I live in a close-in suburb. It’s just about time to buy the dream house and be where we’re going to be for the duration. My wife and I are currently contemplating whether to take the family into the city (probably Lincoln Park, some chance of OT or GC) or to a further-away suburb (probably Wilmette, some chance of Kenilworth).
Some complicated issues (in no particular order):
schools (public v. private, what makes a good school really?, a higher number of options v. a worse default), crime (can I really let the kids play on the street in the city? would I really let them play on the street in the 'burbs anyway?), summer activities (the park and zoo etc. are freaking awesome, but Gilson park is nice as well, sailing options are probably better in the city for un-owned boats and better in the burbs if I buy a boat),
**winter activities **(better access to museums and other indoor stuff in the cities, but better access to sledding and outdoor stuff in the burbs), housing (I’d probably have to be more creative or build something to really get what I want in the city, but that may be true in the burbs as well), commute (this is a clear win for the city, I guess the issue is how much my commute should be weighted with other factors), and
**a million other things **(what big issues am I missing here?).
So let’s have a knock-down drag-out (but polite) 10-page rager so I can read and learn something. Thank you.
A good start would be to examine what kind of character you want the kids to have. Do you want to raise independent, street-smart kids who are aware of the diversity in human circumstance? Or do you want to lower the chances of them ever having an unpleasant experience from .0001 to .00005?
I grew up in Deepest Suburbia - and while the schools were good, ye gods was it a boring place to grow up. Daily life is nothing but school to home, home to school - once I got a bike, I could switch it up a little and go to the library on my own, but visiting friends still required mooching a ride or (much later) borrowing a car. The nearest major city was an hour’s drive away, and visiting it was a rare schlep. (An hour-long drive is lengthy to a kid.)
There’s so much great stuff for kids to do right outside their door in a big city - museums, bookshops, sports, and so on. If at all possible, I’d certainly want to raise my hypothetical kids in a city.
To be fair to Rand Rover, Wilmette and Kenilworth are not “Deepest Suburbia”. Both have decent Metra service, and the south end of Wilmette has L service, so no hour-long drive is required to reach the more urban activities in Evanston or Chicago. And Wilmette has a modest walkable downtown of its own so that it’s not have-to-drive-everywhere strip-mall six-lane-highway-without-sidewalks Suburbia.
Now, if he was talking Schaumburg or Rolling Meadows or the like, you would definitely have a point.
I grew up a city kid. At eleven I could navigate my way from the Northwest Side to the Museum of Science and Industry and back via public transportation. The whole city lay at my feet. Never even came close to having a dangerous event happen.
I had the opposite suburban experience. There were a zillion kids within a 3 or 4 block radius of my house, and my after-school and early evening hours were spent roaming the neigborhood with my friends, playing wiffle ball, kickball, hide and seek and its many variants, and so on and so forth. I was rarely in the house during daylight, and was never bored.
I suppose today’s overprotected and overscheduled kids have it different, but growing up in the 'burbs is definitely a YMMV situation.
Could you expand on this some? For example: why do you think suburban kids can’t be (or are less likely to be) independent and “street-smart”? what exactly do you mean by “diversity in human circumstances”?
City kid here, and I loved it. Some info that’s most certainly biased in favor of the city:
Schools - Obviously you can get an excellent education in either the city or the North Shore where you’re looking. There are many good private schools in the city and what many people do not know is that some of the top-ranked grammar, middle, and high schools in the state are also located in the city. See here: http://www.schooldigger.com/go/IL/schoolrank.aspx?pagetype=top10&level=3 But obviously, these schools can be almost impossible to get into since there are many many more students in the system then spaces at the top schools. You’ll need to look into testing requirements and read up on the tier system CPS uses. I’m not a parent but I hear it is very competitive and children from Tier 1 neighborhoods (like Lincoln Park) are at a severe disadvantage in obtaining spots in high performing schools like Edison Gifted and Decatur Classical. So IMHO if you are looking to make sure your child is at a very good school it would be easier to move to the North Shore and be able to send them to public schools, unless you really don’t have a problem dropping the cash for a private school. I will say though, that the level of diversity I was exposed to going to a city public school probably could not be matched in Kenilworth or Wilmette and I believe being exposed to different folks has only helped me in my life. Also, access to city culture was also a biggie. By the time I was in seventh and eighth grade, I was able to take the train downtown with my friends during the day to attend gifted classes at the Art Institute. that was an amazing experience for me at the time.
