Is Boston designed for babies?

John Hynes tried to make his future Seaport square "designed for babies" who will grow into school-age children by including a private school for the families that would move into his development and if you remember, Mayor Menino blew the school plan to bits within a day! Hynes had the foresight to understand that for families to settle and invest in their family's future in the city, they need to feel comfortable with the schools their children will be attending. In this case, Boston had a golden opportunity to encourage families to move back into town but, IMO, the Mayor wrongly and shortsightedly, squashed what parents look most for in a neighborhood besides safety...and that's the local school.
 
I have to take issue with putting the blame for Boston's faults on the pols and redirect it at the people who flee!

If you actually get engaged in civic projects to improve the city and make your neighborhood a better place, you will find yourself talking with your neighbors and building relationships with the city's staff and find that it's not such a bad place after all.

A city is alive and it needs care and feeding -- the sidewalks don't repair themselves, street trees don't grow on their own, and sidewalks don't get shoveled by some central-planning authority. These things happen because people make them happen.
 
If you beamed down from space, you'd have sworn that Manhattan was designed by babies too. Aha! Light bulb moment! The real problem here is the "Manhattanization of Boston."
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Well, thank god all of New York isn't Midtown, or you'd be right. But to illustrate things differently, what's designed for babies in New York is Disney World to Boston's educational Brio. The attractions in this city are built to cultivate intelligent, if sheltered, children.
 
atlantaden said:
John Hynes tried to make his future Seaport square "designed for babies" who will grow into school-age children by including a private school for the families that would move into his development and if you remember, Mayor Menino blew the school plan to bits within a day! Hynes had the foresight to understand that for families to settle and invest in their family's future in the city, they need to feel comfortable with the schools their children will be attending. In this case, Boston had a golden opportunity to encourage families to move back into town but, IMO, the Mayor wrongly and shortsightedly, squashed what parents look most for in a neighborhood besides safety...and that's the local school.
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I think that as the person ultimately in responsible for Boston's schools Menino had to say this. Hopefully he will then quietly allow the school to be built.

There is a baby boom going on in my section of the South End, by Mike's. If I had kids I would never send them to Boston's public schools.
 
PaulC said:
If I had kids I would never send them to Boston's public schools.
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This is the typical reaction of adults of means in the city. Sometimes I wonder what it's really based on though. I'm no expert, but much of what I've read about education leads me to believe that the education level and income level of the parents are the biggest predictors of a child's success in school. Public schools in places like Weston or Newton, or private schools anywhere are full of kids with highly educated and higher income parents, so it's no surprise these schools do great on tests, or send more kids to elite colleges.

There probably aren't enough upper- or middle-class children in the Boston schools to have a sufficiently large sample size, but I wonder how that popuation performs relative to their private or suburban peers. This is probably my bias coming through, but I would imagine a kid going through the Boston Public schools and graduating from a place like Latin would have some life skill advantages over a kid from Marblehead or Needham.
 
belmont square said:
This is the typical reaction of adults of means in the city.
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I'm far from being an adult of means. I've lived in Boston off and on since 1977 and I've had enough exposure to the schools to know.

belmont square said:
This is probably my bias coming through, but I would imagine a kid going through the Boston Public schools and graduating from a place like Latin would have some life skill advantages over a kid from Marblehead or Needham.
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I would agree with that but it's hard to get into this school. Many families move out of the city if thier kids do not get accepted
 
If you aren't an adult of means then you might not be able to make the decision Paul C references--never sending your kid to the public schools. I'm not talking "Boston Brahmin" means, I'm talking "pay private school tuition or move to a suburb with half decent public schools" means.

Sure, Latin is tough to get into. And so is Latin Academy. If the choice is Jeremaih Burke or BC High, then I can see the point. But many parents never consider the schools at all, as if the child of two parents with masters degrees living in the South End is not going to be able to read as a 4th grader just because they attend a Boston public elementary school.

Look, I'm not arguing that the schools are the best in the world. But since 1977 have you met a lot of upper middle class families (and above) with college degrees who've sent their kids to the schools, and if so, did they perform worse than their private/suburban peers? It's an honest question.
 
Many of the people I know who grew up in the Boston city limits and attended the better public high schools were educated in private schools first.
 
czsz said:
Many of the people I know who grew up in the Boston city limits and attended the better public high schools were educated in private schools first.
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This is often but not universally true. I attended and graduated from Boston Latin in the 80's. Many of my classmates attended "sister school" K-6 or K-8 before BLS. I'm a product of the public schools. My parents (a cop and a telephone operator with high school educations) made sure to be personally involved in my education, and this was key to my success.

I believe this is still true, in and beyond Boston.
 
I saw this in the Globe this morning and knew I had to post it here. Evidently it's New York that's designed for babies, not Boston. Personally, I've always suspected that we're better than them. Now I have the scientific proof to back it up!
 
That article talks about the return of "middle class" white families to Manhattan, then later says that the median income of these families is $285,000.
 
I don't know if this has been mentioned or not but go to downtown crossing tomorrow and ask if Boston is 'built for babies'... the answer is clear
 
We were all babies once and we were probably all pushed in strollers. Some people are rude about it, my wife and I try not to be. I really don't understand the notion that they don't have as much right to be somewhere as others. I don't take him into bars or strictly adult places but I do take him into some restaurants because he is always well behaved. Only once did he have a meltdown in a place and we left right away, because I think we pushed the nap thing a little too far.

