Where should people be living?

[Cismontane]

I see it as an issue as having a larger than average underclass with no expectations for the future. How do you solve such an issue as the culture of poverty simply?

well, for one thing, by eliminating zone schooling, consolidating districts... that culture of poverty becomes the suburbs' problems, the problems will get addressed. Why not institute a lottery system for anybody to be able to attend any school in a metro area? Home rule is overrated. In CA, some of the most affluent suburbs with the highest quality schools are now contemplating layoffs of more than 50-70% of teaching staff. On the other hand, we have cities that have the ability to fund their schools but which have intractable problems with corruption, patronage, waste and lower income communities. Neither approach is sustainable or desirable.

So.. when Cupertino, CA, a suburb with an average household income of around $120,000 a year and the top rated schools in the country, lays off MOST of its teaching stafff, as they are now contemplating, do you think they'll still have the top rated schools in the country? Suburban schools may be great, but in my part of the country (and many others) they're generally fiscal disasters. When push comes to shove, and there's a fiscal crisis (which will happen more and more often), you can't pay for schools with only a single family home residential property tax base and a bunch of anti-tax NIMBYs livin' in 'em.

Incidentally, San Diego had a reasonably effective form of non-zone schooling in place for many years before conservative NCLB fundamentalists came along and trashed it (my theory is because they were trying to lay the political groundwork for people to push for more homeschooling and private school vouchers).. Places like Gompers Secondary or Morse High, in the worst neighborhoods in the city, more than held their own against La Jolla High or Torrey Pines, two schools in the two of the wealthiest suburban neighborhoods in the country. Now, Gompers was shut down in a flagrant act of political revenge (I guess it was too successful for the Republicans to abide its existence) and Morse, stripped of resources by the same gang of thugs, is in receivership for being one of the worst scoring schools in the country. Morse used to be practically guaranteed an Intel/Westinghouse Talent Search winner every year. Now its the place to go to get shot in the hallways. Strangely, the neighborhood it sits in actually GOT BETTER, even when the school got worst. As with most of these cases, it was a victim of politics, not demographics. They even tried to prosecute parents who tried to keep their kids in the schools they were already in by manipulating their addresses after the NCLBers changed all the rules all of a sudden. Now its urban schools are uniformly horrible, and even its suburban schools are getting worse fast.

At least the ex- Federal cop culture-warrior who ran the schools into the ground is back to where he started: running border patrol operations (they literally took the head Homeland Sec guy in the region and made him head of the City Schools (a vast urban district) - he promised, among other thans - to purge "foreigness" from the curriculem (as well as all as everything else other than English... he even eliminated many science and social studies program on the grounds that they were politically incorrect), among other things - then he gleefully went about destroying the schools until the Democrats finally got enough school board members elected to fire him - years later.. now he's back to his true passion of hunting illegal aliens. I put his infamous speech about the threat posed to Caucasian America and "Western Values" by Mexican-American culture in my thesis on planning and border politics.

Politics are killing our schools.. not geography.

[HomerJ]

well, for one thing, by eliminating zone schooling, consolidating districts... that culture of poverty becomes the suburbs' problems, the problems will get addressed. Why not institute a lottery system for anybody to be able to attend any school in a metro area?

I lived in Champaign, Illinois for a while and this is actually the way they run their school districts. I'm not sure how each school stacks up to one another in performance (I feel like test scores are somewhat arbitrary but sometimes it's all we have to go off), but I have heard that they are all pretty even, and the community itself is rated very high for public schools. Logistically, it creates a nightmare for having to transport kids via bus halfway across town even if they live across the street from a school, but Champaign is relatively small so they can make it work. Plus, their planning department makes a little extra every year working as the school system's consultants for traffic circulation studies and whatnot, pretty clever...

[wahday]

I lived in Champaign, Illinois for a while and this is actually the way they run their school districts. I'm not sure how each school stacks up to one another in performance (I feel like test scores are somewhat arbitrary but sometimes it's all we have to go off), but I have heard that they are all pretty even, and the community itself is rated very high for public schools. Logistically, it creates a nightmare for having to transport kids via bus halfway across town even if they live across the street from a school, but Champaign is relatively small so they can make it work. Plus, their planning department makes a little extra every year working as the school system's consultants for traffic circulation studies and whatnot, pretty clever...

