I grew up in a cul de sac where all the kids played outside, we walked to school together, and the parents socialised. Sadly the cost of housing is such now that none of us kids can afford to live in those nice neighborhoods and are instead in worse areas of town or on the outskirts of town.
Note that I am not sure the cul-de-sac is a key. We raised our family on a cul-de-sac, with the primary advantage of less crime (only one exit), but it was not socially advantageous. After 50 years, we have a new batch of children again with a better outcome of kids taking over the street.
While this is a great idea, and more cul de sacs should be encouraged, “Communist” is a terrible word, meaning Communism. Communes need a different word to distinguish them, tho communitarianism isn’t quite accurate as well as being hard to use and pretty pompous sounding. Gated communities with a Home Ownership Association are already around, and are fairly elitist, and usually opposed by the non-protected majority. Yet support for building cul de sacs remains a good idea.
I’d guess there are few nice cul de sacs where a majority of the owners have no cars, and far too much Urban Planning is oriented towards reducing to ending car ownership, essentially reducing freedom. Not mentioned is that often a big developer will buy a tract of land, and design and build he streets, with the city taking ownership later.
It would be good for the state govt to offer a special second mortgage to married young people with kids so as to buy multi-bedroom house in a new, ET-like community complex. Perhaps especially offering tax cut benefits to builders, based on how many houses they built in the prior years. Including support for cul de sacs but also meandering limited access roads.
There is a nice photo of big blocks in Norway, with big thin buildings surrounding a communal central courtyard (on X). Such central courtyards become the playgrounds of the local kids and the parents get to know each other while watching the kids play. Very nice.
It's a nice vision. I wouldn't restrict the communes to families with young children. I'd allow young couples who want to have children - the older families could help them get started.
Of course, it's politically infeasible. The reason for the over-55 communities is that they're (relatively) rich and pay taxes, without needing more school space. A commune of young families would be the opposite, and existing towns wouldn't want them.
You've been arguing this for years, but to my knowledge you've never explained WHY being a grandparent makes you happy. Without it, your argument is incomplete.
An excellent article by Dr. Kling. Cul-de-sacs and other similar housing arrangements promote child rearing in particular and neighborhood formation in general. The relationships formed by young families often carry over to the following decades.
When I was six we moved to just such a play-friendly place. I didn't live on a cul-de-sac - there was a street grid, which is much more pleasing for walks and biking than a pointlessly winding-to-nowhere-and-back-in-on-itself one or two streets - but in essence the whole neighborhood was a cul-de-sac: no one drove into it who hadn't a reason to; people would have to be facing a pretty desperate traffic situation to ever use it as a cut-through; most people wouldn't know it was there.
As kids we thus owned the street as well as all the yards, and the nearby bayou (which urban legend about "a kid who had drowned there" made us cautious of, though we were drawn to it). We naturally developed an efficient system for whether or not to suspend a street game. Cars rolled to the stop sign at the intersection with our block, and we'd holler out "coming!" or "turning!"
Most of the mothers did indeed stay home, but I have to laugh at the idea of their "supervising" us. It seemed whenever we had a mind to go inside to play, or if weather was inclement, that the mothers often had "just mopped" and rarely welcomed our ragtag, both-genders group inside. The moms had a pretty sweet deal and daycare was no part of it!
I remember once we got into the house next door and the mother discovered that seven or eight of us had just embarked on some play that involved taking our clothes off lol, and none of us ever saw the inside of that house again, though we sometimes got to use their pool. When they were out of town.
Too bad. I always liked to look at people's books, if they had any.
I grew up with a cul-de-sac. My kids grew up with a cul-de-sac. The two kids who have bought homes live in cul-de-sacs. For one of the kids this was a decisive factor, for the other child I don't think it was a factor other than the desire to not live on a road with busy traffic.
My simple observation is that it is easier as a parent to let kids play outside and have some degree of autonomy if one has a cul-de-sac, or at least a neighborhood laid out with boundaries that limit traffic and the movement of people. Consequently, I think condos and townhomes impose a tax on children - adding multiple children and keeping them indoors is stressful to parents. SFH suburban neighborhoods invite families to have more children.
Oh, and a third controversial claim is that cul-de-sacs are good for society. I think you've made a good argument. But there is a culturally left viewpoint that cul-de-sacs are racist because (they claim with at least some evidence) their original intent was to keep poor black people from driving through your white neighborhood. In my own town, which is extremely left progressive, there is an official "connector road" policy which bans new developments from having cul-de-sacs. I should add that NO ONE in the neighborhoods wants those roads to connect (including me), but then, the progressives in charge respond by saying "you're racist"
Cul-de-sacs are desirable to home owners for many reasons so I find the racism argument to be wanting. And interestingly, one of the new benefits of cul-de-sacs is they greatly reduce speeding. Neighborhoods built with through roads end up spending gobs of money to install speed barriers to improve safety. Do the same people who hate cul-de-sacs also argue speed barriers are racist.