Is Boston designed for babies?
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Yes, there are excellent medical facilities in this city and incredible educational opportunities, that is reason enough to have a child here.

No, having a child means planning a whole day of what to eat, where to change him, what will keep him entertained, naps...naps...naps! and the city isn't very good for that. The suburbs are often better and that is too bad because you will get the money out of most parents as fast as tourists.
 
Why does everywhere in the world have to be child friendly? I know so many New Yorkers who liked the city better the way it was...crime and all.
 
Because we parents pay taxes and vote, en masse. If the powers that be do not accommodate us, their political career will be brief.

Get used to it.

btw- I personally have never heard anyone who witnessed it, say that they miss the crime in New York.
 
endus said:
Why does everywhere in the world have to be child friendly? I know so many New Yorkers who liked the city better the way it was...crime and all.
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Are you talking about the city's first 320 years before rampant suburbanization when most New York metropolitan families raised their children there? Or the subsequent 40 years or so when most middle and upper class families decamped to the suburbs, leaving only the very wealthy and poorest children behind?

This pro- or anti-child debate strikes me as very odd. I'm not sure how anyone that is in favor of sustainable development (as most on this board seem to be) can be opposed to families living in the city, where kids can walk to schools and playgrounds, ride public transportation to get to activities when they are teenagers, don't have to drive a car at the age of 16 (and the risks in that behavior) to access activities, and get exposed to the range of socioeconomic classes and age groups that exist in the world. Yes, there should be sections of cities that are not designed for children--adult entertainment zones, industrial zones, districts of office buildings--but why should any other part of Manhattan or Boston not be sensitive to the needs of all age groups?
 
Let's take the argument further; Why should I as a taxpayer have to pay for the Comm Ave improvement project? It is not as if it helps anyone but the students and the colleges have so many people wishing to get in that we shouldn't spend any public money at all when they will bang the door down no matter what. If they complain they can go somewhere else because there are 5 more waiting to take their place. Then we should force the colleges to pay taxes on their property at the same rate that I do because places like Harvard, BU and BC have forgotten that their mission is to educate Bostonians or Catholics and not some snot nosed kids from Long Island or Buffalo who has a bag full of daddy's money.

How's that?
 
Actually, Boston city planning has been pretty unfriendly to students of late. Restrictive zoning on multiple-occupancy apartments, the hypergentrification of old haunts like Kenmore Square, expansion plans for dorms and such nixed citywide.

The totem pole of interests in terms of this city's physical development goes something like this:

-old neighborhood residents with far too much time on their hands to scrutinize ERFs
-uncreative developers with their hands down City Hall's pants
-babies
-yuppies waiting to colonize another fun but somewhat rundown neighborhood with designer seafood restaurants
-
-
-
-
-
-students
 
Of course, that was all sarcasm, I always get fired up on the day the residential tax bills arrive.
 
belmont square said:
Are you talking about the city's first 320 years before rampant suburbanization when most New York metropolitan families raised their children there? Or the subsequent 40 years or so when most middle and upper class families decamped to the suburbs, leaving only the very wealthy and poorest children behind?
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Subsequent 40 years. :)

belmont square said:
This pro- or anti-child debate strikes me as very odd. I'm not sure how anyone that is in favor of sustainable development (as most on this board seem to be) can be opposed to families living in the city, where kids can walk to schools and playgrounds, ride public transportation to get to activities when they are teenagers, don't have to drive a car at the age of 16 (and the risks in that behavior) to access activities, and get exposed to the range of socioeconomic classes and age groups that exist in the world. Yes, there should be sections of cities that are not designed for children--adult entertainment zones, industrial zones, districts of office buildings--but why should any other part of Manhattan or Boston not be sensitive to the needs of all age groups?
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Because those zones are under constant attack from the breeders. I've been in bars in Cambridge at 10:30 at night and had people walk in with a baby! No joke. The situation is completely out of control. I want strip clubs and seedy businesses to have a place to exist, mostly because I think the people who frequent those businesses have a right to do so (I, personally, would neeever go to a strip club....nope....definitely not....nosireee...). We are homogenizing our culture at such an insane pace now. It's not just that the city in general has to be kid friendly, it's that people want to be able to take their stroller through the combat zone at 2am. It's one thing to create sustainable development, it's another to revamp the city as a bastion of yuppies.

Local business is obviously the first victim of the homogenization, as we see eeeeever so clearly in Harvard Square. The second set of vicims are the people who grew up in the city. Affording a house in Arlington, where I grew up, is nothing but a cruel joke now. I realize that my scope is creeping a bit here, but I think that it's all interrelated. It seems that the more you aim at making the city "safe" and "kid friendly" the more you chase out the locals and their businesses. In doing so you completely destroy the character of the city and what made it a cool place that people wanted to live in the first place, and the more you turn it into yet another strip mall filled with culturally bankrupt corporate line-towers. These people want to live in their idea of what "Boston" is, not the actual reality of what Boston is. They view all of the things that make the city what it is as a blight and a hindrance to their vision of a bed bath and beyond on every corner and no one throwing up in the alley behind their apartment when the bars close.

I won't even get into gentrification and the effects on the racial makeup of an area that it can have.
 
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