Albuquerque's school district - one of the largest in the country - does this. You can go to your local school without doing anything, but you can also put your name in for a lottery to any school in the district. One additional layer is that we also have schools identified as "failing" based on some standardized assessment. If that is your local school, you get preference for the lottery picks. Otherwise, its totally random.

This issue of "failing schools" in my mind pretty much ensures those institutions will continue to fail. If everyone who values education for their kids transfers out of the area, the quality of that school will continue to drop. With current layoffs and tight budgets, I think the difference between a school that does well and one that does not may hinge a lot on parent involvement. This dynamic tends to preference areas where parents have more time to give to the school and where there may be more expendable income to raise additional funds for programs. Poor areas will continue to suffer as a result.

[ColoGI]

You can go to your local school without doing anything, but you can also put your name in for a lottery to any school in the district... If everyone who values education for their kids transfers out of the area, the quality of that school will continue to drop.

An old GF had her kid in such a school district. He went to a non-neighborhood school, which relegated her to driving-slave to his school schedule. She was of course a single mom, but even in a...erm..."traditional" family, that means slavery for one or both parents, and car dependency, and increased emissions, and and and. And this was a city with a decent bus system.

[wahday]

An old GF had her kid in such a school district. He went to a non-neighborhood school, which relegated her to driving-slave to his school schedule. She was of course a single mom, but even in a...erm..."traditional" family, that means slavery for one or both parents, and car dependency, and increased emissions, and and and. And this was a city with a decent bus system.

Good point! - another problem with this arrangement that I did not mention. To make matters worse, we have a poor public transit system and a very spread out city (mostly one story) so this doesn't in any way contribute to improving congestion, sprawl, air pollution or a sense of neighborhood improvement. I know a lot of people with very fractured lives because of this very thing.

[Cismontane]

This issue of "failing schools" in my mind pretty much ensures those institutions will continue to fail. If everyone who values education for their kids transfers out of the area, the quality of that school will continue to drop

How they addressed this in the years before the culture warriors took power in San Diego was to not only dismantle zone schooling but pour resources into inner city schools to make them centers of excellence. Gompers - in the heart of the barrio - was known as one of the top science-math schools in the country, with burbanites falling over each other to get their kids admitted there. while, at the same time, leveraging those successes into renedial programs... basically an attempt to institutionalize Stand by Me in a dozen inner city high schools.

It worked for a time, until culture war thugs behind national NCLB started praying on suburban fears that "educating the Mexicans" was a bad idea (whose candidates were backed by billionaire out of state carpetbaggers like Koch in WI and the Waltons in AR.. who funded some schoolboard candidates' campaigns to the tone of 100x what they would normally have cost with local fundraising.. plus in-state but out of town reactionaries like billionaires Broad and Riordan and, of course, Ward "Affirmative Action Must Die" Connelly and the local rightwind daily newspaper and its controlling family, the Copleys). The carpetbaggers had decided to make my city a national lab for their theories, I guess because SD was the only major city in liberal Cali with enough of a Republican minority in its annexed suburbs to be worth bothering with.

Once they bought the board, they fired the successful reform superintendent (Tom Payzant.. who was then picked up to turn around Boston's schools), replaced virtually all senior positions with either Meg Whitman-type business execs or with actual cops, outright dismantled the most successful programs citing budget cuts, reinstituted zone schooling after nearly 20 years, and instituted NCLB guidelines that required total focus on reading/English skills and standardized test prep in 40% of all classroom hrs, Not only were the centers of excellence gutted, but schools were ordered to cancel social studies, music, art, even math and science, in favor of an exclusive focus on reading and writing. Gifted ed was eliminated. Dozens of experienced principals were fired and replaced with business or law enforcement hacks. Schools were told that if they wanted such unnecessary programs, they had to fundraise on their own, which of course favored only wealthy (read white and asian) suburban schools.

Now they're still trying to pick up the pieces at a time when the fiscal coffers really are broke. And the Koch/Walton/Broad man is back to breaking heads in the border patrol - with the exact same title and rank he held before his foray into public education - as if his disastrous 7 year reign over one of the nation's largest school systems could just disappear from his resume.

This is why I have zero sympathy for suburban schools.. or, for that matter, with NCLB.

[PennPlanner]

So...

That's the liberal progressive's viewpoint.

Would be nice to have the conservative's viewpoint on the subject as well.

