Cities without Kids

I was intrigued by this article in the New York Times about otherwise successful cities losing children. What I noticed most of all was that no one interviewed for the article seemed to have any idea what to do about the problem. I suppose about the only thing I can think of is something really obvious like tax breaks or housing vouchers for young families, which would lower the cost of living for them, and then once you'd attracted a "critical mass", the city could start putting money toward the "parks, trails and public safety improvements" that Portland's mayor says kids help make possible.

It might also be necessary to convince young parents that they actually have options other than moving out to the exurbs. It seems to be almost culturally unacceptable to not escape your apartment at least by the time your kids reach school age, if not several years earlier, although that could have as much to do with the instinct to flee hopelessly ghettoized and underfunded (or racially unfamiliar) urban school districts as with yard space and extra bedrooms.