Glasgow is trying to make urban living less miserable | Hacker News Reader

Glasgow is trying to make urban living less miserable

mosaicscience.com

83 pointsKaibeezy74 comments

For ponds, she says, it might be that the presence of a certain type of newt tells you whether or not the water is healthy. In cities, the newts are children. “If you can see children, it’s probably a healthy and happy city.”

Large [presumably US] Cities With the Lowest Share of Families With Children

  San Francisco    16.5%
  Seattle          18.7%
  Washington, D.C. 18.9%
  New Orleans      20.7%
  Miami            21.4%
  Minneapolis      21.8%
  Philadelphia     22.5%
  Portland         23.2%
  Denver           23.3%
  Cleveland        23.7%

https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/01/top-cities-for-families...

Yeah but its not if you have children, its if you see them. Children are not playing in the streets of Denver or Cleveland.

Exactly this. But it's harder to get this stat, how would you properly measure it?

Maybe not at nighttime/all hours?

Children play in the streets of New Orleans (the article does blame depopulation) and played in the streets of Cleveland when I was growing up there (cf. Tamir Rice)

I can't speak for SF or Seattle, but I suspect a big reason for lack of families with children in many large American cities is that, for the most part, public schools are unacceptable for any family that cares about education.

DC, Philly, Baltimore, Cleveland... all the same story. Even in gentrifying and resurgent neighborhoods, parents with the means to do so leave as soon as their kids get to school age or enroll them in extremely expensive private schools. Some might try charter schools or selective magnet schools, but the local neighborhood school in your typical big city is typically a hard "no go".

From what I see, Washington parents who care can be good at managing the charter/magnet school thing. On my block are two kids at each of two charter schools, one at a well-thought-of public middle school, one at a private school, and several I couldn't tell you about. Yes, I have seen people move across the park (to the more prosperous part of town) when the kid left Aidan Montessori or they got tired of the admissions stuff. But I suspect I know three families that stuck it out here for ever two that left.

It doesn’t have to be that way, Boston public schools for instance are excellent.

And we still think it's not good enough!

I'd bet it's also more expensive, less safe, less space, basically none of the things that you think of when you imagine the typical American nuclear family

Exactly this. You could not even pay me to raise my two kids in the city. What the city offers to someone in their 20s does nothing for those in their 30s spending most of their time working or child rearing (and I work from home).

I require space, comfort, and convenience for family, not eatery and nightlife variety. Proximity to interstates and international airports is also desirable though for work and vacation travel.

As much as I hate on the old joint family system it definitely took care of this problem

> convenience for family

As a late-20s person living in the city, this is a thing I've been pondering. I grew up in typical suburban sprawl living "close" to school, soccer practice and friend's houses... but "close" still meant entirely dependent on my parents for rides to each place (less the 5-10 children my age within a 1-mile walk). It was a huge time sink for the family, and having to be driven everywhere felt isolating as a child (i.e. can't hang out because mom is too busy to drive me). Not every urban neighborhood is inherently walkable, but many cities have inner ring suburbs (usually within city limits) where all of those amenities are at most a 20 minute walk away. Would this type of neighborhood be livable with your requirements?

Maybe. Suburbs streets have so little traffic you can let a 4 year old play games in them. As you get closer and closer in there is more traffic. If I lived on any of the roads near downtown in my tiny city I'd be concerned about my kid running out the door and into the street. While I worry about that anywhere, the odds are in my favor where I live now because there are so few cars, while in the city there are cars all the time.

Surely after 4 or 5 your kid can look for traffic no?

Sure, she looks. It doesn't always register to not run out in traffic though.

Possibly! Depends on the climate. The more mild, the more I’d consider it. I’m not walking 20 minutes in weather below 32F (Chicago) or above 90F (Tampa, Orlando, Miami).

My partner is a stay at home mom who wouldn’t mind providing daily transportation, and after a certain age we’ll just provide electric scooters and bikes to our kids before they’re old enough to drive.

I grew up in New York City (Queens) so YMMV, but none of these are huge blockers.

- more expensive: pre-K is now universally funded by local government and the public schooling system has decent pathways. General living expenses are more expensive, but not so much so if you're comparing with any of the NYC suburbs with decent schools.

- less safe: NYC has become, on a per-capita basis, one of the safest cities in the country, and certainly the safest large one. In general, a massive amount of "eyes on the street" helps keep crime down, whereas in the suburbs being outside alone is not uncommon.

- less space: in terms of living area and backyard, strictly speaking, yes. But I lived fine in a two-bedroom apartment with my parents. There are also houses with modest front and backyards within the city limits, and we moved to one of those with the addition of another child. Do you need 3000 sq ft and an acre of land to raise a child?