Cheers

How they addressed this in the years before the culture warriors took power in San Diego was to not only dismantle zone schooling but pour resources into inner city schools to make them centers of excellence. Gompers - in the heart of the barrio - was known as one of the top science-math schools in the country, with burbanites falling over each other to get their kids admitted there. while, at the same time, leveraging those successes into renedial programs... basically an attempt to institutionalize Stand by Me in a dozen inner city high schools.

It worked for a time, until culture war thugs behind national NCLB started praying on suburban fears that "educating the Mexicans" was a bad idea (whose candidates were backed by billionaire out of state carpetbaggers like Koch in WI and the Waltons in AR.. who funded some schoolboard candidates' campaigns to the tone of 100x what they would normally have cost with local fundraising.. plus in-state but out of town reactionaries like billionaires Broad and Riordan and, of course, Ward "Affirmative Action Must Die" Connelly and the local rightwind daily newspaper and its controlling family, the Copleys). The carpetbaggers had decided to make my city a national lab for their theories, I guess because SD was the only major city in liberal Cali with enough of a Republican minority in its annexed suburbs to be worth bothering with.

Once they bought the board, they fired the successful reform superintendent (Tom Payzant.. who was then picked up to turn around Boston's schools), replaced virtually all senior positions with either Meg Whitman-type business execs or with actual cops, outright dismantled the most successful programs citing budget cuts, reinstituted zone schooling after nearly 20 years, and instituted NCLB guidelines that required total focus on reading/English skills and standardized test prep in 40% of all classroom hrs, Not only were the centers of excellence gutted, but schools were ordered to cancel social studies, music, art, even math and science, in favor of an exclusive focus on reading and writing. Gifted ed was eliminated. Dozens of experienced principals were fired and replaced with business or law enforcement hacks. Schools were told that if they wanted such unnecessary programs, they had to fundraise on their own, which of course favored only wealthy (read white and asian) suburban schools.

Now they're still trying to pick up the pieces at a time when the fiscal coffers really are broke. And the Koch/Walton/Broad man is back to breaking heads in the border patrol - with the exact same title and rank he held before his foray into public education - as if his disastrous 7 year reign over one of the nation's largest school systems could just disappear from his resume.

This is why I have zero sympathy for suburban schools.. or, for that matter, with NCLB.

[DetroitPlanner]

An old GF had her kid in such a school district. He went to a non-neighborhood school, which relegated her to driving-slave to his school schedule. She was of course a single mom, but even in a...erm..."traditional" family, that means slavery for one or both parents, and car dependency, and increased emissions, and and and. And this was a city with a decent bus system.

That is exactly why I brought up culture of poverty. Many of the opportunities to cross districts, go to a magnet or to a charter school are lost when you don't have the financial means to get the children out of the neighborhood, and you can't afford to live where the schools are better.

[Linda_D]

How they addressed this in the years before the culture warriors took power in San Diego was to not only dismantle zone schooling but pour resources into inner city schools to make them centers of excellence. Gompers - in the heart of the barrio - was known as one of the top science-math schools in the country, with burbanites falling over each other to get their kids admitted there. while, at the same time, leveraging those successes into renedial programs... basically an attempt to institutionalize Stand by Me in a dozen inner city high schools.

It worked for a time, until culture war thugs behind national NCLB started praying on suburban fears that "educating the Mexicans" was a bad idea (whose candidates were backed by billionaire out of state carpetbaggers like Koch in WI and the Waltons in AR.. who funded some schoolboard candidates' campaigns to the tone of 100x what they would normally have cost with local fundraising.. plus in-state but out of town reactionaries like billionaires Broad and Riordan and, of course, Ward "Affirmative Action Must Die" Connelly and the local rightwind daily newspaper and its controlling family, the Copleys). The carpetbaggers had decided to make my city a national lab for their theories, I guess because SD was the only major city in liberal Cali with enough of a Republican minority in its annexed suburbs to be worth bothering with.

Once they bought the board, they fired the successful reform superintendent (Tom Payzant.. who was then picked up to turn around Boston's schools), replaced virtually all senior positions with either Meg Whitman-type business execs or with actual cops, outright dismantled the most successful programs citing budget cuts, reinstituted zone schooling after nearly 20 years, and instituted NCLB guidelines that required total focus on reading/English skills and standardized test prep in 40% of all classroom hrs, Not only were the centers of excellence gutted, but schools were ordered to cancel social studies, music, art, even math and science, in favor of an exclusive focus on reading and writing. Gifted ed was eliminated. Dozens of experienced principals were fired and replaced with business or law enforcement hacks. Schools were told that if they wanted such unnecessary programs, they had to fundraise on their own, which of course favored only wealthy (read white and asian) suburban schools.

