June 2008
By: Kristine Henry
The kids stay in the picture
Do cities need families?
Unsavory characters rule the streets in the open-air drug market that operates one block from Judy O’Brien’s upscale rowhouse in Otterbein. But she and her husband, Brendan, would never consider raising their two young daughters anywhere else. “My husband and I love being able to walk to work. I love being able to drop my daughter off at preschool two blocks from my house. I love to walk to restaurants,” says the account manager with the marketing firm NCSDO. “This lifestyle is more green and sustainable because we hardly drive anywhere.”
O’Brien and her husband are among a growing number of young parents who have bucked the trend of moving to the northern region of the city or to the suburbs once they start having children. (See “The Next Baby Boom,” Urbanite April ’06.) “I love the feeling of connection we have with our neighbors,” says O’Brien.
But what they don’t love is the dearth of quality child-care centers, the scarcity of preschools and recreational programming, the lack of playgrounds and open space in some areas, and the need to drive to the suburbs to buy necessities. To get city leaders and private developers to address these issues, Upper Fells Point resident Rebecca Gershenson Smith has created a nonprofit advocacy group called the Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance; O’Brien is the group’s president. “I want lawmakers, when creating or considering a policy proposal, to ask, ‘What does the [alliance] say about this?’ and to seek out our organization as partners in the creation of policy that will affect quality-of-life issues downtown,” says Smith, who is a Ph.D. candidate in English language and literature at the University of Michigan.
The alliance’s central argument—that downtown Baltimore needs to cater to more than just childless twentysomethings—can be a hard message for city leaders to hear, says Joel Kotkin, presidential fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and author of The City: A Global History. “Clearly, it’s the path of least resistance for cities to attract the hip-young-and-cool and the childless couples with pied-a-terres. These people are relatively easy to satisfy. As long as criminal gangs are not ruling the streets and the garbage is picked up, they are more concerned with architecture and stuff to do,” says Kotkin. “But families are demanding. They care about schools, they care about whether there’s a broad-based economy, about the state of public parks. They’re a pain in the ass if you’re a city.”
But young professionals often only stay a few years, and many cities have come to see retaining middle- and upper-class families is one of the best routes to a stable tax base. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced with great fanfare an initiative, backed by more than $100 million, to assure there is a park or playground within a ten-minute walk of every city residence. In Philadelphia, where the number of school-age kids in the downtown area fell by half between 1970 and 1990, the Central Philadelphia Development Corporation is furiously selling its downtown as a family-friendly place and is working with schools to make them more competitive.
“Clearly, for lots of cities, the starting point is empty nesters and young professionals,” says Paul Levy, president and chief executive of Philadelphia’s Center City District. “But we think to be sustainable you have to take the next step. We really need to think about strategies to retain these people as they have kids.”
The Downtown Partnership of Baltimore estimates that between 2000 and 2007, the number of people living downtown grew from 36,360 to 38,250, as the city as a whole lost population. The numbers have been driven largely by childless singles and empty nesters. “We’ve talked a lot about making downtown more of a 24/7 place, but there really hasn’t been a great emphasis on attracting and retaining families,” says Andrew Frank, Baltimore’s deputy mayor for neighborhood and economic development. “When partners like [the Family Alliance] have ideas about how to make downtown more livable and attractive to young families, we’re more than willing to partner with them.”
The alliance has two overarching goals. One is to promote downtown as an attractive option for families. The second is to make it more so. The group’s website (www.dbfam.org) will serve as a link between current residents, and as a repository of information for those who want to learn more about the area. The group plans to host a school fair to spread the word that there are several good public elementary schools downtown. Other goals include creating more recreational programs, more green space, more day cares and preschools, safer streets, and more shopping opportunities. “I think families would kill to get a Target downtown,” Smith says.
Although diversity is one of the things alliance members like about living downtown, and their board is mixed racially, so far the group has not attracted many lower-income families. “We know Baltimore has bigger issues than middle class families not being able to buy kids’ shoes downtown,” O’Brien says. “Our group is not exclusive. We really believe that helping us and retaining these families in the end is going to help Baltimore grow and be a thriving city.”
Kevin Cleary, community outreach director for City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, says he agrees with O’Brien. “If this group helps get a new rec center downtown, then all kids benefit,” he says. “And we do need a solid middle-class tax base.”
City Councilman William Cole, who represents the eleventh district, is on the alliance’s advisory board and is himself raising a family downtown. “I have neighborhoods in my district that are riddled with drugs and crime, and the city needs to address that. But if we lose the tax base of expensive homes, then the city’s doomed in the long run,” he says. “I’m willing to support [the alliance’s] activities as long as it does not detract from other neighborhoods’ ability to rebuild.”
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