Why cities are becoming "theme parks of childless affluence"

Even with improvements in housing, education is the main barrier to making the cities more conducive to children. The knowledge economy feeds on brain power, and parents will do anything to make sure their kids can compete and achieve in it.

We have to feed our children to this thing we created, this gaping maw of achievement with long hours and stressful quality of life where we yearn to “work to live” while committing to “live to work.” We tell kids to follow their bliss, to live their dreams, so long as it puts them at the center of a knowledge-based economy where success is its own reward.

SAT tutors have given way to professional preschool preppers. Two-parent households have double the income to pay for the support needed to enrich their small flock and to keep kids in the orbit of the economy they must be shuffled into. Parents who grew up with all the educational accouterments and those who did not are desperate to make sure their kids get every advantage. If the cities can’t provide that and the parents have the means, they will leave. The students left behind will suffer.

Neither the problems nor the potential solutions are unique to New York. Household sizes and birth rates are in decline throughout the developed world. Fertility is decreasing, and domestic migration is reversing, which means fewer people are moving internally to America’s largest cities.