Crime- Here is a link to a blog where you can look up crimes by neighborhoods: http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/ If you take a look at the listing for Lincoln Park, you’ll see a lot of burglary and theft. Alarm systems and practices like locking windows and doors go a long way to prevent things like that. Much of the violent crime in the city is confined to poorer neighborhoods and is related to gang activity and drugs and are not really a problem in the more affluent neighborhoods. That said, Chicago is a big city and crimes can occur anywhere (Same is true for the burbs). It is important to teach kids vigilance wherever they are. In my anecdotal experience, city kids tend to be more aware of their surroundings and more educated on how to deal with emergency occurrences.
Summer Activities - Summer activities in the city are amazing! There are so many different programs! I had so much fun as a kid. The Chicago Park District has a wide variety of summer camps and classes for kids. Here is the CPD program browser: http://programs.chicagoparkdistrict.com/programBrowser/ Aside from these, there are programs like Gallery 37 that give older kids the opportunity to get paid to make artwork. Another amazing program is Marwen, they offer many low cost art classes to kids from 6-12th grade.
Winter Activities - Again, the Chicago Park District has tons of offerings. There are places to sled and ice skate in the city. I’m not a winter person so perhaps others can offer more info on these types of activities.
Transportation: Very easy to navigate after a short period of time. Off-duty police officers ride the buses and els in the city. They’re not on every bus or train, but they’re usually not too far away if you need them.
People say that Chicago is a city of neighborhoods. Each offers a unique environment. Lincoln Park is a great neighborhood if you and your family really enjoy urban living and don’t mind crowds, especially on weekends (There are many bars and restaurants and the DePaul Campus means a lot of college-age kids roaming around). If you want the convenience of the city but a more suburban neighborhood to retreat to, consider neighborhoods like Old Irving or Lincoln Square.
I hope some of this information has been helpful. Good luck wherever you decide to move, all of the options you mentioned have great things to offer.
My guess is that he means the suburban neighborhoods would be less diverse - both ethnically and economically - and that if you live in the city you’re more likely to have to learn to adapt to a more varied life in general - taking buses and CTA, being able to roam much further afield without requiring parents to drive you, etc.
I grew up in the burbs, and it was a pretty white-bread existence. I don’t think it’s nearly the same now, but in some towns I’m sure it is. My parents did let me roam about more than the typical kid (comes from being the younget of 4, I think, plus growing up in the 70’s before people got so scared of letting their kids out of their sight), and lived near big cities, so I got some of that street-wise stuff too.
The real issue is schooling. Good, private schools can cost 20k a year net. The religious schools are a little more reasonable but still pricey. If you cant get into a magnet schools then private is an important option. We live in Lincoln Park and while we love it we have to consider the options. Also you get a lot less housing for your dollar in LP then in say Winnetka pr Wilmette. Lake view is nice as is North Central. Logan Square is still up and coming and Lincoln Square is too far north in my mind. Everything else is subjective. If you have the money to get a nice single family home and pay for private school then the city is the way to go.
Stormcrow pretty much has it. The North Shore suburbs you’re mentioning now have some ethnic diversity, but not much economic diversity. The problems that kids get into are different than in the rest of the world, and are often solved by the application of money.
Some of that is true along the Lincoln Park–Gold Coast axis as well, but the kids at least see every day that other ways of life exist. Having the power to get around on their own from an early age, they become more independent and are better equipped to handle the freedom suburban kids have suddenly sprung on them at age 16.
Any cites for this or is this just all opinion? For example, is there a higher incidence of drug use amongst suburban kids who cant handle new found freedom? The reason I ask is because I feel that in this day and age most well off kids in the US are fairly worldly due to technology. Moreover, while LP kids may get to see a different way of life around them they’ll still be mixing with upper middle class kids and dealing with upper middle class kid issues just like their suburban counter parts. Exposing your kids to the “real world” is all well and good but i still want mine to mix with the highest socio-economic group that they can.
I think it all depends on money. If you want your kids to go to a good school and live in a good house/area then you have to be relatively well off. From our search you can get more house, even in Winnetka than in LP.
One other issue is how do you, the parent, feel about the suburbs? I love the space and cleanliness that Winnetka has to offer. The down side is though that it is numbingly boring. I mean really, really fucking boring. I don’t want to join a country club so what to do? Would my relationship be affected by the fact that I am miserable and bored? I don’t get that in the city. I can go on benders with my buddies and he home by nine. I can see the family before a client dinner. Tough call but we are leaning towards the city.
On the school issue–you seem to be saying that private is the best option if one can afford it. I’m not sure about that–I’m still trying to refine my idea of what makes a good school a good school. Public schools have AP classes and gifted programs and IB programs etc. The academic rigor of private schools is a little more opaque–some private schools are rumored to let in anyone whose check cashes. And public schools typically have more extra-curricular options, including ones that aren’t available or are done on a much different scale than in private school. The money isn’t an issue for me, I’m just not sure private is always best.
