How Does This Bode for Sacramento?

Now that I can hyperlink I can bring your attention to an interesting article on the economic prosperity of family-friendly cities on today’s WSJ opinion page.  Note the dis on SF and the promise that those of us girls with college degrees have a 75% chance of getting married. There’s lots of funny things that could be said but still, it’s an interesting story.   

6 thoughts on “How Does This Bode for Sacramento?”

  1. Forget using your house as an ATM– Use your spouse instead! Just better hope no “spousing recession” comes down the pipe, so to speak.

    Like

  2. My son moved from Chicago, to Las Vegas, and now lives in suburban Portland, OR..with his wife and 1.9 children. I love Portland!

    How does it bode for Sac? I asked my son if he’d ever consider moving to Sac. “Hell no, he said, it’s too fricken hot there..it’s like Las Vegas in the summer..and it’s too flat.” Well, that’s what he said.

    Like

  3. I know just as many people who won’t move to Portland because it’s too rainy and cold. Sometimes it’s just not your weather.

    The focus on DINKs and empty nesters is basically a hollow hope, and a main reason why downtown development hasn’t scored many points: if families want to move to the central city, there are plenty of places for them to move in existing midtown neighborhoods that combine the best of urban living (walkability, proximity to transit and amenities) while still having a single-family home in a far denser setting than modern suburbs (typical suburbs are 3-4 DUA, midtown is more like 30-35 DUA.) Smaller lots also mean less lawn to mow!

    Keeping families means having schools (and having good schools) nearby, and that’s kind of the challenge. Midtown used to have more schools, but sadly earthquake standards (kind of a joke in a region like Sacramento that is not susceptible to earthquakes) meant kids couldn’t go to school at a lot of midtown’s schools anymore (like Newton Booth, Marshall School, etc.) I have noticed the pattern among people I know: people move to midtown in their twenties, meet another midtownie, get married, have a kid, and when the kid reaches school age they move out because central city schools don’t meet their standards. Often these folks end up hating where they move to, because they’d really rather still be in midtown, but the kids’ needs win out. Fix the schools and you keep the midtownies.

    It also means having things for families to do close at hand: public playgrounds, family entertainment, moderately priced restaurants. We’ve got most of that–but the public playgrounds need to be a little nicer, the family entertainment a little more easy to get to, the restaurants a bit more moderately priced. But mostly, it’s the schools.

    Like

  4. Ah, wburg, always insightful. But I will have to disagree with you on one point, family entertainment is everywhere you look in midtown. I mean, jeesh, Whiskey Wild veritably screams “Come in here for family fun!”

    Like

  5. I’m with wburg. I mean, when the article said:

    The evidence thus suggests that the obsession with luring singles to cities is misplaced. Instead, suggests Paul Levy, president of Philadelphia’s Center City district association, the emphasis should be on retaining young people as they grow up, marry, start families and continue to raise them.

    I let out a big “duh!” I’ve been saying that all along, but in the context that if you want to address urban sprawl, you’ve got to market to the people who make it happen — families with kids.

    And the weather was part of the reason I left Portland. It is a beautiful city, but I grew up here and I wanted to come back.

    Like

  6. I don’t think it’s fair to say that families with kids “make” urban sprawl happen. Also I don’t think that’s what you meant.

    Like

Comments are closed.