Now they're still trying to pick up the pieces at a time when the fiscal coffers really are broke. And the Koch/Walton/Broad man is back to breaking heads in the border patrol - with the exact same title and rank he held before his foray into public education - as if his disastrous 7 year reign over one of the nation's largest school systems could just disappear from his resume.

This is why I have zero sympathy for suburban schools.. or, for that matter, with NCLB.

Sorry, Cismontane, but I don't buy it. There is no difference between having selective schools based on achievement/testing/talent or even luck (lottery) and having selective schools based on geography: some schools get the best students and parents while other schools get the remainder. Buffalo tried a similar system by using "magnet schools" (the impetus was court ordered desegregation), and that, too, failed.

The problem is the concept not any "culture war"; the system exacerbates the distance between the haves and the have-nots. From the get-go, the magnet schools in Buffalo flourished, and some still do. The problem is that the kids who didn't get into the magnet schools for various reasons were stuck in "neighborhood" schools that had been stripped of their best students AND their best teachers AND their most involved parents while resources were siphoned off to provide more resources for the magnets as well as for busing of large numbers of students all over the city. Middle class parents whose kids got into magnets or the selective public high schools were happy campers. Middle class parents whose kids didn't or who feared their kids wouldn't, bolted for the 'burbs. Concerned parents who couldn't get their kids into magnets or selective high schools and who couldn't afford private schools or the suburbs agitated for charter schools, of which Buffalo probably has more of than all the rest of NYS except for NYS. When schools are stripped of their most talented and achievement oriented students, their most innovative teachers, and the most involved parents, how can anyone realistically expect them to NOT fail?

School districts that have NOT succumbed to the lure of setting up a few schools to cater to the select few at the expense of the majority seem to do much better. That's the suburban, rural, and smaller city school districts that really don't offer "school choice" at all or a very limited component of it. They succeed because children from deprived and/or dysfunctional or non-English speaking families aren't concentrated in a few schools while children from the best situations are concentrated in other schools. If there's 1 elementary school, 1 middle or junior high, and 1 high school, the involved parents who push for programs for their own kids get them for everybody's kids. Even where there are multiple school configurations, it still works when the schools draw their attendance districts to deliberately integrate economic and social communities.

BTW, many suburban school districts, especially first ring and far outer ring suburbs are NOT economically and socially monolithic, at least in upstate New York. Exurban development in rural areas has also created lots of economic and some significant cultural diversity in rural school districts as well.

[Cismontane]

To Linda's point, I'd make five observations:

1. Suburban schools are generally considered to be higher quality but are in more fiscal trouble, given constraints on single family home tax bases. This is the single biggest case against an argument for favoring suburbs, which was the original argument to which I was responding

2. What I was trying to point out is that there was more than one example of successful urban schools, including several that were in their time regarded to be superior to or equal to their suburban equivalents, at least during the Payzant superintendency (before zone schooling was reinstituted).

3. The phenomenon Linda described where sending schools only become part of a cycle of failure only became an issue after NCLB Title I PISC programs were instituted. There's not much anyone can do when 19 of 29 high schools are all of a sudden classified as failing and the law requires two options be provided for every failing school. Before NCLB, under the Payzant superintendancy, only one school (Lincoln) was so classified - without any effective magnet programs for drawing students from other areas.

4. In a district where 130 languages are spoken, higher achievement happened when there was more flexibility, especially in a white minority city. The Bersin superintendancy sought to end all non-English instruction with devastating consequences for inner city and some suburban schools.

5. I agree with you that suburban schools are diverse as well (excluding the non-immigrant White/Asian distinction since top suburban schools in California can be majority one or another without actually reflecting socioeconomic diversity at all), but under the more restrictive zone schooling system socioeconomically diverse surburban schools started to fail just as inner city schools did. The issue was poverty, not location. If you built a poor suburb, your schools would be just as much in trouble than if you concentrated poverty in a new inner city infill public housing development. In fact, with higher densities you have a better chance of creating diversity in a new urban area than you would in a new suburuban low density one.

Again, my main argument is that trying to say that we should prioritize new suburban development over new urban development on the off chance you end up with better schools, all other factors being equal and absent gross inequality in your development product, is either tail-wagging-dog syndrome or institutionalizing intolerance as land-use policy. Neither should be acceptable.