This post has at least two provocative claims, which I applaud for their potential to prompt discussions society is NOT having. First, you basically said that too many people are going to college, and that it's better for women to have children when they're 18 to 22 than it is for them to go to college. Yikes! Doesn't that take us back to the 1950s? Second, you said something that is definitely taboo among the educated elite: You're not allowed to say that being heterosexual is preferable to, or even is equally as good as, being gay. When have you heard someone talk about "straight pride"? Me: never. I asked ChatGPT the following question, not long ago: "What percentage of people can be gay before a society will no longer reproduce at replacement level?" I'm always testing ChatGPT to see if it's possible to get it to say something obviously true that's not progressive. I had to ask it a few times (as usual) to get the obvious answer to a question where the answer doesn't align with progressive viewpoints. Finally, it said, "Societies with more than 20-30% being gay may struggle to maintain a stable population" and then it calculated: If 20% are gay (and not reproducing) then the 40 of 100 women who are straight must each have 105 children total, 2.62 births per woman. The U.S. number right now is 1.6 children per woman, so how does ChatGPT come up with such a big number as 20-30% (that's especially odd when surveys show roughly 5-10 percent gay in the U.S.). I told you that it's hard to get ChatGPT to say anything that's not culturally to the left. But, then, the next obvious question is, don't we have too many people already? Maybe it's better if society shrinks, in which case, having more gay people might contribute to, let's say, less damage to the environment that would be caused by maintaining the population at its current level. There are some people out there who say that we shouldn't be having children (I'm not one of them)
Regarding children and sexuality, I think you are missing something important. That is, whether we like it or not, children are exposed to shockingly explicit sexuality every day on the internet. Much of this is cruel or, at best, unfeeling. Kids shouldn't be pushed toward LGBTQ stuff, but I'm not sure that happens as often as many think. But we do need to address sexuality directly and encourage consideration and kindness.
"As a society, we should de-emphasize higher education, sexual exploration, and materialism."
My kids got married before grad school. One couple did grad school before jobs and had their first kid while in school. The other did more school while working. I don't see a problem here.
I grew up in a cul de sac where all the kids played outside, we walked to school together, and the parents socialised. Sadly the cost of housing is such now that none of us kids can afford to live in those nice neighborhoods and are instead in worse areas of town or on the outskirts of town.
"This sort of housing discrimination is legal." As it--and other sorts--should be! Freedom of association is widely disrespected these days.
Note that I am not sure the cul-de-sac is a key. We raised our family on a cul-de-sac, with the primary advantage of less crime (only one exit), but it was not socially advantageous. After 50 years, we have a new batch of children again with a better outcome of kids taking over the street.
How would it be received if you titled the post your Nazi Vision? There would be uproar. Why so tone deaf about communism and Marxism?
While this is a great idea, and more cul de sacs should be encouraged, “Communist” is a terrible word, meaning Communism. Communes need a different word to distinguish them, tho communitarianism isn’t quite accurate as well as being hard to use and pretty pompous sounding. Gated communities with a Home Ownership Association are already around, and are fairly elitist, and usually opposed by the non-protected majority. Yet support for building cul de sacs remains a good idea.
I’d guess there are few nice cul de sacs where a majority of the owners have no cars, and far too much Urban Planning is oriented towards reducing to ending car ownership, essentially reducing freedom. Not mentioned is that often a big developer will buy a tract of land, and design and build he streets, with the city taking ownership later.
It would be good for the state govt to offer a special second mortgage to married young people with kids so as to buy multi-bedroom house in a new, ET-like community complex. Perhaps especially offering tax cut benefits to builders, based on how many houses they built in the prior years. Including support for cul de sacs but also meandering limited access roads.
There is a nice photo of big blocks in Norway, with big thin buildings surrounding a communal central courtyard (on X). Such central courtyards become the playgrounds of the local kids and the parents get to know each other while watching the kids play. Very nice.
It's a nice vision. I wouldn't restrict the communes to families with young children. I'd allow young couples who want to have children - the older families could help them get started.
Of course, it's politically infeasible. The reason for the over-55 communities is that they're (relatively) rich and pay taxes, without needing more school space. A commune of young families would be the opposite, and existing towns wouldn't want them.
You've been arguing this for years, but to my knowledge you've never explained WHY being a grandparent makes you happy. Without it, your argument is incomplete.
An excellent article by Dr. Kling. Cul-de-sacs and other similar housing arrangements promote child rearing in particular and neighborhood formation in general. The relationships formed by young families often carry over to the following decades.
