretty much anything,” Mr. Bernard said. “The city
challenges you; it prepares you for life.” Manhattan is probably more diverse than most suburbs, he said, because “the five boroughs are brought together in Manhattan.” “We were just at the Children’s Museum, and I didn’t see a lack of
diversity there at all,” Ms. Bers said. “New York is a melting pot. We
have every intention of sending our kids to P.S. 6. New York is a
wonderful place to raise children, especially if there are more of them
and more resources devoted to them.”
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Vancouver’s downtown penninsula has the 2nd highest residential density in North America after Manhattan. I recall reading recently that 60 new babies per month are added to the population (estimated at 90,000).
Take that Kotkin — dense urban areas work really well for families: lots of kids = lots of amenities and activities for them close by, making parenting easier.
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Wendy – Wow! We are really in the midst of a very complex sorting. Cities, dense urban centers, are prized locations of the creative economy. My worry of course, as is yours, is that our geography is becoming one of class. My hunch is that Vancouver, Toronto and Scandinavian cities have done a much better job of keeping cities more diverse in terms of socio-economic status. In the US, we are seeing growing spikiness or inequality across cities and regions and within them as well.
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Oh, the irony; the stats tell us that family life in Manhattan is becoming restricted to the very wealthy, who are raising their kids their for the “diversity.” Fabulous!
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:06 pm
John – See my comment above. We are going to see a lot more of this. Jane Jacobs and Robert Lucas long ago showed us the basic economic logic of centrality and density – such concentrations of people generate huge productivity improvement. So left to its own logic the only people who will be able to afford the center will be -you guess it- the very wealthy.
This has become even clearer to me in the research I’m doing with Charlotta Mellander. Our housing paper shows how housing prices are “disconnected” from wages, the creative class or productivity. Housing prices reflect income and wealth (often made elsewhere) plus this huge premium for amenity and openness. We have another paper coming on regional development and are now starting one on inequality and housing affordability.
The bottom line is that more and more urban outcomes are divorced from regional productivity and work. Income and amenity are driving a lot in the system.
My question is why won’t policy-makers, leaders talk about this. They still see cities as filled with poor people, while the middle class and business are in the suburbs. We are living through powerful migration and geographic sorting trends, that we all need to get a grip on.
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:43 pm
“My worry of course, as is yours, is that our geography is becoming one of class. My hunch is that Vancouver, Toronto and Scandinavian cities have done a much better job of keeping cities more diverse in terms of socio-economic status.”
Vancouver’s politicians and planners have certainly tried and continue to try to keep some diversity of income in most neighbourhoods, but market forces are hard to fight. The city itself (as opposed to the metro region), is gradually becoming like San Francisco — the desired locale of the wealthier from the region, or those with some inherited cash they can invest in housing. It’s not there yet — there are neighbourhoods and new housing styles that are more affordable — but give the area 20-30 years, and this may not be the case.
There are obvious consequences for diversity of these trends:
Downtown Vancouver’s condo dwelling population is not as ethnically diverse as the region generally — and given the escalating housing costs, it’s rapidly becoming less socio-economically diverse–just like Manhattan. For the least expensive 2 bedroom condos on the market right now, you’d need a household income of over $100K to afford it unless you had a huge down payment. A couple of experienced video game developers can afford it — but not necessarily the people pouring lattes.
March 24th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Well, you’re contradicting your lede; upscale moms are not “taking over” Manhattan, and those 35,000 white non-hispanic toddlers are, in a metro area the size of greater NY, a drop in the ocean. I expect what David Brooks would say (rightly, though I rarely agree with the guy) is that the vast majority of people who can afford to make choices choose to raise kids in the suburbs, but there are of course those who make this particularly boutique choice.
I’m certainly not knocking city life, or raising kids in Manhattan; I think it’s great. I wish normal middle class people could afford to do it, though.
My point, delivered somewhat sarcastically, is that when these parents slap themselves on the back for raising kids in such a diverse setting, it’s nonsense; there’s more diversity in my central Houston neighborhood than where most of these folks live.
And, given that a house in this diverse, thriving, gay friendly, artist friendly neighborhood costs about what a parking space in Manhattan will run you, I wonder if there’s a point at which the trends you identify that increase the real estate prices in places like NY short-circuit and people flee. I’m struck by just how many people I know have left places like Los Angeles and the Bay Area in the last decade, because – creative energy and all – life just got far too challenging.
Does a creative city work if it’s a group of super-affluent creative elites, but economic conditions drive others out?
March 24th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Fascinating piece, great comments. This is going on in many of the cities I have lived in =-= DC, SF, and even Chicago — where more affluent and dual income families are sticking around in the city. One note/question of the crowd, even if people don’t stay in the city/core, they likely stay in the metro and still add to the vitality of the region? And even if people leave b/c they don’t want commute/quality of life — in certain places there appears to be people lined up to replace them. so the suburban/exurb folks are still creative and keep the metro creative — even if only some of them can/choose to live in the city itself? yes, no,?
My experience in DC’s Capitol Hill over the past two years is that there are new babies everywhere. (in fact there seem to be babies all over this city).
We have had one of our own, two members of my dog park crew have also had kiddies in the last couple of months and the playgrounds seem to be more full each time i pass it. We are still a few years from the decision point, but we are already working hard to figure out how to make it work — that is staying in the city as our baby grows and needs to be educated. My wife has denied my request to homeskool our boy!
March 26th, 2007 at 11:46 am
DJM,
I think there’s something to the notion that one of the great advantages of a strong city core is that it attracts young people as they are just getting started with their careers. That then makes it more likely that they end up staying in that region as they start to raise families, whether it’s in the city itself or the suburbs.
I’ve observed a lot more young affluent couples start to raise families in my hometown of Chicago as compared to a decade ago. That being said, the underlying detriment for young families in a number of large cities is the quality of public education. While Chicago, for example, has some fine public magnet schools along with an array of top notch private schools, it doesn’t take much to see that the average public school in the city is far behind in terms of resources as compared to the average suburban public school. That’s the number one reason as to why my wife and I decided to move from the city to the suburbs when we wanted to purchase a house to put down roots. The quality of education for our future children is of paramount importance to us, as I would think would be the case with other knowledge workers or members of the creative class.
While those with large financial resources can be satisfied with the educational component in the city since they can afford the tuition for the top private schools, most people have to perform a cost/benefit analysis on how much a city lifesyle is worth versus what is the best possible educational environment is for their children. Attracting knowledge workers when they are fresh out of college with diverse and lively neighborhoods is one matter, but being able to retain those knowledge workers as they start to raise families is going to largely depend upon how well large cities improve their public education systems.
March 26th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Frank – Great comment! In doing the research for Who’s Your City, it’s pretty clear to me that we make three key location decisions in our lives: where to go after college, when the kids go to school, and when the kids are gone. Of the three the first is the most important in conditioning regional outcomes. For one, people are much more likely to make significant moves when they are young, and young people move more frequently. But second, and connected toi your point, the move that comes when kids go to school is not necessarily a move out of the region. In fact, lots of people just jump over the border the the suburbs. Sure, that’s a loss for the city, but not for the region of which that city is a part. And then third, lots of empty-nesters head back to the city when the kids are gone. Given the state of public education, cities are attracting two core groups that do not depend so much on education. That’s a heck of a lot better than nothing. And the region as a whole wins so long as they can find the right place to raise and educate their kids nearby. The point being: the regions that are attracting young people have a huge advantage in retaining them over their life-course.