[wahday]

How they addressed this in the years before the culture warriors took power in San Diego was to not only dismantle zone schooling but pour resources into inner city schools to make them centers of excellence. Gompers - in the heart of the barrio - was known as one of the top science-math schools in the country, with burbanites falling over each other to get their kids admitted there. while, at the same time, leveraging those successes into renedial programs... basically an attempt to institutionalize Stand by Me in a dozen inner city high schools.

Our main struggle, and the struggle of so many poor municipalities (we're also in a poor state) is that the school system lacks the resources to make the kind of large institutional changes your example cites. I wish it were easier to generate the drive and the money needed, but this is what our school system's 2011-2012 school budget landscape looks like now:

Though the state Legislature hasn’t yet determined just how much money APS will receive to educate its 90,000 students, district officials are anticipating a $26 million shortfall that includes a $10 million cut by the state and another $16 million in increased costs for utilities, teacher pay and other expenses.

This shortfall is after various cost-cutting measures like pay cuts, furloughs, eliminating professional development days and shifting more of the retirement burden from employer to employee, potentially saving about $8 million but decreasing take home pay for employees earning more than $20,000 a year.

Not to sound defeatist, but the realities of our schools' economic future puts in a very tight spot in terms of figuring out how to move forward on reform. They're just trying to keep the boat afloat...

[Linda_D]

Cismontane, I can't speak to the situation in San Diego or California because I'm only familiar with educational systems in upstate NY. However, what I've observed, being a former teacher and now working in higher ed, as well as a parent and taxpayer, is that there are some models that work better than others. I don't believe that the non-zonal model works because I haven't seen it succeed anywhere and have seen it massively fail in the Buffalo Public Schools. Just for starters, it wastes tremendous amounts of $$$ on transportation that could be better used on programs.

It also fails to provide equal education. For years, students in some Buffalo public schools didn't have access to foreign languages, art, music, AP classes, etc while students in other schools had access to those programs. If my kids had been short-shrifted like that in the BPS, I would looked into filing a lawsuit ... of course, that didn't come up because my kids attended South Colonie (outside Albany) and Jamestown schools.

I don't think you can separate the image of the local school system from successful redevelopment of most American cities. We need to find ways to improve urban public schools without segregating children from the underclass to do it. I don't have any answers to this. I wish I did.

I am wondering if perhaps we could learn from the Canadians because they do not SEEM to have the kinds of problems with their educational system, even in their large cities like Toronto and Vancouver, that we do in the US. Of course, that could be an entirely wrong impression.

[Cismontane]

"foreign languages, art, music, AP classes"

These were the exact programs that the Bersin superintendancy eliminated when they restored zone schooling.... well, that and science and social science classes too. They left those programs to local initiative and fundraising, which meant that they disappeared everywhere but the wealthiest zone schools.

[Linda_D]

"foreign languages, art, music, AP classes"

These were the exact programs that the Bersin superintendancy eliminated when they restored zone schooling.... well, that and science and social science classes too. They left those programs to local initiative and fundraising, which meant that they disappeared everywhere but the wealthiest zone schools.

IMO, that's better than the school superintendent and the BOE deciding that students in schools x, y, and z get those programs and students in schools a, b, and c don't. That was the situation in Buffalo, and it may still be that way. It's a clear violation of the 14th amendment in my mind.

In NYS, taxpayers in suburban, rural and small city school districts vote to tax themselves to provide education, and they pay higher taxes than people in the large cities do. Sure, there's unevenness in wealth among districts and unevenness in services but it's people putting up their own money to make schools better. The difference is that in these districts there are always people pushing for more and better programs, and all the kids benefit. In the city of Buffalo, the people who control the school budget -- the politicians in City Hall -- don't really care about the schools because their kids go to private schools or the selective magnet schools. They could care less if there are enough textbooks for the trig class at Lafayette HS or if East HS doesn't offer AP classes because their kids never go to "failing" schools.

[Cismontane]

IMO, that's better than the school superintendent and the BOE deciding that students in schools x, y, and z get those programs and students in schools a, b, and c don't. That was the situation in Buffalo, and it may still be that way. It's a clear violation of the 14th amendment in my mind.
.

Actually no, it's much worse. If they decide, there's a chance for lower income schools to get some programs. If they let parental money decide, it guarantees that the divide will benefit only rich schools... which is exactly what happened. Remember, their real political motive was to annoy the poor neighborhoods so much that they'd support initiatives for charter schools, private school vouchers and homeschooling.

