Uneasy Rhetoric

There is quite a discussion going on over at LivingInUrbanSac, in a post about Dave O’Toole’s comments in the Sacramento News and Reveiw.

O’Toole echos a sentiment I’ve expressed here a number of times — the people building all of this new high-density housing in Downtown and Midtown Sacramento are targeting affluent single adults, childless couples, and empty nesters. To some extent, I have a hard time arguing with this because these are the fastest growing demographics. However, even though their numbers may be shrinking, families with children are still an important part of the urban fabric and, as O’Toole points out,

Families with children tend to be active in preserving the safety, appearance and amenities of their community. Sadly, many prospective parents downtown feel forced to move out to suburbs to raise a family. They shouldn’t have to relocate.

No doubt, some urban pioneers will try to raise a family in their condo in the Aura. I know from experience that it is possible for a mother and father and a teenage boy to live under the same roof in an 800 square foot 2 bed one bath ground floor apartment in Midtown, and to do so in relative comfort. But the fact is my parents didn’t have much choice. We lived that way because we couldn’t afford any better choices.

I would argue that Sacramento, with its built-in middle-class stability of state employment, may be just the place to make a family-friendly urban core happen. It could, in fact, be a kind of signature that sets us apart from Portland’s washed out eco-yuppie self-righteousness, Seattle’s dot com geeky haughtiness, and San Francisco’s self-important tragic hipster-ness. Let’s face it - if state workers can’t afford to live downtown, what good is having housing downtown?

This discussion over at LIUS is getting pretty esoteric; it’s beginning to sound like one of the longer comment threads on heckasac. Get on over and have a read.