When I was six we moved to just such a play-friendly place. I didn't live on a cul-de-sac - there was a street grid, which is much more pleasing for walks and biking than a pointlessly winding-to-nowhere-and-back-in-on-itself one or two streets - but in essence the whole neighborhood was a cul-de-sac: no one drove into it who hadn't a reason to; people would have to be facing a pretty desperate traffic situation to ever use it as a cut-through; most people wouldn't know it was there.
As kids we thus owned the street as well as all the yards, and the nearby bayou (which urban legend about "a kid who had drowned there" made us cautious of, though we were drawn to it). We naturally developed an efficient system for whether or not to suspend a street game. Cars rolled to the stop sign at the intersection with our block, and we'd holler out "coming!" or "turning!"
Most of the mothers did indeed stay home, but I have to laugh at the idea of their "supervising" us. It seemed whenever we had a mind to go inside to play, or if weather was inclement, that the mothers often had "just mopped" and rarely welcomed our ragtag, both-genders group inside. The moms had a pretty sweet deal and daycare was no part of it!
I remember once we got into the house next door and the mother discovered that seven or eight of us had just embarked on some play that involved taking our clothes off lol, and none of us ever saw the inside of that house again, though we sometimes got to use their pool. When they were out of town.
Too bad. I always liked to look at people's books, if they had any.
Hear, hear, Mr. Kling.
I grew up with a cul-de-sac. My kids grew up with a cul-de-sac. The two kids who have bought homes live in cul-de-sacs. For one of the kids this was a decisive factor, for the other child I don't think it was a factor other than the desire to not live on a road with busy traffic.
My simple observation is that it is easier as a parent to let kids play outside and have some degree of autonomy if one has a cul-de-sac, or at least a neighborhood laid out with boundaries that limit traffic and the movement of people. Consequently, I think condos and townhomes impose a tax on children - adding multiple children and keeping them indoors is stressful to parents. SFH suburban neighborhoods invite families to have more children.
Oh, and a third controversial claim is that cul-de-sacs are good for society. I think you've made a good argument. But there is a culturally left viewpoint that cul-de-sacs are racist because (they claim with at least some evidence) their original intent was to keep poor black people from driving through your white neighborhood. In my own town, which is extremely left progressive, there is an official "connector road" policy which bans new developments from having cul-de-sacs. I should add that NO ONE in the neighborhoods wants those roads to connect (including me), but then, the progressives in charge respond by saying "you're racist"
Cul-de-sacs are desirable to home owners for many reasons so I find the racism argument to be wanting. And interestingly, one of the new benefits of cul-de-sacs is they greatly reduce speeding. Neighborhoods built with through roads end up spending gobs of money to install speed barriers to improve safety. Do the same people who hate cul-de-sacs also argue speed barriers are racist.
This post has at least two provocative claims, which I applaud for their potential to prompt discussions society is NOT having. First, you basically said that too many people are going to college, and that it's better for women to have children when they're 18 to 22 than it is for them to go to college. Yikes! Doesn't that take us back to the 1950s? Second, you said something that is definitely taboo among the educated elite: You're not allowed to say that being heterosexual is preferable to, or even is equally as good as, being gay. When have you heard someone talk about "straight pride"? Me: never. I asked ChatGPT the following question, not long ago: "What percentage of people can be gay before a society will no longer reproduce at replacement level?" I'm always testing ChatGPT to see if it's possible to get it to say something obviously true that's not progressive. I had to ask it a few times (as usual) to get the obvious answer to a question where the answer doesn't align with progressive viewpoints. Finally, it said, "Societies with more than 20-30% being gay may struggle to maintain a stable population" and then it calculated: If 20% are gay (and not reproducing) then the 40 of 100 women who are straight must each have 105 children total, 2.62 births per woman. The U.S. number right now is 1.6 children per woman, so how does ChatGPT come up with such a big number as 20-30% (that's especially odd when surveys show roughly 5-10 percent gay in the U.S.). I told you that it's hard to get ChatGPT to say anything that's not culturally to the left. But, then, the next obvious question is, don't we have too many people already? Maybe it's better if society shrinks, in which case, having more gay people might contribute to, let's say, less damage to the environment that would be caused by maintaining the population at its current level. There are some people out there who say that we shouldn't be having children (I'm not one of them)
Regarding children and sexuality, I think you are missing something important. That is, whether we like it or not, children are exposed to shockingly explicit sexuality every day on the internet. Much of this is cruel or, at best, unfeeling. Kids shouldn't be pushed toward LGBTQ stuff, but I'm not sure that happens as often as many think. But we do need to address sexuality directly and encourage consideration and kindness.
You mean "communitarianism" rather than "communism."
"As a society, we should de-emphasize higher education, sexual exploration, and materialism."
My kids got married before grad school. One couple did grad school before jobs and had their first kid while in school. The other did more school while working. I don't see a problem here.