[PennPlanner]

Ciso,

You are a theorist. Your approach is to think about the matter and decide if "they do this or they do that," with "they" being the collective will of society including both parents, students and the school officials.

While it's nice to think about the power of the collective force of "they," in reality "they" don't exist insomuch as the individual does.

Regardless of what most people's philosophies are, at the end of the day people will make the best decisions for their children and for their children alone. Relatively few people are willing to use their child as a guinea pig in a social experiment, especially with something as important as their child's education. When it comes to education most parents want a school that provides a good education and is safe. When the perception (fair or not) is that the school no longer provides a good education or is no longer safe, the parents bail out. Parents won't wait a few years in the hopes that reform will happen and the statistics improve because a few years is an eternity when it comes to a child's education.

As a result, families with children automatically gravitate to the best school districts they can afford. Families easily move across city borders for schools.

Second, a great deal of a school's success is based on the pupil themselves and the families they come from, not the amount of funding or types of programs. No matter what policies are enacted by the decision makers with good intentions, the more affluent areas will always have the better schools (only exceptions are in areas with a strong private school tradition such as found in certain urban areas which is why you do have affluent families living in DC or Baltimore but sending their children to private schools).

You would be wise to read up on the State of Missouri's experiement over two decades during which billions and billions were poured into the Kansas City and St. Louis school districts. The fanciest new schools with all the amenities and programs you could desire, including magnet schools designed to draw from beyond the districts' borders, were built. The end result? The KC and St. Louis schools are no better off, based on test scores, and enrollment have still plummeted in both areas as families have continually voted with their feet and chose suburban school districts.

I myself grew up in Baltimore. Baltimore has one of the worst school systems in the nation. Suburban school districts outperform Baltimore schools by wide margins. Yet Baltimore City schools spend more money per child than suburban districts do. So obviously decades of domination by a liberal, progressive school bureaucracy had a minimal impact. School spending had a minimal impact. The quality of the student body - a huge impact. But there's only so much a school can do when the social background of the students is hugely broken.

Actually no, it's much worse. If they decide, there's a chance for lower income schools to get some programs. If they let parental money decide, it guarantees that the divide will benefit only rich schools... which is exactly what happened. Remember, their real political motive was to annoy the poor neighborhoods so much that they'd support initiatives for charter schools, private school vouchers and homeschooling.

[Veloise]

AKA a coming housing crisis of a different sort.

[ColoGI]

That is exactly why I brought up culture of poverty. Many of the opportunities to cross districts, go to a magnet or to a charter school are lost when you don't have the financial means to get the children out of the neighborhood, and you can't afford to live where the schools are better.

Yup, I got it. I just personalized it and added some flavor. ;o)

Go Red Wings!

Oh, and thank you Veloise for the interesting read.

[DetroitPlanner]

Go Red Wings!

Wow you must hate SJ more than DRW! Either that or that is a comment towards us blowing the second round!

[ColoGI]

Wow you must hate SJ more than DRW! Either that or that is a comment towards us blowing the second round!

I grew up in Warren. I still have the opening day ticket from Tiger Stadium after they won the WS, with the WS trophy on it. Don't have my playoff tix from Olympia any more, tho...

[Cismontane]

You are a theorist..

yes, I am theorizing but this is the big plans forum so it's probably the place to do it.

The problem tough is that it's not the same thing for individuals to choose to live with sprawl and a failed housing finance system in orer to get their kids into better schools. It is quite another for governments to adopt such a tail-wag-dog doctrine as the basis for spatial policy.

[ColoGI]

The problem tough is that it's not the same thing for individuals to choose to live with sprawl and a failed housing finance system in orer to get their kids into better schools. It is quite another for governments to adopt such a tail-wag-dog doctrine as the basis for spatial policy.

Yes exactly. The two are not the same. Just as people comparing their family budget to the federal budget. Not the same.

[Linda_D]

yes, I am theorizing but this is the big plans forum so it's probably the place to do it.

The problem tough is that it's not the same thing for individuals to choose to live with sprawl and a failed housing finance system in orer to get their kids into better schools. It is quite another for governments to adopt such a tail-wag-dog doctrine as the basis for spatial policy.

