Suburbs in the News: Is it Wrong to Raise Your Kids in the Suburbs?

Really interesting post in Grist by Carla Saulter entitled “Moving to the Suburbs for your kids? Think again.” which argues that environmentally-conscious parents should resist the siren song of the suburbs if they care about the planet:

We Americans tend to believe that a healthy environment in which to raise children is a large, single-family home in a quiet, suburban community. Many of us are convinced that trading the polluted, crowded city for greener pastures (also known as the large backyards that usually come along with suburban homes) is the right decision for our children. Unfortunately, the farther we move from urban centers, the more auto-dependent, resource-intensive, and by extension, environmentally detrimental our lives become. Auto-dependent living is bad for our children; it’s also very, very bad for the planet.

She goes on to make the pro-urban argument that we’ve alluded to previously here, centering on the idea that dense city environments are better than suburban sprawl because they use fewer resources and allow for more personal connections that foster true community.

I agree with all that.  But I think the problem is that too much density can be a bad thing for many people.  That is, people love the cities precisely for the walkability, the close proximity, the access to culture and ethnicity and all that.  But that density comes at a price that’s too high for many people — namely, that to live in that kind of environment, you have to either give up personal space or pay what has become an almost ridiculous price to get some.  It’s one thing to prize living in an urban environment when you can afford a home that provides reasonably living space, including bedrooms for your kids.  It’s another to live with three or four other people in 600 square feet that costs you $600,000 to own.

The really unfortunate part of this whole debate is that we end up with basically polarized choices.  You have urban centers that provide all the good stuff, but are expensive to live in, and you have suburbs that create that stereotypical disaffection, but which are affordable. There’s not a lot of middle ground.

For example, when we were making a decision to move to the Manhattan suburbs, we really wanted to try to find a place where we would have some of the trappings of our urban life.  In the NYC metro area, there’s not a lot to choose from.  Nyack, our ultimate home, gave us some of that — a nice lefty culture, some diversity, a reasonable restaurant scene, a walkable downtown — but it’s probably only one of a few places that does (and even Nyack, which I like very much, is a very faint, pale version of a urbanized experience).