As far as outside, the city offers a lot of playgrounds and parks with other people in it. And then as you get older and outgrow the playground, the constant variety of things really helps with boredom, and many attractions like the museums are even free for residents. And the cherry on top is that the mass transit system allows children to travel without a chaperone of legal driving age, so parents don't have to pick between chauffeuring children around or keeping them at home.

I think it's also preference. I like being close to the city, but living in the city proper is suffocating.

American cities are strange because you usually have the spiky, tall central districts and the extremely low density suburbs, but nothing in the middle.

Queens is 2.3M people, but they're mostly in low-rise, <5 story apartments and houses of various sizes. Fresh Meadows, NY is hardly suffocating levels of density, and yet this kind of neighborhood is simply not available in most metropolitan areas. https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7337074,-73.7813407,3a,75y,3...

SF has a lottery system. With the wrong stroke of luck, your child can be damned to hours of commuting across the city every day, just to go to a crappy school, when a "good" one might be across the street.

That's an extreme example, and in the worst case scenario there are plenty of good private schools to send your children. But choosing to live in SF comes with such a set of pros and cons that many parents of school-age children who have a choice choose to live outside of it.

Is a lottery system really worse overall than just letting people buy their way into desired school district? That model obviously hasn't been working well either.

You can have proper zoning and not have to make it buy in only. Before I moved to the suburbs the city I lived in created “Workforce” zoning to combat gentrification.[1]

What’s really hard to stop are the doctors and lawyers who just send their kids to private schools and vote against everything.

[1] https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/brookhaven-zon...

Depends on your goals and metrics. I'd say yes, it is worse.

An interesting read: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/san-francisco-school-s...

Thanks, that was a genuine question.

How long has the lottery existed? Hopefully in a reasonable amount of time, it will cause the differences between good and bad public schools to disappear?

This is only the case if the schools are bad because of the students going to them.

> This is only the case if the schools are bad because of the students going to them.

Presumably the good schools got good because they're in rich neighborhoods where the parents pour time and money into the schools. If their kids are going to a wider variety of schools now, the rich parents will have incentive to make all the schools good.

What instead happens is rich parents either move out of San Francisco to the burbs, or send their kids to private school. And so San Francisco ends up both with the lowest population of children of any major city and one of the highest private school enrollment rates in the country (~20%).

Absolutely true. Safety, good schools. Most major cities compromise on both if you're middle class or below. In our case we're already planning our move away in time for public school and it's a few years out yet.

That may have been true 10 years ago. In DC, the nicer neighborhoods have some of the best (top 400) elementary schools in the country. This is driven primarily by wealthy younger couples choosing to stay in the city rather than leave for the boring burbs.

That's certainly possible. People have been trying to figure out what threshold of gentrification is required to keep families with means from leaving. I expect it's very high in DC and hard to replicate elsewhere.

That said DC is a small place surrounded by some significantly urbanized parts of Maryland and Virginia (eg Silver Spring, Alexandria, and many of the communities with metro stops).

Very true. We'll see how things evolve over the next few years!

Also, I think that for the top three you have to account for the influx of the young, who may have just established a household and not got around to children. That was the case for four households I can think of on my block since 2009.

Kinda misleading data IMO.

For example Philadelphia proper is 141.7 mi² and Phoenix proper is 517 mi². A lot of families part of the the Philadelphia area live just outside the city limits.

Thanks for sharing. I think these metrics explain a lot of the differences of opinion on zoning laws/density, management/tolerance of crime, transportation modes, etc.

Anecdotally as a resident of Minneapolis, I'm not sure what its inclusion on this list is supposed to signify. I think it's a great town to raise a family. We recently chose to build a new house just a few blocks from our current one, instead of move to the suburbs; our children are thriving in their public neighborhood school. There's tons of parks and green space nearby where we often run into neighborhood kids.

One possible explanation I guess is that the city is doing well economically, but is not as overpriced as some of the others on this list. It's still attractive for both young professionals without kids to buy houses, as well as older adults without kids to remain in their houses after their kids have grown.

Glaswegian here.

I would love to support the merry picture this article is painting but most of the examples are happy accidents.

The diet aspect is cultural and will be around for many generations. You can try and "chip" away at it by education and social mobility but it will still be around. In fact I could murder a fish and chip supper right now.

In terms of open spaces and such, Glasgow council is selling land like its going out of fashion to developers. The joke being "oh theres more student accomodation being built". Plus the city's infrastructure is under strain as Glasgow approaches the 1 million mark.

The weather will always be crap.

> Plus the city's infrastructure is under strain as Glasgow approaches the 1 million mark.

Why are you concerned with that?

Why are they worried about something being under strain? Because it won’t work as well and is more likely to break. Why wouldn’t you be concerned about that?