In any kind of representative political system where people's votes determine who governs, the tail always wags the dog to a considerable extent. You can't make policy if you can't get elected to office, and if the electorate doesn't like your policies, you won't be in office long enough to implement them.

[Cismontane]

In any kind of representative political system where people's votes determine who governs, the tail always wags the dog to a considerable extent. You can't make policy if you can't get elected to office, and if the electorate doesn't like your policies, you won't be in office long enough to implement them.

Yes, but I think you'll find that there's no true plurality on issues like this. A slight majority backs dissolution of the GSE system, for example. Most people voice support for ending or rducing suburban sprawl. Which was really the only point I was trying to make here.

I know I wrote more than I should have here because I was using the thread to vent my personal anger I have for what happened in San Diego to the public schools - which went from some of the better ranked ones in the state to among the worst in 7 short years due to the actions of a man I consider to be corrupt thug, but really this discussion was about housing and not about schools.. and the point being made is whither single family home suburbia, to some extent.

And no.. nobody can give the American taxpayer $4 trillion dollars so that they can have their pre-crisis single family home based housing system back, no matter what voter preferences are. We have to plan for the alternative. We don't really have a choice. Sometimes "no choice" and "change must come" become the only acceptable outcomes, unless one cares to offer up another solution based on something other than gut preferences and personal impressions... unless of course you have $4 trillion dollars to offer to contribute, in which case yes, you can offer true choice in housing back to the American people... Sometimes policy has to respond, with flexiblity, to disruptive change.

In a way, we are all living with diminished expectations. This is an era of diminished expectations... most Americans seem to be aware of that fact, to some extent. I know I will live with less privilege and material abundance and, yes, quality of life, than my parents and grandparents experienced with their own suburban upbringings. Sometimes the best we can offer as planners is to help people make the most of what they can have and can afford, not to offer them a chance to reclaim a past now lost to them.. maybe a past that never was for all but an unjustly privileged few, at immense social, environment and economic cost to the bigger world around them.

[Cismontane]

I should expand on my point in my last post below. As I said, I know I will live with less privilege and material abundance and, yes, quality of life, than my parents and grandparents experienced with their own suburban upbringings. My grandparents had something called acreage in Palo Alto. No idea what that even means... My parents grew up in single family home suburbia near the coast. I was raised in an urban environment but in a single family home. Now I own a small apartment (one of a very few among friends that own anything at all).. and it is frankly unfathomable to me to even think of being able to afford a single family home in the greater NYC area, which is where I know live and work, even if I wanted one, which I don't. I do the sums every year around tax time and I always come to the same answer: no.

My closest friends - most of whom grew up upper middle class somewhere in suburbia - are now starting their families in one bedroom apartments in Brooklyn or Jersey City, in their mid-to-late 30s age that their parents were buying mcmansions in West LA or Rancho Santa Fe or Scarsdale or the Philly Mainline, with the same types of jobs AND one more spouse working, too... and THEIR kids are now just about the age to start in Brooklyn and North Jersey public schools, whilst they themselves went to private and prep schools. My friends back in California aren't any better off... other than those few who inherited the last generation's single family homes. Yeah.. we could move somewhere else, but our chance at gainful employment there would be nil. If all of us moved upstate to where Linda is, we wouldn't be able to have her job. We'd all just be unemployed!

At work, from the economic analysis we do, we have come up with two semi-satirical demographic profiles of 1/3 x3: the suburban choice - 1/3rd taxes, 1/3rd transport costs and living expenses, and 1/3rd mortgage payments, the urban choice - 1/3rd taxes, 1/3rd tuition/nanny and living expenses and 1/3rd rent. Rock and hard place all around.

And there's every indication the rate of disruptive change in our cozy little world is about to accelerate. The next big memes now percolating to the surface in the broader world are really scary things like de-dollarization, an end to the Washington Consensus that has assured American economic prosperity for the last 65 years, and a global realignment of power relationships unseen since the end of World War I. All of this means more belt-tightening for us Americans.. and, short of war or an Apartheid-style South African police state (similar economic and social realities there helped bring the National Party - their teabaggers in a way, there to power, who then imposed draconian measures to "preserve" their own quality of life at the expense of their own less privileged countrymen), there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. For 40 years we as a nation were living on borrowed means, borrowing more each year to keep up with diminishing expectations and our own greed.. now the bill collector is at the door.

Our job as planners, as I see it, is to anticipate and respond to - through urban planning - these changes, doing the best we can to build on what we still have to create better lives for people.