Because once again, according to the Mayor and the UFT, new hires will be made worse off to pay for a deal for those cashing in and moving out. Kind of like the 2000 pension enhancement funded by our $25,000 per year cops.

But I believe the assumptions are fraudulent, and it will be even worse than that. You can’t do more than a back of the envelope, because this is a secret deal, but my overview is here: http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/the_defining_moment_of_the_spitzer_administration_has_arrived.html

I think Carolyn refers to the fact that there are more “good” (middle class) schools due to changing demographics. Parents of elementary school students have better choices in certain gentrifying neighborhoods.

According to Bloomberg, the pension deal will save the city money. Do you know otherwise?

But so many Americans are obsessed with their own prosperity situation, they barely look up at the rest of the world and wonder whether they may be part of the global mess we’re in.

So true Angus Grieve-Smith, I mean I can expand on that so much but it’s pretty self-expanatory and repetative.

I expect some blowback here from the UFT and the rest of the state. They will not allow this to go unchallenged.

Wait until the real NY State budget gets passed after the November election, and the cost of the latest early retirement deal for teachers has to be paid for out of the schools (assuming Spitzer signs it). Remember, in the last two recessions state school aid was cut for NYC, and increased for the rest of the state.

Years ago, RPA found that the biggest factor in people’s choice to stay in the city was the ability to by a bagel at midnight. But the opposite driving force outward is the calibre of schools. In 1993, when Brian and Charlie Komanoff wrote “Win-win Transportation” which led to the formation of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, I chided them that they had their eye on the wrong prize–that efficient transportation would not woo people into cities untill public schools got better. that even the most avid transportation advocates would not risk their own children’s education. Now that City schools actually are better (partly due to a critcal mass of educated parents), we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I asked my suburban-bred 12-year old niece who has a “passion for Manhattan,” on onw of our city junkets, if she could see herself living there. To her “yes,” I asked what she likes about it. Her reply said it all: “it’s busy.” (There’s hope!)

cappucino-sipping, yoga-practicing resident of a urban-type neighborhood

That’s funny, the vast majority of cappucino-sipping yoga practitioners I know live in suburbs or exurbs. Some of them in McMansions, even. The few other Atlantic readers I know live mostly in urban areas. What was the point of mentioning the choice of caffeinated beverage and exercise/spiritual practice?

I think you’re picking up on a peculiarity of the Atlantic‘s style more than anything else, Jonathan. Pretty much every article seems to be framed in abstract, general, philosophical terms, leaving the reader to decide how much it affects them directly. With the exception of the back page where they make up funny words. It’s not Cosmo, you know.

So what would you say to someone who just took out a thirty-year, zero-down mortgage on a dwelling that will most likely be impractical in five years and uninhabitable in twenty?

Seriously, while there’s a place for learned discussions about the unstable economies of distant suburbs, the article seems strangely detached from any possible practical relevance to the lives of its readers. Either every Atlantic Monthly reader is a cappucino-sipping, yoga-practicing resident of a urban-type neighborhood, or there is a whole cadre of McMansion owners out there who can read this without understanding that the author’s point is that neither their houses, nor their neighborhoods, nor their communities, will last much longer than it takes for their kindergarteners to graduate from college. Wow.

In this case, I believe there is no decisive point where people say, “Tomorrow we change.” There’s just too much tied up in the infrastructure we already have. And let’s not forget all the cities that are still caught up in their own inertia of sprawling expansion.

But the Atlantic’s more important article on this topic was last month: The $1.4 Trillion Question.

Why will suburbs be going away in the years ahead? The Chinese will stop subsidizing our “way of life.” Without their help, we won’t be able to afford them any longer.

Through the quarter-century in which China has been opening to world trade, Chinese leaders have deliberately held down living standards for their own people and propped them up in the United States. This is the real meaning of the vast trade surplus—$1.4 trillion and counting, going up by about $1 billion per day—that the Chinese government has mostly parked in U.S. Treasury notes. In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China. Like so many imbalances in economics, this one can’t go on indefinitely, and therefore won’t.

…

The dollar’s value has been high for many years—unnaturally high, in large part because of the implicit bargain with the Chinese. Living standards in China, while rising rapidly, have by the same logic been unnaturally low. To understand why this situation probably can’t go on, and what might replace it—via a dollar crash or some other event—let’s consider how this curious balance of power arose and how it works.

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/thinking_of_moving_south.html

I’ve written others on the same theme. The aftermath of the housing boom and bust may reveal a shift in relative well being. Or, rather, those with relative well being may end up shifting.

It’s crucial to note that these premiums have arisen not only in central cities, but also in suburban towns that have walkable urban centers offering a mix of residential and commercial development. For instance, luxury single-family homes in suburban Westchester County, just north of New York City, sell for $375 a square foot.

This is crucial to note. It’s not “suburbs” per se that are the problem, it’s car-dominated lifestyles. When my wife and I were looking for a place to settle a few years ago, we found eight towns in southern Westchester where you could buy a co-op within comfortable walking distance of a train station and a supermarket: Bronxville, Scarsdale, Hartsdale, Pelham, Mount Vernon (near both the Fleetwood and Mount Vernon East stations), Harrison, Larchmont and Tarrytown. Since then, the last two lost their supermarkets as casualties of the Grand Union bankruptcy that in one swoop decimated the pedestrian-friendliness of towns across the region, but the others are still just as friendly.

We ultimately decided we wanted subway frequencies to get to Manhattan, and the prices were a little steep, but otherwise those towns were great.

Yet recent consumer research by Jonathan Levine of the University of Michigan and Lawrence Frank of the University of British Columbia suggests that roughly one in three homeowners would prefer to live in these types of places.

This is good to use to push back against people who try to tell us that “the American people” want suburbs.

I doubt the swing toward urban living will ever proceed as far as the swing toward the suburbs did in the 20th century; many people will still prefer the bigger houses and car-based lifestyles of conventional suburbs.

Maybe they will, but that’s immaterial if they can’t afford them.

Two or three decades from now, the next Kurt Russell may find his breakout role in Escape From the Suburban Fringe.

Or maybe it will be Kurt himself, busting out of his gated retirement community in a utility trike, shooting his way through other imprisoned geriatric gangsters.

I must say though, the landscaping is magnificent.

As far as retrofitting–maybe the term “streetcar suburbs” will come back into vogue. That would really put the “retro” in “retrofitting.”

22 years ago, knowing how I wanted to live, the choices were limited, because of the accessibility I wanted within walking distance.

But since a bicycle moves at 3+ times the speed, it provides the same access at one-third the density. Add the internet, and goods delivered, and you can have a life.

The far exurbs are a problem, however. Perhaps if you have several McMansions on a cul-de-sac, you can convert one to workforce housing and divide the rest into nursing home units for seniors.

I tried (very delicately) to discuss some of Kunstler’s ideas with my in-laws — particularly his theory that these age-limited gated retirement communities will die off once energy becomes scarce and the original residents die off themselves. Let’s just say that my mother-in-law in particular was not interested in hearing any of it.

No surprise to me. God, I LOVE NEW YORK!