Cities grow people

By John L. Gann Jr.

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With a reviving housing market and a new crop of graduates now spilling out of college campuses, more people will again be making decisions on where to live.

Those who have or expect children will understandably put them first in choosing a neighborhood. Though homebuilders will be advertising their newest subdivisions, families and families-to-be would do well to consider overlooked neighborhoods that are seldom marketed but offer real advantages for kids. They are the parts of our cities and older suburbs built before World War II.

If you go by the six-o'-clock news, urban neighborhoods are plagued by shootings, drug trafficking, gangs, failing schools, poverty and decay to which no one would want to expose young children. Some are. But, as I point out in my book, Hybrid Neighborhoods, most are not.

Many such places have been losing families with children in part because, unlike with suburban subdivisions, no one has marketed their advantages to counter all the negative publicity. I grew up in New York City and wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Outside of the worst ghetto areas of drugs and violence, homes in older neighborhoods can be better places for kids than large-lot suburbs.

Youngsters, of course, don't drive, and postwar suburbs were designed exclusively for people with drivers' licenses. Places are so spread out that you go nowhere without wheels. That makes kids dependent on Mom or Dad's Taxi to get to friends' houses, parks, the movies, and the proverbial soccer games.

But because stores and other places are within walking distance in older areas, the kids can run errands on foot or by bike. Kids can also walk to school. That helps them stay fit and combats the epidemic of child obesity. Parks and playgrounds are also within walking distance. Easily-accessed play spaces can be antidotes to the effects of sedentary hours in front of TV, computer, and video game screens.

Large-scale development and zoning codes have made many postwar suburbs into bland, homogeneous places that can bore kids out of their minds. Older neighborhoods are more visually stimulating and intellectually challenging.

But what about schools, which are universally seen to be, and often are, better in the ‘burbs? There are still good schools in those same cities and in smaller older cities. And the savings in home prices and car and gasoline expenses that older neighborhoods make possible can help pay for a good private or parochial school.

Farms grow crops. Suburbs grow grass. But cities grow people.

John L. Gann Jr, president of Chicago-area-based Gann Associates, consults, trains and writes on marketing places for economic growth. Comments: citykid@uwalumni.com