Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children

Parents Forum
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<p>Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children
By TIMOTHY EGAN </p>

<p>PORTLAND, Ore. - The Pearl District in the heart of this perpetually self-improving city seems to have everything in new urban design and comfort, from the Whole Foods store where fresh-buffed bell peppers are displayed like runway models to the converted lofts that face sidewalk gardens.</p>

<p>Everything except children. </p>

<p>Crime is down. New homes and businesses are sprouting everywhere. But in what may be Portland’s trendiest and fastest-growing neighborhood, the number of school-age children grew by only three between the census counts in 1990 and 2000, according to demographers at Portland State University.</p>

<p>“The neighborhood would love to have more kids, that’s probably the top of our wish list,” said Joan Pendergast of the Pearl Neighborhood Association. “We don’t want to be a one-dimensional place.”</p>

<p>It is a problem unlike the urban woes of cities like Detroit and Baltimore, where families have fled decaying neighborhoods, business areas and schools. Portland is one of the nation’s top draws for the kind of educated, self-starting urbanites that midsize cities are competing to attract. But as these cities are remodeled to match the tastes of people living well in neighborhoods that were nearly abandoned a generation ago, they are struggling to hold on to enough children to keep schools running and parks alive with young voices. </p>

<p>San Francisco, where the median house price is now about $700,000, had the lowest percentage of people under 18 of any large city in the nation, 14.5 percent, compared with 25.7 percent nationwide, the 2000 census reported. Seattle, where there are more dogs than children, was a close second. Boston, Honolulu, Portland, Miami, Denver, Minneapolis, Austin and Atlanta, all considered, healthy, vibrant urban areas, were not far behind. The problem is not just that American women are having fewer children, reflected in the lowest birth rate ever recorded in the country. </p>

<p>Officials say that the very things that attract people who revitalize a city - dense vertical housing, fashionable restaurants and shops and mass transit that makes a car unnecessary - are driving out children by making the neighborhoods too expensive for young families.</p>

<p>*From 1990 to 2003, Portland added more than 90,000 people, growing to an estimated 529,121 residents, but the city is now educating the fewest students in more than 80 years. *</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/national/24childless.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=c3fa254d35a51c1f&ex=1269320400&partner=rssnyt[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/national/24childless.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=c3fa254d35a51c1f&ex=1269320400&partner=rssnyt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>THe northwest has a high percentage of educated families who don’t follow religions that often counsel to have large families.</p>

<p>Portland also has troubles with school funding as does Seattle.
However the Pearl District did not strike me at all as a place where people lived. It seems like an industrial neighborhood gone trendy and spendy, high fashion not cozy.
well high fashion for Portland anyway :wink:
( where the heck are the sidewalk gardens? you mean trees?)</p>

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<p>That’s certainly not a problem we have here in Toronto. All you hear about is overcrowding and insufficient resources per capita at schools. But I think that’s largely due to our high immigration levels.</p>