The New York Times figures out that high housing costs mean few kids in urban neighborhoods. All those intensely creative places where all the hip people gather just don't have the right mix of low costs, space, and safety to attract children. Two bit really got my goat though:
"I don't think we're going to become a nearly childless city like San Francisco, but the age structure is really changing," said Barry Edmonston, an urban studies professor at Portland State, who does demographic projections for the school district. "People are not turning over the houses like they used to. They're aging in place, at the same time that prices are really going up, making it hard for young families to move into the city."
.....
But what they cannot do, especially after the failure last year of a ballot measure sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce to encourage affordable housing, is bring housing prices down.
It's a favorite of those on the left to talk about unsustainable strategies, extolling sustainable growth. It looks like they're waking up to the fact that their bastions, the blue cities, are themselves unsustainable without massive immigration from other places and other ways of life.
HT: Dynamist Blog
Posted by TMLutas at March 24, 2005 03:40 PM