I don't think there will be much strain

Ok? But they do, so that’s why they’re concerned.

There won’t be much strain as Glasgow’s population used to be much larger, and many commuter trains are practically empty compared to places like London. The city also has lots of central accommodation compared to places like London, and the traffic is nowhere near as bad. Maybe a bit of lifestyle change as people vary commute hours, and less driving as the motorway is apparently very bad at peak hours.

Source: used to live and work in Glasgow, have friends in council planning, have been back there and taken commuter trains over the last few years.

I don't know if I'm preaching to the choir here, but if you've never seen the shows Chewin' the Fat or Still Game... you must.

>The joke being "oh theres more student accomodation being built"

Ha, we have the same here in Aberdeen.

> Glasgow council is selling land like its going out of fashion to developers

Guessing the sentiment here is that this is bad? Why exactly? Is Glasgow not growing and ever more people needing roofs over heads?

I've never once heard a person hate on farmers for producing too much food for consumption but the moment developers come even close to meeting demand for housing they are considered on par with criminals.

Both are essentials for life. Yet an abundance of one may reduce an individuals personal wealth.

In my country developers are banned from political donations, bikie gangs (organised criminals) are not.

Because private developers only build housing for a profit, which does not make it possible to satisfy everyone's needs and is therefore not in line with the supposed purpose of the council. If it truly cared about the needs of its constituents, the council could contract out to develop the land itself and provide housing at a cost accessible to everyone. Instead there is a lot of money sloshing around for the wealthy and powerful, and a lot of poor people with inadequate housing. This is why these people are considered "on par with criminals" and why your farming analogy is not really relevant.

I lived 5 years in Glasgow to get my engineering diploma, coming from a quiet village from the french countryside. It was a shock when I arrived there, barely speaking english, having never lived in a city before, but my god I loved this city so much.

Weather is depressing as hell, violence is common, the food is the worst I ever tasted and there is still this silly war between catholic and protestant. But glaswegians are so friendly, and the city is so mad that I felt so alive there. Living there was surreal every time of the day, from the morning hangover, the awful food to the mad parties at night.

Having said that, I never saw myself raising a family there, Glasgow is just too much of everything.

Glasgow may be in the words of Frankie Boyle "like Blade Runner without the special effects" but it is worth noting that it is definitely one of the friendliest cities, whereas here in Edinburgh we might have one of the most beautiful cities in the world but the inhabitants tend to be comparatively grim of mood.

And a large Glasgow City Centre apartment about half of the price of a similar apartment in Edinburgh. Making urbanization a lot more affordable. That said, moving 30 minutes out of Glasgow (Kilmarnock), you can get a similar end unit apartment for a third of the cost in Glasgow walking distance to a direct line to Glasgow.

And here I am in the States driving 50 miles a day and paying triple for my house what a nice City Centre flat costs in Edinburgh.

~30 mins by train from Edinburgh Haymarket gets you across to Fife - which is where we moved from central Edinburgh ~3 years ago.

Edinburgh folk aren't that bad, unless it is festival time.

Though I admit getting drunk in Glasgow usually leads to more random encounters and general chitchat than Edinburgh, unless you're lucky enough to be in Leith!

Glasgow has the friendliest folk!

I was just visiting and some delightful older Glaswegian ladies were seating next to me at dinner and noticed I was eating alone.

Next thing I know, I (nearly 30 years old) am accepting their (mid-late 50s) invite to go to speakeasy they had reservations for. Glaswegians are no joke. Such a fun night. People make the place.

I wonder if that's something to do with the number of tourists? Londoners have a reputation for being unfriendly towards strangers, but having lived there a few years, I can understand the frustration when walking around the streets.

> Anna recalls the change. “When we were in the tenements, you’d shout up to the window: ‘Mammy, I want a piece of jam!’ Before you knew it there was a dozen of them being thrown out of the window.” In the tower block, she did not let her own children play unsupervised. Neighbours only spoke if they took the same lift. Her daughter was threatened with a bread knife.

Interesting that this anecdote is the same theme as the children's song we learned at school "You cannae through pieces oot a twenty story flat"

Chicago, USA, had similar urban "renewal" woes, resulting in the construction of high-rise housing projects (called housing estates in Scotland). The Robert Taylor Homes were a particularly egregious example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes

They were demolished in the early 21st century. But, unfortunately, Chicago remains a city where it's a vast dangerous struggle to live in poverty.

'twould be interesting to compare Glasgow's sectarianism with Chicago's racism, to see whether ways of mitigating one could mitigate the other.

If anyone is interested in this type of thing I would recommend reading ‘Seeing Like a State’ by James C. Scott. It is one of those books that makes a point so definitively that many articles on the topic could just be appended as examples.