Well, on the independence issue, Wilmette is walkable and served by both train systems, so kids can get around there as well before they can drive. You probably have a point with respect to Kenilworth, though.
Kenilworth also has a Metra station. But most preteen kids don’t commute to downtown Chicago. The point is being able to get around their world by themselves: school, the library, the skate park, a 7-Eleven, the movie theater, their friends’ houses, maybe a comic book store or a Target.
It’s a city neighborhood with a very suburban feel. Lots of big old homes on streets with big old trees. The L is on the ground here. I am childless but I hear good things about the local school and I know it has a large garden for the kids to plant things and learn about and eventually eat. The downside for me is I have to leave the neighborhood to do anything–movies, shopping, having a drink with a friend.
And then, all around us, is the largest community of Ecuadorans outside of Ecuador, plus tons of Middle Easterners (Jewish and Muslim) and just to the north is Devon Avenue, which is Diversity Land. So I get both–lovely walks to the L, petting my neighbors’ dogs and a great place for felafel not all that far away.
Well, this thread went nowhwere. I thought I would share some “research results” (based mainly on me bugging everyone I work with) about city schools v. suburb schools.
Seems to me that in general the city schools have higher highs and lower lows, whereas most suburb schools are just somewhere right in the middle. That is, if your kid is able to test into a gifted or classical school, then they will be with kids of greater ability than in a suburban school, but if they don’t make it then they could get shot in their neighborhood school (or just be with kids of all levels of ability with sometimes not great access to honors classes etc.). One problem with testing a kid into a gifted or classical elementary school is you’ve only solved half the problem–they have to test in again to a gifted/classical high school. There are also sibling issues here–if one kid tests in then you may have to move to a neighborhood with a decent neighborhood school in case the second kid is a meathead, but those neighborhoods will put you in a worse tier for trying to test the second kid in. Also, with gifted/classical schools, the kid may have to travel quite a distance to school, and there’s no guarantee of much continuity in kids in their class from elementary to high school. Finally, the kid has to get in for kindergarten or it’s really hard to get in at all (due to low attrition).
If you live in the city then many of the above problems are solved by going to private school, but of course there are new problems, including that their sizes typically preclude a full bevy of extra-curriculars and some are not all that transparent about how selective they are with kids.
With the suburb public schools, you get a good neighborhood feel (i.e., you live around your kid’s friends) and good continuity, but there may be less availability of gifted programs (but perhaps greater availability of tailored solutions). Of course private is always an option in the burbs as well.
I was raised in a city and have lived the past 7 or so years in a relatively isolated suburb. I could never imagine raising my child (when I do have a child) in a suburban setting like the one I currently live in. There is a little anecdote l like to tell that perfectly captures why I feel that I would be robbing my kids of something vital.
It’s about seeing a little boy, maybe 8 or 9, riding his bike along the sidewalk down my street in the suburbs. He is going along, having fun, until he gets to the entrance of the subdivision from the main road. There he has to stop. He has to stop because the sidewalk simply ends. So he turns around and rides his bike back over the same sidewalk he had just covered. That’s his world basically. Oh, and he can shoot hoops on his basketball hoop that is sitting on a slanted driveway, ('cause all the driveways are slanted in the suburbs) making the hoop sit at a crazy sideways angle. But hey, it’s still something.
I had an awesome childhood and I attribute a lot of that to where I lived, the friends I had and all the amazing fun times we had all over the city. From the nature trails by my parents house to the basketball courts by the IMA or the creek that would freeze over in the winter that ran all through the city that we would trek out on; it made for some great memories and diverse experiences. Living in a city, you are connected to something more than just your house. That poor boy on his bike on the sidewalk isn’t having a childhood like that, I dare say.
Yeah the risks of life surround us a little more closely when we live in the city, but they don’t disappear by moving out a little farther to the 'burbs. But by living out there, you deprive your children of the enriching experiences and acquiring the social skills that others avenues of education simply don’t touch.
Well Jamie, it sounds like the city and suburbs you are talking about are different than Chicago and Evanston/Wilmette–the sidewalks don’t end in the burbs I’m talking about, and a kid can’t really ride a bike on the street in the city I’m talkig about. I started this thread in the Chicago forum for a reason,you know.
Here’s the latest aspect of this I’m thinking about today–yard v. no yard. Is having a yard absolutely necesary? The city has great parks, but they aren’t directly outside your house (or condo/co-op/whatever).
That’s his world basically. Oh, and he can shoot hoops on his basketball hoop that is sitting on a slanted driveway, ('cause all the driveways are slanted in the suburbs) making the hoop sit at a crazy sideways angle. But hey, it’s still something.