From Wikipedia:

> The book catalogues schemes which states impose upon populaces that are convenient for the state since they make societies "legible", but are not necessarily good for the people. For example, census data, standardized weights and measures, and uniform languages make it easier to tax and control the population.

What's wrong with "standardized weights and measures"?

And with taking a census for that matter?

If you don't feel like reading the actual book, this book review [0] does an excellent job of summarizing.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-lik...

Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780747411/ ) makes the case that standardized weights and measures do indeed make things easier for the state, but that in this case the state is on the side of the peasants against the nobility who would like to enserf them.

History supports this view in some obvious ways -- European peasant revolutions included demands for standardized weights and measures as a counter to abuse of nonstandard measures by local lords.

I'm not sure how decreased dereliction, increased greenspaces, and strengthening the local community are tools of government control. It kind of feels like the same goals an anarchist commune would have.

It's pretty easy to point to the obvious societal and economic benefits to the population of all of those examples.

Does the book explain why it believes said benefits are outweighed by their use in allowing the government to actually enforce taxes and laws?

The map is not the territory. The argument is not that they are without benefit, but that there are downsides to people who don't fit the statistical model.

For censuses, an example might be the list of religion, race or gender checkboxes. If your identity doesn't correspond to a checkbox, it appears not to exist.

I think UK did not get highrise development right. Building residential highrises far away from workplaces,social facilities, and no good transit pretty much defeats the purpose of building highrises.

In other words, UK cities with "depressive" highrise communities unknowingly copied Moscow suburbs.

You're right that the UK government bungled the high-rise housing in the 60s and 70s (as documented by Adam Curtis in "The Great British Housing Disaster" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch5VorymiL4).

But I'd like to explore the UK/Moscow comparison though. I don't have first-hand experience with Moscow but I am familiar with the Czech Republic where paneláky house a sizeable chunk of the population. Many of my friends live in them and they're generally quite pleasant, well served by transport and amenities (shops, bars, things like hairdressers and such).

What I'm getting at is that this - in the "west" there is a lot of misunderstanding about life in Warsaw Pact countries. From my Czech experience it would not surprise me in the least if much of the Moscow mass-housing you're referring to was planned and constructed better than similar developments in UK.

So I think the comparison between (say) Red Road flats in Glasgow or the Banana Flats in Leith and Moscow's suburbs might be unfair to Moscow.

I'd say Moscow improved since Soviet times. The issue with Moscow suburbs were that they were made to house a lot of lower end Soviet proletarians, densely, cheaply, and most importantly away from Soviet elites.

They had no or bare minimum in terms of living infrastructure like shops, schools, daycare and people had to travel to Moscow for everything.

The only connection they had to the city centre were busses, and trains whose routes and schedules were very peculiarly planned, again to frustrate residents from faring to city centre too often.

Those bedroom communities were only linked to the metro like a decade or so ago.

Used to live in Glasgow and it is my favourite city. I left for a job elsewhere.

The weather and the dark winters are the real issue. Association with violence is outdated - it’s much safer than London, for example.

Association with drinking alcohol entirely accurate. If you like that, Glasgow is a great place to party. It also contributes to a very communal feel around the pubs there. And it brings the downsides you’d expect - increased levels of alcoholism and domestic violence.

The Protestant catholic thing is a regular source of annoyance when the orange marches are on, but you can otherwise ignore it. Some momentum against the marching is developing now, hopefully the council will act.

Now the positives: long beautiful summer evenings, relatively warm winters, incredible arts and music scenes, best pubs and bars in the UK, beautiful parks, stunning architecture (really, really stunning), beautiful tenements you can afford to live in on an average wage like you’re in some kind of Parisian movie, great museums, Loch Lomond about 30 min drive away and lots of other beautiful countryside nearby, great staging post for the highlands. Incredible urban landscape to explore. Two great universities. Very vegan friendly - a bunch of the major venues for music and general hipster things are vegan.

But the biggest plus is the people - the most kind, warm, friendly people you’ll meet in the UK. People shouting out of their windows to invite me in for a drink. Starting conversations with me as I walk down the street. Drinking whisky with strangers you’ve just met at the bar. Community organisations (like the Children’s Wood mentioned in the article) spring up everywhere. This innate sense of fairness. It’s so hard to describe, but go visit and you might be lucky enough to understand why “people make glasgow” is both a council marketing slogan and also perfectly true.

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The weather will always be crap.

Climate change will solve that problem.

I believe Scotland is forecast to have warmer even wetter winters - although summers should be drier.

Prevailing Westerlies should ensure a good deal of water is always being dumped on the West. Kent weather is not in our future.

Unless climate change kills the gulf stream...

Please don't do that here.

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